initial commit of ebook 15431HEADmain

1 files changed, 24728 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/15431.txt b/15431.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4029ffd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/15431.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,24728 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Success, by Samuel Hopkins Adams
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Success
+       A Novel
+
+Author: Samuel Hopkins Adams
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2005 [EBook #15431]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUCCESS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Shimmin, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                Success
+
+                        BY SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS
+
+             Author of "The Clarion," "Common Cause," etc.
+
+                                 1921
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+    PART I. ENCHANTMENT
+
+   PART II. THE VISION
+
+  PART III. FULFILLMENT
+
+
+
+
+SUCCESS
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+ENCHANTMENT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The lonely station of Manzanita stood out, sharp and unsightly, in the
+keen February sunlight. A mile away in a dip of the desert, lay the
+town, a sorry sprawl of frame buildings, patternless save for the one
+main street, which promptly lost itself at either end in a maze of
+cholla, prickly pear, and the lovely, golden-glowing roseo. Far as the
+eye could see, the waste was spangled with vivid hues, for the rare
+rains had come, and all the cacti were in joyous bloom, from the scarlet
+stain of the ocatilla to the pale, dream-flower of the yucca. Overhead
+the sky shone with a hard serenity, a blue, enameled dome through which
+the imperishable fires seemed magnified as they limned sharp shadows on
+the earth; but in the southwest clouds massed and lurked darkly for a
+sign that the storm had but called a truce.
+
+East to west, along a ridge bounding the lower desert, ran the railroad,
+a line as harshly uncompromising as the cold mathematics of the
+engineers who had mapped it. To the north spread unfathomably a forest
+of scrub pine and pinon, rising, here and there, into loftier growth. It
+was as if man, with his imperious interventions, had set those thin
+steel parallels as an irrefragable boundary to the mutual encroachments
+of forest and desert, tree and cactus. A single, straggling trail
+squirmed its way into the woodland. One might have surmised that it was
+winding hopefully if blindly toward the noble mountain peak shimmering
+in white splendor, mystic and wonderful, sixty miles away, but seeming
+in that lucent air to be brooding closely over all the varied loveliness
+below.
+
+Though nine o'clock had struck on the brisk little station-clock, there
+was still a tang of night chill left. The station-agent came out,
+carrying a chair which he set down in the sunniest corner of the
+platform. He looked to be hardly more than a boy, but firm-knit and
+self-confident. His features were regular, his fairish hair slightly
+wavy, and in his expression there was a curious and incongruous
+suggestion of settledness, of acceptance, of satisfaction with life as
+he met it, which an observer of men would have found difficult to
+reconcile with his youth and the obvious intelligence of the face. His
+eyes were masked by deeply browned glasses, for he was bent upon
+literary pursuits, witness the corpulent, paper-covered volume under his
+arm. Adjusting his chair to the angle of ease, he tipped back against
+the wall and made tentative entry into his book.
+
+What a monumental work was that in the treasure-filled recesses of which
+the young explorer was straightway lost to the outer world! No human
+need but might find its contentment therein. Spread forth in its
+alluringly illustrated pages was the whole universe reduced to the
+purchasable. It was a perfect and detailed microcosm of the world of
+trade, the cosmogony of commerce _in petto_. The style was brief, pithy,
+pregnant; the illustrations--oh, wonder of wonders!--unfailingly apt to
+the text. He who sat by the Damascus Road of old marveling as the
+caravans rolled dustily past bearing "emeralds and wheat, honey and oil
+and balm, fine linen and embroidered goods, iron, cassia and calamus,
+white wool, ivory and ebony," beheld or conjectured no such wondrous
+offerings as were here gathered, collected, and presented for the
+patronage of this heir of all the ages, between the gay-hued covers of
+the great Sears-Roebuck Semiannual Mail-Order Catalogue. Its happy
+possessor need but cross the talisman with the ready magic of a postal
+money order and the swift genii of transportation would attend, servile
+to his call, to deliver the commanded treasures at his very door.
+
+But the young reader was not purposefully shopping in this vast
+market-place of print. Rather he was adventuring idly, indulging the
+amateur spirit, playing a game of hit-or-miss, seeking oracles in those
+teeming pages. Therefore he did not turn to the pink insert, embodying
+the alphabetical catalogue (Abdominal Bands to Zither Strings), but
+opened at random.
+
+"Supertoned Banjos," he read, beginning at the heading; and, running his
+eye down the different varieties, paused at "Pride of the Plantation, a
+full-sized, well-made, snappy-toned instrument at a very moderate price.
+12 T 4031/4."
+
+The explorer shook his head. Abovestairs rested a guitar (the Pearletta,
+12 S 206, price $7.95) which he had purchased at the instance of Messrs.
+Sears-Roebuck's insinuating representation as set forth in catalogue
+item 12 S 01942, "Self-mastery of the Guitar in One Book, with All
+Chords, Also Popular Solos That Can Be Played Almost at Sight." The
+nineteen-cent instruction-book had gone into the fire after three days
+of unequal combat between it and its owner, and the latter had
+subsequently learned something of the guitar (and more of life) from a
+Mexican-American girl with lazy eyes and the soul of a capricious and
+self-indulged kitten, who had come uninvited to Manzanita to visit an
+aunt, deceased six months previously. With a mild pang of memory for
+those dreamy, music-filled nights on the desert, the youth decided
+against further experiments in stringed orchestration.
+
+Telescopes turned up next. He lingered a moment over 20 T 3513, a
+nickel-plated cap pocket-glass, reflecting that with it he could discern
+any signal on the distant wooded butte occupied by Miss Camilla Van
+Arsdale, back on the forest trail, in the event that she might wish a
+wire sent or any other service performed. Miss Camilla had been very
+kind and understanding at the time of the parting with Carlotta, albeit
+with a grimly humorous disapproval of the whole inflammatory affair; as
+well as at other times; and there was nothing that he would not do for
+her. He made a neat entry in a pocket ledger (3 T 9901) against the time
+when he should have spare cash, and essayed another plunge.
+
+Arctics and Lumberman's Overs he passed by with a grin as inappropriate
+to the climate. Cod Liver Oil failed to interest him, as did the
+Provident Cast Iron Range and the Clean-Press Cider Mill. But he paused
+speculatively before Punching Bags, for he had the clean pride of body,
+typical of lusty Western youth, and loved all forms of exercise. Could
+he find space, he wondered, to install 6 T 1441 with its Scientific
+Noiseless Platform & Wall Attachment (6 T 1476) in the portable house
+(55 S 17) which, purchased a year before, now stood in the clearing
+behind the station crammed with purchases from the Sears-Roebuck
+wonderbook. Anyway, he would make another note of it. What would it be
+like, he wondered, to have a million dollars to spend, and unlimited
+access to the Sears-Roebuck treasures. Picturing himself as such a
+Croesus, he innocently thought that his first act would be to take train
+for Chicago and inspect the warehoused accumulations of those princes of
+trade with his own eager eyes!
+
+He mused humorously for a moment over a book on "Ease in Conversation."
+("No trouble about conversation," he reflected; "the difficulty is to
+find anybody to converse with," and he thought first of Carlotta, and
+then of Miss Camilla Van Arsdale, but chiefly of the latter, for
+conversation had not been the strong point of the passionate,
+light-hearted Spanish girl.) Upon a volume kindly offering to teach
+astronomy to the lay mind without effort or trouble (43 T 790) and
+manifestly cheap at $1.10, he bestowed a more respectful attention, for
+the desert nights were long and lonely.
+
+Eventually he arrived at the department appropriate to his age and the
+almost universal ambition of the civilized male, to wit, clothing.
+Deeply, judiciously, did he meditate and weigh the advantages as between
+745 J 460 ("Something new--different--economical--efficient. An all-wool
+suit embodying all the features that make for clothes satisfaction. This
+announcement is of tremendous importance"--as one might well have
+inferred from the student's rapt expression) and 776 J 017 ("A
+double-breasted, snappy, yet semi-conservative effect in dark-green
+worsted, a special social value"), leaning to the latter because of a
+purely literary response to that subtle and deft appeal of the
+attributive "social." The devotee of Messrs. Sears-Roebuck was an
+innately social person, though as yet his gregarious proclivities lay
+undeveloped and unsuspected by himself. Also he was of a literary
+tendency; but of this he was already self-conscious. He passed on to
+ulsters and raincoats, divagated into the colorful realm of neckwear,
+debated scarf-pins and cuff-links, visualized patterned shirtings, and
+emerged to dream of composite sartorial grandeurs which, duly
+synthesized into a long list of hopeful entries, were duly filed away
+within the pages of 3 T 9901, the pocket ledger.
+
+Footsteps shuffling along the right of way dispelled his visions. He
+looked up to see two pedestrians who halted at his movement. They were
+paired typically of that strange fraternity, the hobo, one being a
+grizzled, hard-bitten man of waning middle age, the other a vicious and
+scrawny boy of eighteen or so. The boy spoke first.
+
+"You the main guy here?"
+
+The agent nodded.
+
+"Got a sore throat?" demanded the boy surlily. He started toward the
+door. The agent made no move, but his eyes were attentive.
+
+"That'll be near enough," he said quietly.
+
+"Oh, we ain't on that lay," put in the grizzled man. He was quite
+hoarse. "You needn't to be scared of us."
+
+"I'm not," agreed the agent. And, indeed, the fact was self-evident.
+
+"What about the pueblo yonder?" asked the man with a jerk of his head
+toward the town.
+
+"The hoosegow is old and the sheriff is new."
+
+"I got ya," said the man, nodding. "We better be on our way."
+
+"I would think so."
+
+"You're a hell of a guy, you are," whined the boy. "'On yer way' from
+you an' not so much as 'Are you hungry?' What about a little hand-out?"
+
+"Nothing doing."
+
+"Tightwad! How'd you like--"
+
+"If you're hungry, feel in your coat-pocket."
+
+"I guess you're a wise one," put in the man, grinning appreciatively.
+"We got grub enough. Panhandlin's a habit with the kid; don't come
+natural to him to pass a likely prospect without makin' a touch."
+
+He leaned against the platform, raising one foot slightly from the
+ground in the manner of a limping animal. The agent disappeared into the
+station, locking the door after him. The boy gave expression to a
+violent obscenity directed upon the vanished man. When that individual
+emerged again, he handed the grizzled man a box of ointment and tossed a
+packet of tobacco to the evil-faced boy. Both were quick with their
+thanks. That which they had most needed and desired had been, as it
+were, spontaneously provided. But the elder of the wayfarers was
+puzzled, and looked from the salve-box to its giver.
+
+"How'd you know my feet was blistered?"
+
+"Been padding in the rain, haven't you?"
+
+"Have you been on the hoof, too?" asked the hobo quickly.
+
+The other smiled.
+
+"Say!" exclaimed the boy. "I bet he's Banneker. Are you?" he demanded.
+
+"That's my name."
+
+"I heard of you three years ago when you was down on the Long Line
+Sandy," said the man. He paused and considered. "What's your lay, Mr.
+Banneker?" he asked, curiously but respectfully.
+
+"As you see it. Railroading."
+
+"A gay-cat," put in the boy with a touch of scorn.
+
+"You hold your fresh lip," his elder rebuked him. "This gent has treated
+us _like_ a gent. But why? What's the idea? That's what I don't get."
+
+"Oh, some day I might want to run for Governor on the hobo ticket,"
+returned the unsmiling agent.
+
+"You get our votes. Well, so long and much obliged."
+
+The two resumed their journey. Banneker returned to his book. A freight,
+"running extra," interrupted him, but not for long. The wire had been
+practicing a seemly restraint for uneventful weeks, so the agent felt
+that he could settle down to a sure hour's bookishness yet, even though
+the west-bound Transcontinental Special should be on time, which was
+improbable, as "bad track" had been reported from eastward, owing to the
+rains. Rather to his surprise, he had hardly got well reimmersed in the
+enchantments of the mercantile fairyland when the "Open Office" wire
+warned him to be attentive, and presently from the east came tidings of
+Number Three running almost true to schedule, as befitted the pride of
+the line, the finest train that crossed the continent.
+
+Past the gaunt station she roared, only seven minutes late, giving the
+imaginative young official a glimpse and flash of the uttermost luxury
+of travel: rich woods, gleaming metal, elegance of finish, and on the
+rear of the observation-car a group so lily-clad that Sears-Roebuck at
+its most glorious was not like unto them. Would such a train, the
+implanted youth wondered, ever bear him away to unknown, undreamed
+enchantments?
+
+Would he even wish to go if he might? Life was full of many things to do
+and learn at Manzanita. Mahomet need not go to the mountain when, with
+but a mustard seed of faith in the proven potency of mail-order miracles
+he could move mountains to come to him. Leaning to his telegraph
+instrument, he wired to the agent at Stanwood, twenty-six miles
+down-line, his formal announcement.
+
+"O. S.--G. I. No. 3 by at 10.46."
+
+"O. K.--D. S.," came the response.
+
+Banneker returned to the sunlight. In seven minutes or perhaps less, as
+the Transcontinental would be straining to make up lost time, the train
+would enter Rock Cut three miles and more west, and he would recapture
+the powerful throbbing of the locomotive as she emerged on the farther
+side, having conquered the worst of the grade.
+
+Banneker waited. He drew out his watch. Seven. Seven and a half. Eight.
+No sound from westward. He frowned. Like most of the road's employees,
+he took a special and almost personal interest in having the regal train
+on time, as if, in dispatching it through, he had given it a friendly
+push on its swift and mighty mission. Was she steaming badly? There had
+been no sign of it as she passed. Perhaps something had gone wrong with
+the brakes. Or could the track have--
+
+The agent tilted sharply forward, his lithe frame tense. A long drawn,
+quivering shriek came down-wind to him. It was repeated. Then short and
+sharp, piercing note on piercing note, sounded the shrill, clamant
+voice.
+
+The great engine of Number Three was yelling for help.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Banneker came out of his chair with a spring.
+
+"Help! Help! Help! Help! Help!" screamed the strident voice.
+
+It was like an animal in pain and panic.
+
+For a brief instant the station-agent halted at the door to assure
+himself that the call was stationary. It was. Also it was slightly
+muffled. That meant that the train was still in the cut. As he ran to
+the key and sent in the signal for Stanwood, Banneker reflected what
+this might mean. Crippled? Likely enough. Ditched? He guessed not. A
+ditched locomotive is usually voiceless if not driverless as well.
+Blocked by a slide? Rock Cut had a bad repute for that kind of accident.
+But the quality of the call predicated more of a catastrophe than a mere
+blockade. Besides, in that case why could not the train back down--
+
+The answering signal from the dispatcher at Stanwood interrupted his
+conjectures.
+
+"Number Three in trouble in the Cut," ticked Banneker fluently. "Think
+help probably needed from you. Shall I go out?"
+
+"O. K.," came the answer. "Take charge. Bad track reported three miles
+east may delay arrival."
+
+Banneker dropped and locked the windows, set his signal for "track
+blocked" and ran to the portable house. Inside he stood, considering.
+With swift precision he took from one of the home-carpentered shelves a
+compact emergency kit, 17 S 4230, "hefted" it, and adjusted it, knapsack
+fashion, to his back; then from a small cabinet drew a flask, which he
+disposed in his hip-pocket. Another part of the same cabinet provided a
+first-aid outfit, 3 R 0114. Thus equipped he was just closing the door
+after him when another thought struck him and he returned to slip a coil
+of light, strong sash-cord, 36 J 9078, over his shoulders to his waist
+where he deftly tautened it. He had seen railroad wrecks before. For a
+moment he considered leaving his coat, for he had upwards of three miles
+to go in the increasing heat; but, reflecting that the outward and
+visible signs of authority might save time and questions, he thought
+better of it. Patting his pocket to make sure that his necessary
+notebook and pencil were there, he set out at a moderate, even,
+springless lope. He had no mind to reach a scene which might require his
+best qualities of mind and body, in a semi-exhausted state.
+Nevertheless, laden as he was, he made the three miles in less than half
+an hour. Let no man who has not tried to cover at speed the ribbed
+treacheries of a railroad track minimize the achievement!
+
+A sharp curve leads to the entrance of Rock Cut. Running easily,
+Banneker had reached the beginning of the turn, when he became aware of
+a lumbering figure approaching him at a high and wild sort of
+half-gallop. The man's face was a welter of blood. One hand was pressed
+to it. The other swung crazily as he ran. He would have swept past
+Banneker unregarding had not the agent caught him by the shoulder.
+
+"Where are you hurt?"
+
+The runner stared wildly at the young man. "I'll soom," he mumbled
+breathlessly, his hand still crumpled against the dreadfully smeared
+face. "Dammum, I'll soom."
+
+He removed his hand from his mouth, and the red drops splattered and
+were lost upon the glittering, thirsty sand. Banneker wiped the man's
+face, and found no injury. But the fingers which he had crammed into his
+mouth were bleeding profusely.
+
+"They oughta be prosecuted," moaned the sufferer. "I'll soom. For ten
+thousan' dollars. M'hand is smashed. Looka that! Smashed like a bug."
+
+Banneker caught the hand and expertly bound it, taking the man's name
+and address as he worked.
+
+"Is it a bad wreck?" he asked.
+
+"It's hell. Look at m'hand! But I'll soom, all right. _I_'ll show'm ...
+Oh! ... Cars are afire, too ... Oh-h-h! Where's a hospital?"
+
+He cursed weakly as Banneker, without answering, re-stowed his packet
+and ran on.
+
+A thin wisp of smoke rising above the nearer wall of rocks made the
+agent set his teeth. Throughout his course the voice of the engine had,
+as it were, yapped at his hurrying heels, but now it was silent, and he
+could hear a murmur of voices and an occasional shouted order. He came
+into sight of the accident, to face a bewildering scene.
+
+Two hundred yards up the track stood the major portion of the train,
+intact. Behind it, by itself, lay a Pullman sleeper, on its side and
+apparently little harmed. Nearest to Banneker, partly on the rails but
+mainly beside them, was jumbled a ridiculous mess of woodwork, with here
+and there a gleam of metal, centering on a large and jagged boulder.
+Smaller rocks were scattered through the _melange_. It was exactly like
+a heap of giant jack-straws into which some mischievous spirit had
+tossed a large pebble. At one end a flame sputtered and spread
+cheerfully.
+
+A panting and grimy conductor staggered toward it with a pail of water
+from the engine. Banneker accosted him.
+
+"Any one in--"
+
+"Get outa my way!" gasped the official.
+
+"I'm agent at Manzanita."
+
+The conductor set down his pail. "O God!" he said. "Did you bring any
+help?"
+
+"No, I'm alone. Any one in there?" He pointed to the flaming debris.
+
+"One that we know of. He's dead."
+
+"Sure?" cried Banneker sharply.
+
+"Look for yourself. Go the other side."
+
+Banneker looked and returned, white and set of face. "How many others?"
+
+"Seven, so far."
+
+"Is that all?" asked the agent with a sense of relief. It seemed as if
+no occupant could have come forth of that ghastly and absurd
+rubbish-heap, which had been two luxurious Pullmans, alive.
+
+"There's a dozen that's hurt bad."
+
+"No use watering that mess," said Banneker. "It won't burn much further.
+Wind's against it. Anybody left in the other smashed cars?"
+
+"Don't think so."
+
+"Got the names of the dead?"
+
+"Now, how would I have the time!" demanded the conductor resentfully.
+
+Banneker turned to the far side of the track where the seven bodies lay.
+They were not disposed decorously. The faces were uncovered. The
+postures were crumpled and grotesque. A forgotten corner of a
+battle-field might look like that, the young agent thought, bloody and
+disordered and casual.
+
+Nearest him was the body of a woman badly crushed, and, crouching beside
+it, a man who fondled one of its hands, weeping quietly. Close by lay
+the corpse of a child showing no wound or mark, and next that, something
+so mangled that it might have been either man or woman--or neither. The
+other victims were humped or sprawled upon the sand in postures of
+exaggerated _abandon_; all but one, a blonde young girl whose upthrust
+arm seemed to be reaching for something just beyond her grasp.
+
+A group of the uninjured from the forward cars surrounded and enclosed a
+confused sound of moaning and crying. Banneker pushed briskly through
+the ring. About twenty wounded lay upon the ground or were propped
+against the rock-wall. Over them two women were expertly working, one
+tiny and beautiful, with jewels gleaming on her reddened hands; the
+other brisk, homely, with a suggestion of the professional in her
+precise motions. A broad, fat, white-bearded man seemed to be informally
+in charge. At least he was giving directions in a growling voice as he
+bent over the sufferers. Banneker went to him.
+
+"Doctor?" he inquired.
+
+The other did not even look up. "Don't bother me," he snapped.
+
+The station-agent pushed his first-aid packet into the old man's hands.
+
+"Good!" grunted the other. "Hold this fellow's head, will you? Hold it
+hard."
+
+Banneker's wrists were props of steel as he gripped the tossing head.
+The old man took a turn with a bandage and fastened it.
+
+"He'll die, anyway," he said, and lifted his face.
+
+Banneker cackled like a silly girl at full sight of him. The spreading
+whisker on the far side of his stern face was gayly pied in blotches of
+red and green.
+
+"Going to have hysterics?" demanded the old man, striking not so far
+short of the truth.
+
+"No," said the agent, mastering himself. "Hey! you, trainman," he called
+to a hobbling, blue-coated fellow. "Bring two buckets of water from the
+boiler-tap, hot and clean. Clean, mind you!" The man nodded and limped
+away. "Anything else, Doctor?" asked the agent. "Got towels?"
+
+"Yes. And I'm not a doctor--not for forty years. But I'm the nearest
+thing to it in this shambles. Who are you?"
+
+Banneker explained. "I'll be back in five minutes," he said and passed
+into the subdued and tremulous crowd.
+
+On the outskirts loitered a lank, idle young man clad beyond the glories
+of Messrs. Sears-Roebuck's highest-colored imaginings.
+
+"Hurt?" asked Banneker.
+
+"No," said the youth.
+
+"Can you run three miles?"
+
+"I fancy so."
+
+"Will you take an urgent message to be wired from Manzanita?"
+
+"Certainly," said the youth with good-will.
+
+Tearing a leaf from his pocket-ledger, Banneker scribbled a dispatch
+which is still preserved in the road's archives as giving more vital
+information in fewer words than any other railroad document extant. He
+instructed the messenger where to find a substitute telegrapher.
+
+"Answer?" asked the youth, unfurling his long legs.
+
+"No," returned Banneker, and the courier, tossing his coat off, took the
+road.
+
+Banneker turned back to the improvised hospital.
+
+"I'm going to move these people into the cars," he said to the man in
+charge. "The berths are being made up now."
+
+The other nodded. Banneker gathered helpers and superintended the
+transfer. One of the passengers, an elderly lady who had shown no sign
+of grave injury, died smiling courageously as they were lifting her.
+
+It gave Banneker a momentary shock of helpless responsibility. Why
+should she have been the one to die? Only five minutes before she had
+spoken to him in self-possessed, even tones, saying that her
+traveling-bag contained camphor, ammonia, and iodine if he needed them.
+She had seemed a reliable, helpful kind of lady, and now she was dead.
+It struck Banneker as improbable and, in a queer sense, discriminatory.
+Remembering the slight, ready smile with which she had addressed him, he
+felt as if he had suffered a personal loss; he would have liked to stay
+and work over her, trying to discover if there might not be some spark
+of life remaining, to be cherished back into flame, but the burly old
+man's decisive "Gone," settled that. Besides, there were other things,
+official things to be looked to.
+
+A full report would be expected of him, as to the cause of the accident.
+The presence of the boulder in the wreckage explained that grimly. It
+was now his routine duty to collect the names of the dead and wounded,
+and such details as he could elicit. He went about it briskly,
+conscientiously, and with distaste. All this would go to the claim agent
+of the road eventually and might serve to mitigate the total of damages
+exacted of the company. Vaguely Banneker resented such probable
+penalties as unfair; the most unremitting watchfulness could not have
+detected the subtle undermining of that fatal boulder. But essentially
+he was not interested in claims and damages. His sensitive mind hovered
+around the mystery of death; that file of crumpled bodies, the woman of
+the stilled smile, the man fondling a limp hand, weeping quietly.
+Officially, he was a smooth-working bit of mechanism. As an individual
+he probed tragic depths to which he was alien otherwise than by a large
+and vague sympathy. Facts of the baldest were entered neatly; but in the
+back of his eager brain Banneker was storing details of a far different
+kind and of no earthly use to a railroad corporation.
+
+He became aware of some one waiting at his elbow. The lank young man had
+spoken to him twice.
+
+"Well?" said Banneker sharply. "Oh, it's you! How did you get back so
+soon?"
+
+"Under the hour," replied the other with pride. "Your message has gone.
+The operator's a queer duck. Dealing faro. Made me play through a case
+before he'd quit. I stung him for twenty. Here's some stuff I thought
+might be useful."
+
+From a cotton bag he discharged a miscellaneous heap of patent
+preparations; salves, ointments, emollients, liniments, plasters.
+
+"All I could get," he explained. "No drug-store in the funny burg."
+
+"Thank you," said Banneker. "You're all right. Want another job?"
+
+"Certainly," said the lily of the field with undiminished good-will.
+
+"Go and help the white-whiskered old boy in the Pullman yonder."
+
+"Oh, he'd chase me," returned the other calmly. "He's my uncle. He
+thinks I'm no use."
+
+"Does he? Well, suppose you get names and addresses of the slightly
+injured for me, then. Here's your coat."
+
+"Tha-anks," drawled the young man. He was turning away to his new duties
+when a thought struck him. "Making a list?" he asked.
+
+"Yes. For my report."
+
+"Got a name with the initials I. O. W.?"
+
+Banneker ran through the roster in the pocket-ledger. "Not yet. Some one
+that's hurt?"
+
+"Don't know what became of her. Peach of a girl. Black hair, big,
+sleepy, black eyes with a fire in 'em. Dressed _right_. Traveling alone,
+and minding her own business, too. Had a stateroom in that Pullman there
+in the ditch. Noticed her initials on her traveling-bag."
+
+"Have you seen her since the smash?"
+
+"Don't know. Got a kind of confused recklection of seeing her wobbling
+around at the side of the track. Can't be sure, though. Might have been
+me."
+
+"Might have been you? How could--"
+
+"Wobbly, myself. Mixed in my thinks. When I came to I was pretty busy
+putting my lunch," explained the other with simple realism. "One of Mr.
+Pullman's seats butted me in the stomach. They ain't upholstered as soft
+as you'd think to look at 'em. I went reeling around, looking for Miss
+I. O. W., she being alone, you know, and I thought she might need some
+looking after. And I had that idea of having seen her with her hand to
+her head dazed and running--yes; that's it, she was running. Wow!" said
+the young man fervently. "She was a pretty thing! You don't suppose--" He
+turned hesitantly to the file of bodies, now decently covered with
+sheets.
+
+For a grisly instant Banneker thought of the one mangled
+monstrosity--_that_ to have been so lately loveliness and charm, with
+deep fire in its eyes and perhaps deep tenderness and passion in its
+heart. He dismissed the thought as being against the evidence and
+entered the initials in his booklet.
+
+"I'll look out for her," said he. "Probably she's forward somewhere."
+
+Without respite he toiled until a long whistle gave notice of the return
+of the locomotive which had gone forward to meet the delayed special
+from Stanwood. Human beings were clinging about it in little clusters
+like bees; physicians, nurses, officials, and hospital attendants. The
+dispatcher from Stanwood listened to Banneker's brief report, and sent
+him back to Manzanita, with a curt word of approval for his work.
+
+Banneker's last sight of the wreck, as he paused at the curve, was the
+helpful young man perched on the rear heap of wreckage which had been
+the observation car, peering anxiously into its depths ("Looking for I.
+O. W. probably," surmised the agent), and two commercial gentlemen from
+the smoker whiling away a commercially unproductive hiatus by playing
+pinochle on a suitcase held across their knees. Glancing at the vast,
+swollen, blue-black billows rolling up the sky, Banneker guessed that
+their game would be shortly interrupted.
+
+He hoped that the dead would not get wet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Back in his office, Banneker sent out the necessary wires, and learned
+from westward that it might be twelve hours before the break in the
+track near Stanwood could be fixed up. Then he settled down to his
+report.
+
+Like his earlier telegram, the report was a little masterpiece of
+concise information. Not a word in it that was not dry, exact,
+meaningful. This was the more to the writer's credit in that his brain
+was seething with impressions, luminous with pictures, aflash with odds
+and ends of minor but significant things heard and seen and felt. It was
+his first inner view of tragedy and of the reactions of the human
+creature, brave or stupid or merely absurd, to a crisis. For all of this
+he had an outlet of expression.
+
+Taking from the wall a file marked "Letters. Private"-it was 5 S 0027,
+and one of his most used purchases--he extracted some sheets of a
+special paper and, sitting at his desk, wrote and wrote and wrote,
+absorbedly, painstakingly, happily. Wind swept the outer world into a
+vortex of wild rain; the room boomed and trembled with the
+reverberations of thunder. Twice the telegraph instrument broke in on
+him; but these matters claimed only the outer shell; the soul of the man
+was concerned with committing its impressions of other souls to the
+secrecy of white paper, destined to personal and inviolable archives.
+
+Some one entered the waiting-room. There was a tap on his door. Raising
+his head impatiently, Banneker saw, through the window already dimming
+with the gathering dusk, a large roan horse, droopy and disconsolate in
+the downpour. He jumped up and threw open his retreat. A tall woman,
+slipping out of a streaming poncho, entered. The simplicity, verging
+upon coarseness, of her dress detracted nothing from her distinction of
+bearing.
+
+"Is there trouble on the line?" she asked in a voice of peculiar
+clarity.
+
+"Bad trouble, Miss Camilla," answered Banneker. He pushed forward a
+chair, but she shook her head. "A loosened rock smashed into Number
+Three in the Cut. Eight dead, and a lot more in bad shape. They've got
+doctors and nurses from Stanwood. But the track's out below. And from
+what I get on the wire"--he nodded toward the east--"it'll be out above
+before long."
+
+"I'd better go up there," said she. Her lips grew bloodless as she spoke
+and there was a look of effort and pain in her face.
+
+"No; I don't think so. But if you'll go over to the town and see that
+Torrey gets his place cleaned up a bit, I suppose some of the passengers
+will be coming in pretty soon."
+
+She made a quick gesture of repulsion. "Women can't go to Torrey's," she
+said. "It's too filthy. Besides--I'll take in the women, if there aren't
+too many and I can pick up a buckboard in Manzanita."
+
+He nodded. "That'll be better, if any come in. Give me their names,
+won't you? I have to keep track of them, you know."
+
+The manner of the two was that of familiars, of friends, though there
+was a touch of deference in Banneker's bearing, too subtly personal to
+be attributed to his official status. He went out to adjust the
+visitor's poncho, and, swinging her leg across the Mexican saddle of her
+horse with the mechanical ease of one habituated to this mode of travel,
+she was off.
+
+Again the agent returned to his unofficial task and was instantly
+submerged in it. Impatiently he interrupted himself to light the lamps
+and at once resumed his pen. An emphatic knock at his door only caused
+him to shake his head. The summons was repeated. With a sigh Banneker
+gathered the written sheets, enclosed them in 5 S 0027, and restored
+that receptacle to its place. Meantime the knocking continued
+impatiently, presently pointed by a deep--
+
+"Any one inside there?"
+
+"Yes," said Banneker, opening to face the bulky old man who had cared
+for the wounded. "What's wanted?"
+
+Uninvited, and with an assured air, the visitor stepped in.
+
+"I am Horace Vanney," he announced.
+
+Banneker waited.
+
+"Do you know my name?"
+
+"No."
+
+In no wise discountenanced by the matter-of-fact negative, Mr. Vanney,
+still unsolicited, took a chair. "You would if you read the newspapers,"
+he observed.
+
+"I do."
+
+"The New York papers," pursued the other, benignly explanatory. "It
+doesn't matter. I came in to say that I shall make it my business to
+report your energy and efficiency to your superiors."
+
+"Thank you," said Banneker politely.
+
+"And I can assure you that my commendation will carry weight. Weight,
+sir."
+
+The agent accepted this with a nod, obviously unimpressed. In fact, Mr.
+Vanney suspected with annoyance, he was listening not so much to these
+encouraging statements as to some unidentified noise outside. The agent
+raised the window and addressed some one who had approached through the
+steady drive of the rain. A gauntleted hand thrust through the window a
+slip of paper which he took. As he moved, a ray of light from the lamp,
+unblocked by his shoulder, fell upon the face of the person in the
+darkness, illuminating it to the astounded eyes of Mr. Horace Vanney.
+
+"Two of them are going home with me," said a voice. "Will you send these
+wires to the addresses?"
+
+"All right," replied Banneker, "and thank you. Good-night."
+
+"Who was that?" barked Mr. Vanney, half rising.
+
+"A friend of mine."
+
+"I would swear to that face." He seemed quite excited. "I would swear to
+it anywhere. It is unforgettable. That was Camilla Van Arsdale. Was she
+in the wreck?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Don't tell me that it wasn't she! Don't try to tell me, for I won't
+believe it."
+
+"I'm not trying to tell you anything," Banneker pointed out.
+
+"True; you're not. You're close-mouthed enough. But--Camilla Van
+Arsdale! Incredible! Does she live here?"
+
+"Here or hereabouts."
+
+"You must give me the address. I must surely go and see her."
+
+"Are you a friend of Miss Van Arsdale?"
+
+"I could hardly say so much. A friend of her family, rather. She would
+remember me, I am sure. And, in any case, she would know my name. Where
+did you say she lived?"
+
+"I don't think I said."
+
+"Mystery-making!" The big man's gruffness had a suggestion of amusement
+in it. "But of course it would be simple enough to find out from town."
+
+"See here, Mr. Vanney, Miss Van Arsdale is still something of an
+invalid--"
+
+"After all these years," interposed the other, in the tone of one who
+ruminates upon a marvel.
+
+"--and I happen to know that it isn't well for--that is, she doesn't
+care to see strangers, particularly from New York."
+
+The old man stared. "Are you a gentleman?" he asked with abrupt
+surprise.
+
+"A gentleman?" repeated Banneker, taken aback.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the visitor earnestly. "I meant no offense.
+You are doubtless quite right. As for any intrusion, I assure you there
+will be none."
+
+Banneker nodded, and with that nod dismissed the subject quite as
+effectually as Mr. Horace Vanney himself could have done. "Did you
+attend all the injured?" he asked.
+
+"All the serious ones, I think."
+
+"Was there a young girl among them, dark and good-looking, whose name
+began--"
+
+"The one my addle-brained young nephew has been pestering me about? Miss
+I. O. W.?"
+
+"Yes. He reported her to me."
+
+"I handled no such case that I recall. Now, as to your own helpfulness,
+I wish to make clear that I appreciate it."
+
+Mr. Vanney launched into a flowery tribute of the after-dinner variety,
+leaning forward to rest a hand upon Banneker's desk as he spoke. When
+the speech was over and the hand withdrawn, something remained among the
+strewn papers. Banneker regarded it with interest. It showed a blotch of
+yellow upon green and a capital C. Picking it up, he looked from it to
+its giver.
+
+"A little tribute," said that gentleman: "a slight recognition of your
+services." His manner suggested that hundred-dollar bills were
+inconsiderable trifles, hardly requiring the acknowledgment of thanks.
+
+In this case the bill did not secure such acknowledgment.
+
+"You don't owe me anything," stated the agent. "I can't take this!"
+
+"What! Pride? Tut-tut."
+
+"Why not?" asked Banneker.
+
+Finding no immediate and appropriate answer to this simple question, Mr.
+Vanney stared.
+
+"The company pays me. There's no reason why you should pay me. If
+anything, I ought to pay you for what you did at the wreck. But I'm not
+proposing to. Of course I'm putting in my report a statement about your
+help."
+
+Mr. Vanney's cheek flushed. Was this composed young hireling making
+sport of him?
+
+"Tut-tut!" he said again, this time with obvious intent to chide in his
+manner. "If I see fit to signify my appreciation--remember, I am old
+enough to be your father."
+
+"Then you ought to have better judgment," returned Banneker with such
+candor and good-humor that the visitor was fairly discomfited.
+
+An embarrassing silence--embarrassing, that is, to the older man; the
+younger seemed not to feel it--was happily interrupted by the advent of
+the lily-clad messenger.
+
+Hastily retrieving his yellow-back, which he subjected to some furtive
+and occult manipulations, Mr. Vanney, after a few words, took his
+departure.
+
+Banneker invited the newcomer to take the chair thus vacated. As he did
+so he brushed something to the floor and picked it up.
+
+"Hello! What's this? Looks like a hundred-bucker. Yours?" He held out
+the bill.
+
+Banneker shook his head. "Your uncle left it."
+
+"It isn't a habit of his," replied the other.
+
+"Give it to him for me, will you?"
+
+"Certainly. Any message?"
+
+"No."
+
+The newcomer grinned. "I see," he said. "He'll be bored when he gets
+this back. He isn't a bad old bird, but he don't savvy some things. So
+you turned him down, did you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did he offer you a job and a chance to make your way in the world in
+one of his banks, beginning at ten-per?"
+
+"No."
+
+"He will to-morrow."
+
+"I doubt it."
+
+The other gave a thought to the bill. "Perhaps you're right. He likes
+'em meek and obedient. He'd make a woolly lamb out of you. Most fellows
+would jump at the chance."
+
+"I won't."
+
+"My name's Herbert Cressey." He handed the agent a card. "Philadelphia
+is my home, but my New York address is on there, too. Ever get East?"
+
+"I've been to Chicago."
+
+"Chicago?" The other stared. "What's that got to do with--Oh, I see.
+You'll be coming to New York one of these days, though."
+
+"Maybe."
+
+"Sure as a gun. A chap that can handle a situation like you handled the
+wreck isn't going to stick in a little sand-heap like this."
+
+"It suits me here."
+
+"No! Does it? I'd think you'd die of it. Well, when you do get East look
+me up, will you? I mean it; I'd like to see you."
+
+"All right."
+
+"And if there's anything I can do for you any time, drop me a line."
+
+The sumptuous ripple and gleam of the young man's faultless coat,
+registered upon Banneker's subconscious memory as it had fallen at his
+feet, recalled itself to him.
+
+"What store do you buy your clothes at?"
+
+"Store?" Cressey did not smile. "I don't buy 'em at a store. I have 'em
+made by a tailor. Mertoun, 505 Fifth Avenue."
+
+"Would he make me a suit?"
+
+"Why, yes. I'll give you a card to him and you go in there when you're
+in New York and pick out what you want."
+
+"Oh! He wouldn't make them and send them out here to me? Sears-Roebuck
+do, if you send your measure. They're in Chicago."
+
+"I never had any duds built in Chicago, so I don't know them. But I
+shouldn't think Mertoun would want to fit a man he'd never seen. They
+like to do things _right_, at Mertoun's. Ought to, too; they stick you
+enough for it."
+
+"How much?"
+
+"Not much short of a hundred for a sack suit."
+
+Banneker was amazed. The choicest "made-to-measure" in his Universal
+Guide, "Snappy, fashionable, and up to the minute," came to less than
+half of that.
+
+His admiring eye fell upon his visitor's bow-tie, faultless and
+underanged throughout the vicissitudes of that arduous day, and he
+yearned to know whether it was "made-up" or self-confected.
+Sears-Roebuck were severely impartial as between one practice and the
+other, offering a wide range in each variety. He inquired.
+
+"Oh, tied it myself, of course," returned Cressey. "Nobody wears the
+ready-made kind. It's no trick to do it. I'll show you, any time."
+
+They fell into friendly talk about the wreck.
+
+It was ten-thirty when Banneker finished his much-interrupted writing.
+Going out to the portable house, he lighted an oil-stove and proceeded
+to make a molasses pie. He was due for a busy day on the morrow and
+might not find time to take the mile walk to the hotel for dinner, as
+was his general habit. With the store of canned goods derived from the
+mail-order catalogue, he could always make shift to live. Besides, he
+was young enough to relish keenly molasses pie and the manufacture of
+it. Having concluded his cookery in strict accordance with the rules set
+forth in the guide to this art, he laid it out on the sill to cool over
+night.
+
+Tired though he was, his brain was too busy for immediate sleep. He
+returned to his den, drew out a book and began to read with absorption.
+That in which he now sought release and distraction was not the _magnum
+opus_ of Messrs. Sears-Roebuck, but the work of a less practical and
+popular writer, being in fact the "Eve of St. Agnes," by John Keats.
+Soothed and dreamy, he put out the lights, climbed to his living
+quarters above the office, and fell asleep. It was then eleven-thirty
+and his official day had terminated five hours earlier.
+
+At one o'clock he arose and patiently descended the stairs again. Some
+one was hammering on the door. He opened without inquiry, which was not
+the part of wisdom in that country and at that hour. His pocket-flash
+gleamed on a thin young man in a black-rubber coat who, with head and
+hands retracted as far as possible from the pouring rain, resembled a
+disconsolate turtle with an insufficient carapace.
+
+"I'm Gardner, of the Angelica City Herald," explained the untimely
+visitor.
+
+Banneker was surprised. That a reporter should come all the way from the
+metropolis of the Southwest to his wreck--he had already established
+proprietary interest in it--was gratifying. Furthermore, for reasons of
+his own, he was glad to see a journalist. He took him in and lighted up
+the office.
+
+"Had to get a horse and ride to Manzanita to interview old Vanney and a
+couple of other big guys from the East. My first story's on the wire,"
+explained the newcomer offhand. "I want some local-color stuff for my
+second day follow-up."
+
+"It must be hard to do that," said Banneker interestedly, "when you
+haven't seen any of it yourself."
+
+"Patchwork and imagination," returned the other wearily. "That's what I
+get special rates for. Now, if I'd had your chance, right there on the
+spot, with the whole stage-setting around one--Lordy! How a fellow could
+write that!"
+
+"Not so easy," murmured the agent. "You get confused. It's a sort of
+blur, and when you come to put it down, little things that aren't really
+important come up to the surface--"
+
+"Put it down?" queried the other with a quick look. "Oh, I see. Your
+report for the company."
+
+"Well, I wasn't thinking of that."
+
+"Do you write other things?" asked the reporter carelessly.
+
+"Oh, just foolery." The tone invited--at least it did not
+discourage--further inquiry. Mr. Gardner was bored. Amateurs who
+"occasionally write" were the bane of him who, having a signature of his
+own in the leading local paper, represented to the aspiring mind the
+gilded and lofty peaks of the unattainable. However he must play this
+youth as a source of material.
+
+"Ever try for the papers?"
+
+"Not yet. I've thought maybe I might get a chance sometime as a sort of
+local correspondent around here," was the diffident reply.
+
+Gardner repressed a grin. Manzanita would hardly qualify as a news
+center. Diplomacy prompted him to state vaguely that there was always a
+chance for good stuff locally.
+
+"On a big story like this," he added, "of course there'd be nothing
+doing except for the special man sent out to cover it."
+
+"No. Well, I didn't write my--what I wrote, with any idea of getting it
+printed."
+
+The newspaper man sighed wearily, sighed like a child and lied like a
+man of duty. "I'd like to see it."
+
+Without a trace of hesitation or self-consciousness Banneker said, "All
+right," and, taking his composition from its docket, motioned the other
+to the light. Mr. Gardner finished and turned the first sheet before
+making any observation. Then he bent a queer look upon Banneker and
+grunted:
+
+"What do you call this stuff, anyway?"
+
+"Just putting down what I saw."
+
+Gardner read on. "What about this, about a Pullman sleeper 'elegant as a
+hotel bar and rigid as a church pew'? Where do you get that?"
+
+Banneker looked startled. "I don't know. It just struck me that is the
+way a Pullman is."
+
+"Well, it is," admitted the visitor, and continued to read. "And this
+guy with the smashed finger that kept threatening to 'soom'; is that
+right?"
+
+"Of course it's right. You don't think I'd make it up! That reminds me
+of something." And he entered a memo to see the litigious-minded
+complainant again, for these are the cases which often turn up in the
+courts with claims for fifty-thousand-dollar damages and heartrending
+details of all-but-mortal internal injuries.
+
+Silence held the reader until he had concluded the seventh and last
+sheet. Not looking at Banneker, he said:
+
+"So that's your notion of reporting the wreck of the swellest train that
+crosses the continent, is it?"
+
+"It doesn't pretend to be a report," disclaimed the writer. "It's pretty
+bad, is it?"
+
+"It's rotten!" Gardner paused. "From a news-desk point of view. Any
+copy-reader would chuck it. Unless I happened to sign it," he added.
+"Then they'd cuss it out and let it pass, and the dear old pin-head
+public would eat it up."
+
+"If it's of any use to you--"
+
+"Not so, my boy, not so! I might pinch your wad if you left it around
+loose, or even your last cigarette, but not your stuff. Let me take it
+along, though; it may give me some ideas. I'll return it. Now, where can
+I get a bed in the town?"
+
+"Nowhere. Everything's filled. But I can give you a hammock out in my
+shack."
+
+"That's better. I'll take it. Thanks."
+
+Banneker kept his guest awake beyond the limits of decent hospitality,
+asking him questions.
+
+The reporter, constantly more interested in this unexpected find of a
+real personality in an out-of-the-way minor station of the high desert,
+meditated a character study of "the hero of the wreck," but could not
+quite contrive any peg whereon to hang the wreath of heroism. By his own
+modest account, Banneker had been competent but wholly unpicturesque,
+though the characters in his sketch, rude and unformed though it was,
+stood out clearly. As to his own personal history, the agent was
+unresponsive. At length the guest, apologizing for untimely weariness,
+it being then 3.15 A.M., yawned his way to the portable shack.
+
+He slept heavily, except for a brief period when the rain let up. In the
+morning--which term seasoned newspaper men apply to twelve noon and the
+hour or two thereafter--he inquired of Banneker, "Any tramps around
+here?"
+
+"No," answered the agent, "Not often. There were a pair yesterday
+morning, but they went on."
+
+"Some one was fussing around the place about first light. I was too
+sleepy to get up. I yipped and they beat it. I don't think they got
+inside."
+
+Banneker investigated. Nothing was missing from within the shack. But
+outside he made a distressing discovery.
+
+His molasses pie was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+"To accomplish a dessert as simple and inexpensive as it is tasty,"
+prescribes The Complete Manual of Cookery, p. 48, "take one cup of thick
+molasses--" But why should I infringe a copyright when the culinary
+reader may acquire the whole range of kitchen lore by expending
+eighty-nine cents plus postage on 39 T 337? Banneker had faithfully
+followed the prescribed instructions. The result had certainly been
+simple and inexpensive; presumably it would have proven tasty. He
+regretted and resented the rape of the pie. What aroused greater
+concern, however, was the presence of thieves. In the soft ground near
+the window he found some rather small footprints which suggested that it
+was the younger of the two hoboes who had committed the depredation.
+
+Theorizing, however, was not the order of his day. Routine and
+extra-routine claimed all his time. There was his supplementary report
+to make out; the marooned travelers in Manzanita to be looked after and
+their bitter complaints to be listened to; consultations over the wire
+as to the condition and probabilities of the roadbed, for the floods had
+come again; and in and out of it all, the busy, weary, indefatigable
+Gardner, giving to the agent as much information as he asked from him.
+When their final lists were compared, Banneker noticed that there was no
+name with the initials I.O.W. on Gardner's. He thought of mentioning the
+clue, but decided that it was of too little definiteness and importance.
+The news value of mystery, enhanced by youth and beauty, which the
+veriest cub who had ever smelled printer's ink would have appreciated,
+was a sealed book to him.
+
+Not until late that afternoon did a rescue train limp cautiously along
+an improvised track to set the interrupted travelers on their way.
+Gardner went on it, leaving an address and an invitation to "keep in
+touch." Mr. Vanney took his departure with a few benign and well-chosen
+words of farewell, accompanied by the assurance that he would "make it
+his special purpose to commend," and so on. His nephew, Herbert Cressey,
+the lily-clad messenger, stopped at the station to shake hands and grin
+rather vacantly, and adjure Banneker, whom he addressed as "old chap,"
+to be sure and look him up in the East; he'd be glad to see him any
+time. Banneker believed that he meant it. He promised to do so, though
+without particular interest. With the others departed Miss Camilla Van
+Arsdale's two emergency guests, one of them the rather splendid young
+woman who had helped with the wounded. They invaded Banneker's office
+with supplementary telegrams and talked about their hostess with that
+freedom which women of the world use before dogs or uniformed officials.
+
+"What a woman!" said the amateur nurse.
+
+"And what a house!" supplemented the other, a faded and lined
+middle-aged wife who had just sent a reassuring and very long wire to a
+husband in Pittsburgh.
+
+"Very much the chatelaine; grande dame and that sort of thing," pursued
+the other. "One might almost think her English."
+
+"No." The other shook her head positively. "Old American. As old and as
+good as her name. You wouldn't flatter her by guessing her to be
+anything else. I dare say she would consider the average British
+aristocrat a little shoddy and loud."
+
+"So they are when they come over here. But what on earth is her type
+doing out here, buried with a one-eyed, half-breed manservant?"
+
+"And a concert grand piano. Don't forget that. She tunes it herself,
+too. Did you notice the tools? A possible romance. You've quite a nose
+for such things, Sue. Couldn't you get anything out of her?"
+
+"It's much too good a nose to put in the crack of a door," retorted the
+pretty woman. "I shouldn't care to lay myself open to being snubbed by
+her. It might be painful."
+
+"It probably would." The Pittsburgher turned to Banneker with a change
+of tone, implying that he could not have taken any possible heed of what
+went before. "Has Miss Van Arsdale lived here long, do you know?"
+
+The agent looked at her intently for a moment before replying: "Longer
+than I have." He transferred his gaze to the pretty woman. "You two were
+her guests, weren't you?" he asked.
+
+The visitors glanced at each other, half amused, half aghast. The tone
+and implication of the question had been too significant to be
+misunderstood. "Well, of all extraordinary--" began one of them under
+her breath; and the other said more loudly, "I really beg--" and then
+she, too, broke off.
+
+They went out. "Chatelaine and knightly defender," commented the younger
+one in the refuge of the outer office. "Have we been dumped off a train
+into the midst of the Middle Ages? Where do you get station-agents like
+that?"
+
+"The one at our suburban station chews tobacco and says 'Marm' through
+his nose."
+
+Banneker emerged, seeking the conductor of the special with a message.
+
+"He is rather a beautiful young thing, isn't he?" she added.
+
+Returning, he helped them on the train with their hand-luggage. When the
+bustle and confusion of dispatching an extra were over, he sat down to
+think. But not of Miss Camilla Van Arsdale. That was an old story,
+though its chapters were few, and none of them as potentially eventful
+as this intrusion of Vanneys and female chatterers.
+
+It was the molasses pie that stuck in his mind. There was no time to
+make another. Further, the thought of depredators hanging about
+disturbed him. That shack of his was full of Aladdin treasures,
+delivered by the summoned genii of the Great Book. Though it was secured
+by Little Guardian locks and fortified with the Scarem Buzz alarm, he
+did not feel sure of it. He decided to sleep there that night with his
+.45-caliber Sure-shot revolver. Let them come again; he'd give 'em a
+lesson! On second thought, he rebaited the window-ledge with a can of
+Special Juicy Apricot Preserve. At ten o'clock he turned in, determined
+to sleep lightly, and immediately plunged into fathomless depths of
+unconsciousness, lulled by a singing wind and the drone of the rain.
+
+A light, flashing across his eyes, awakened him. For a moment he lay,
+dazed, confused by the gentle and unfamiliar oscillations of his
+hammock. Another flicker of light and a rumble of thunder brought him to
+his full senses. The rain had degenerated into a casual drizzle and the
+wind had withdrawn into the higher areas. He heard some one moving
+outside.
+
+Very quietly he reached out to the stand at his elbow, got his revolver
+and his flashlight, and slipped to the floor. The malefactor without was
+approaching the window. Another flash of lightning would have revealed
+much to Banneker had he not been crouching close under the sill, on the
+inside, so that the radiance of his light, when he found the button,
+should not expose him to a straight shot.
+
+A hand fumbled at the open window. Finger on trigger, Banneker held up
+his flashlight in his left hand and irradiated the spot. He saw the
+hand, groping, and on one of its fingers something which returned a more
+brilliant gleam than the electric ray. In his crass amazement, the agent
+straightened up, a full mark for murder, staring at a diamond-and-ruby
+ring set upon a short, delicate finger.
+
+No sound came from outside. But the hand became instantly tense. It fell
+upon the sill and clutched it so hard that the knuckles stood out,
+white, strained and garish. Banneker's own strong hand descended upon
+the wrist. A voice said softly and tremulously:
+
+"Please!"
+
+The appeal went straight to Banneker's heart and quivered there, like a
+soft flame, like music heard in an unrealizable dream.
+
+"Who are you?" he asked, and the voice said:
+
+"Don't hurt me."
+
+"Why should I?" returned Banneker stupidly.
+
+"Some one did," said the voice.
+
+"Who?" he demanded fiercely.
+
+"Won't you let me go?" pleaded the voice.
+
+In the shock of his discovery he had released the flash-lever so that
+this colloquy passed in darkness. Now he pressed it. A girlish figure
+was revealed, one protective arm thrown across the eyes.
+
+"Don't strike me," said the girl again, and again Banneker's heart was
+shaken within him by such tremors as the crisis of some deadly fear
+might cause.
+
+"You needn't be afraid," he stammered.
+
+"I've never been afraid before," she said, hanging her weight away from
+him. "Won't you let me go?"
+
+His grip relaxed slightly, then tightened again. "Where to?"
+
+"I don't know," said the appealing voice mournfully.
+
+An inspiration came to Banneker. "Are you afraid of me?" he asked
+quietly.
+
+"Of every thing. Of the night."
+
+He pressed the flash into her hand, turning the light upon himself.
+"Look," he said.
+
+It seemed to him that she could not fail to read in his face the
+profound and ardent wish to help her; to comfort and assure an uneasy
+and frightened spirit wandering in the night.
+
+He heard a little, soft sigh. "I don't know you," said the voice. "Do
+I?"
+
+"No," he answered soothingly as if to a child. "I'm the station-agent
+here. You must come in out of the wet."
+
+"Very well."
+
+He tossed an overcoat on over his pajamas, ran to the door and swung it
+open. The tiny ray of light advanced, hesitated, advanced again. She
+walked into the shack, and immediately the rain burst again upon the
+outer world. Banneker's fleeting impression was of a vivid but dimmed
+beauty. He pushed forward a chair, found a blanket for her feet, lighted
+the "Quick-heater" oil-stove on which he did his cooking. She followed
+him with her eyes, deeply glowing but vague and troubled.
+
+"This is not a station," she said.
+
+"No. It's my shack. Are you cold?"
+
+"Not very." She shivered a little.
+
+"You say that some one hurt you?"
+
+"Yes. They struck me. It made my head feel queer."
+
+A murderous fury surged into his brain. His hand twitched toward his
+revolver.
+
+"The hoboes," he whispered under his breath. "But they didn't rob you,"
+he said aloud, looking at the jeweled hand.
+
+"No. I don't think so. I ran away."
+
+"Where was it?"
+
+"On the train."
+
+Enlightenment burst upon him. "You're sure--" he began. Then, "Tell me
+all you can about it."
+
+"I don't remember anything. I was in my stateroom in the car. The door
+was open. Some one must have come in and struck me. Here." She put her
+left hand tenderly to her head.
+
+Banneker, leaning over her, only half suppressed a cry. Back of the
+temple rose a great, puffed, leaden-blue wale.
+
+"Sit still," he said. "I'll fix it."
+
+While he busied himself heating water, getting out clean bandages and
+gauze, she leaned back with half-closed eyes in which there was neither
+fear nor wonder nor curiosity: only a still content. Banneker washed the
+wound very carefully.
+
+"Does it hurt?" he asked.
+
+"My head feels queer. Inside."
+
+"I think the hair ought to be cut away around the place. Right here.
+It's quite raw."
+
+It was glorious hair. Not black, as Cressey had described it in his
+hasty sketch of the unknown I.O.W.; too alive with gleams and glints of
+luster for that. Nor were her eyes black, but rather of a deep-hued,
+clouded hazel, showing troubled shadows between their dark-lashed, heavy
+lids. Yet Banneker made no doubt but that this was the missing girl of
+Cressey's inquiry.
+
+"May I?" he said.
+
+"Cut my hair?" she asked. "Oh, no!"
+
+"Just a little, in one place. I think I can do it so that it won't show.
+There's so much of it."
+
+"Please," she answered, yielding.
+
+He was deft. She sat quiet and soothed under his ministerings.
+Completed, the bandage looked not too unworkmanlike, and was cool and
+comforting to the hot throb of the wound.
+
+"Our doctor went back on the train, worse luck!" he said.
+
+"I don't want any other doctor," she murmured. "I'd rather have you."
+
+"But I'm not a doctor."
+
+"No," she acquiesced. "Who are you? Did you tell me? You are one of the
+passengers, aren't you?"
+
+"I'm the station-agent at Manzanita."
+
+For a moment she looked at him wonderingly. "Are you? I don't seem to
+understand. My head is very queer."
+
+"Don't try to. Here's some tea and crackers."
+
+"I'm starved," she said.
+
+With subtle stirrings of delight, he watched her eat the bit that he had
+prepared for her while heating the water. But he was wise enough to know
+that she must not have much while the extent of her injury was still
+undetermined.
+
+"Are you wet?" he inquired.
+
+She nodded. "I haven't been dry since the flood."
+
+"I have a room with a real stove in it over the station. I'll build a
+fire, and you must take off your wet things and go to bed and sleep. If
+you need anything you can hammer on the floor."
+
+"But you--"
+
+"I'll be in my office, below. I'm on night duty to-night," said he,
+tactfully fabricating.
+
+"Very well. You're awfully kind."
+
+He adjusted the oil-stove, threw a warmed blanket over her feet, and
+hurried to his room to build the promised fire. When he came back she
+smiled.
+
+"You are good to me! It's stupid of me--my head is so queer--did you say
+you were--"
+
+"The station-agent. My name is Banneker. I'm responsible to the company
+for your safety and comfort. You're not to worry about it, nor think
+about it, nor ask any questions."
+
+"No," she agreed, and rose.
+
+He threw the blanket around her shoulders. At the protective touch she
+slipped her hand through his arm. So they went out into the night.
+
+Mounting the stairs, she stumbled, and for a moment he felt the firm,
+warm pressure of her body against him. It shook him strangely.
+
+"I'm sorry," she murmured. And, a moment later, "Good-night, and thank
+you."
+
+Taking the hand which she held out, he returned her good-night. The door
+closed. He turned away and was halfway down the flight when a sudden
+thought recalled him. He tapped on the door.
+
+"What is it?" asked the serene music of the voice.
+
+"I don't want to bother you, but there's just one thing I forgot. Please
+give me your name."
+
+"What for?" returned the voice doubtfully.
+
+"I must report it to the company."
+
+"Must you?" The voice seemed to be vaguely troubled. "To-night?"
+
+"Don't give a thought to it," he said. "To-morrow will do just as well.
+I'm sorry to have troubled you."
+
+"Good-night," she said again.
+
+"Can't remember her own name!" thought Banneker, moved and pitiful.
+
+Darkness and quiet were grateful to him as he entered the office. By
+sense of direction he found his chair, and sank into it. Overhead he
+could hear the soft sound of her feet moving about the room, his room.
+Quiet succeeded. Banneker, leagues removed from sleep, or the hope of
+it, despite his bodily weariness, followed the spirit of wonder through
+starlit and sunlit realms of dream.
+
+The telegraph-receiver clicked. Not his call. But it brought him back to
+actualities. He lighted his lamp and brought down the letter-file from
+which had been extracted the description of the wreck for Gardner of the
+Angelica City Herald.
+
+Drawing out the special paper, he looked at the heading and smiled.
+"Letters to Nobody." He took a fresh sheet and began to write. Through
+the night he wrote and dreamed and dozed and wrote again. When a sound
+of song, faint and sweet and imminent, roused him to lift his
+sleep-bowed head from the desk upon which it had sunk, the gray, soiled
+light of a stormy morning was in his eyes. The last words he had written
+were:
+
+"The breast of the world rises and falls with your breathing."
+
+Banneker was twenty-four years old, and had the untainted soul of a boy
+of sixteen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Overhead she was singing. The voice was clear and sweet and happy. He
+did not know the melody; some minor refrain of broken rhythm which
+seemed always to die away short of fulfillment. A haunting thing of
+mystery and glamour, such mystery and glamour as had irradiated his long
+and wonderful night. He heard the door open and then her light footsteps
+on the stair outside. Hot-eyed and disheveled, he rose, staggering a
+little at first as he hurried to greet her.
+
+She stood poised on the lower step.
+
+"Good-morning," he said.
+
+She made no return to his accost other than a slow smile. "I thought you
+were a dream," she murmured.
+
+"No. I'm real enough. Are you better? Your head?"
+
+She put a hand to the bandage. "It's sore. Otherwise I'm quite fit. I've
+slept like the dead."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it," he replied mechanically. He was drinking her in,
+all the grace and loveliness and wonder of her, himself quite
+unconscious of the intensity of his gaze.
+
+She accepted the mute tribute untroubled; but there was a suggestion of
+puzzlement in the frown which began to pucker her forehead.
+
+"You're really the station-agent?" she asked with a slight emphasis upon
+the adverb.
+
+"Yes. Why not?"
+
+"Nothing. No reason. Won't you tell me what happened?"
+
+"Come inside." He held open the door against the wind.
+
+"No. It's musty." She wrinkled a dainty nose. "Can't we talk here? I
+love the feel of the air and the wet. And the world! I'm glad I wasn't
+killed."
+
+"So am I," he said soberly.
+
+"When my brain wouldn't work quite right yesterday, I thought that some
+one had hit me. That isn't so, is it?"
+
+"No. Your train was wrecked. You were injured. In the confusion you must
+have run away."
+
+"Yes. I remember being frightened. Terribly frightened. I'd never been
+that way before. Outside of that one idea of fear, everything was mixed
+up. I ran until I couldn't run any more and dropped down."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"I got up and ran again. Have you ever been afraid?"
+
+"Plenty of times."
+
+"I hadn't realized before that there was anything in the world to be
+afraid of. But the thought of that blow, coming so suddenly from
+nowhere, and the fear that I might be struck again--it drove me." She
+flung out her hands in a little desperate gesture that twitched at
+Banneker's breath.
+
+"You must have been out all night in the rain."'
+
+"No. I found a sort of cabin in the woods. It was deserted."
+
+"Dutch Cal's place. It's only a few rods back in."
+
+"I saw a light from there and that suggested to my muddled brain that I
+might get something to eat."
+
+"So you came over here."
+
+"Yes. But the fear came on me again and I didn't dare knock. I suppose I
+prowled."
+
+"Gardner thought he heard ghosts. But ghosts don't steal molasses pie."
+
+She looked at him solemnly. "Must one steal to get anything to eat
+here?"
+
+"I'm sorry," he cried. "I'll get you breakfast right away. What will you
+have? There isn't much."
+
+"Anything there is. But if I'm to board with you, you must let me pay my
+way."
+
+"The company is responsible for that."
+
+Her brooding eyes were still fixed upon him. "You actually are the
+agent," she mused. "That's quaint."
+
+"I don't see anything quaint about it. Now, if you'll make yourself
+comfortable I'll go over to the shack and rustle something for
+breakfast."
+
+"No; I'd rather go with you. Perhaps I can help."
+
+Such help as the guest afforded was negligible. When, from sundry of the
+Sears-Roebuck cans and bottles, a condensed and preserved sort of meal
+had been derived, she set to it with a good grace.
+
+"There's more of a kick in tea than in a cocktail, I believe, when you
+really need it," she remarked gratefully. "You spoke of a Mr. Gardner.
+Who is he?"
+
+"A reporter who spent night before last here."
+
+She dropped her cracker, oleomargarine-side down. "A reporter?"
+
+"He came down to write up the wreck. It's a bad one. Nine dead, so far."
+
+"Is he still here?"
+
+"No. Gone back to Angelica City."
+
+Retrieving her cracker, the guest finished her meal, heartily but
+thoughtfully. She insisted on lending a hand to the washing-up process,
+and complimented Banneker on his neatness.
+
+"You haven't told me your name yet," he reminded her when the last
+shining tin was hung up.
+
+"No; I haven't. What will you do with it when you get it?"
+
+"Report it to the company for their lists."
+
+"Suppose I don't want it reported to the company?'
+
+"Why on earth shouldn't you?"
+
+"I may have my reasons. Would it be put in the papers?"
+
+"Very likely."
+
+"I don't _want_ it in the papers," said the girl with decision.
+
+"Don't you want it known that you're all right? Your people--"
+
+"I'll wire my people. Or you can wire them for me. Can't you?"
+
+"Of course. But the company has a right to know what has happened to its
+passengers."
+
+"Not to me! What has the company done for me but wreck me and give me an
+awful bang on the head and lose my baggage and--Oh, I nearly forgot. I
+took my traveling-bag when I ran. It's in the hut. I wonder if you would
+get it for me?"
+
+"Of course. I'll go now."
+
+"That's good of you. And for your own self, but not your old company,
+I'll tell you my name. I'm--"
+
+"Wait a moment. Whatever you tell me I'll have to report."
+
+"You can't," she returned imperiously. "It's in confidence."
+
+"I won't accept it so."
+
+"You're a most extraordinary sta--a most extraordinary sort of man. Then
+I'll give you this much for yourself, and if your company collects pet
+names, you can pass it on. My friends call me Io."
+
+"Yes. I know. You're I.O.W."
+
+"How do you know that? And how much more do you know?"
+
+"No more. A man on the train reported your initials from your baggage."
+
+"I'll feel ever so much better when I have that bag. Is there a hotel
+near here?"
+
+"A sort of one at Manzanita. It isn't very clean. But there'll be a
+train through to-night and I'll get you space on that. I'd better get a
+doctor for you first, hadn't I?"
+
+"No, indeed! All I need is some fresh things."
+
+Banneker set off at a brisk pace. He found the extravagant little
+traveling-case safely closed and locked, and delivered it outside his
+own door which was also closed and, he suspected, locked.
+
+"I'm thinking," said the soft voice of the girl within. "Don't let me
+interrupt your work."
+
+Beneath, at his routine, Banneker also set himself to think; confused,
+bewildered, impossibly conjectural thoughts not unmingled with
+semi-official anxiety. Harboring a woman on company property, even
+though she were, in some sense, a charge of the company, might be open
+to misconceptions. He wished that the mysterious Io would declare
+herself.
+
+At noon she did. She declared herself ready for luncheon. There was
+about her a matter-of-fact acceptance of the situation as natural, even
+inevitable, which entranced Banneker when it did not appall him. After
+the meal was over, the girl seated herself on a low bench which Banneker
+had built with his own hands and the Right-and-Ready Tool Kit (9 T 603),
+her knee between her clasped hands and an elfish expression on her face.
+
+"Don't you think," she suggested, "that we'd get on quicker if you
+washed the dishes and I sat here and talked to you?"
+
+"Very likely."
+
+"It isn't so easy to begin, you know," she remarked, nursing her knee
+thoughtfully. "Am I--Do you find me very much in the way?'"
+
+"No."
+
+"Don't suppress your wild enthusiasm on my account," she besought him.
+"I haven't interfered with your duties so far, have I?"
+
+"No," answered Banneker wondering what was coming next.
+
+"You see"--her tone became ruminative and confidential--"if I give you
+my name and you report it, there'll be all kinds of a mix-up. They'll
+come after me and take me away."
+
+Banneker dropped a tin on the floor and stood, staring.
+
+"Isn't that what you want?"
+
+"It's evident enough that it's what _you_ want," she returned,
+aggrieved.
+
+"No. Not at all," he disclaimed. "Only--well, out here--alone--I don't
+understand."
+
+"Can't you understand that if one had happened to drop out of the world
+by chance, it might be desirable to stay out for a while?"
+
+"For _you_? No; I can't understand that."
+
+"What about yourself?" she challenged with a swift, amused gleam. "You
+are certainly staying out of the world here."
+
+"This is my world."
+
+Her eyes and voice dropped. "Truly?" she murmured. Then, as he made no
+reply, "It isn't much of a world for a man."
+
+To this his response touched the heights of the unexpected. He stretched
+out his arm toward the near window through which could be seen the white
+splendor of Mount Carstairs, dim in the wreathing murk.
+
+"Lo! For there, amidst the flowers and grasses, Only the mightier
+movement sounds and passes, Only winds and rivers, Life and death,"
+he quoted.
+
+Her eyes glowed with sheer, incredulous astonishment. "How came you by
+that Stevenson?" she demanded. "Are you poet as well as recluse?"
+
+"I met him once."
+
+"Tell me about it."
+
+"Some other time. We've other things to talk of now."
+
+"Some other time? Then I'm to stay!"
+
+"In Manzanita?"
+
+"Manzanita? No. Here."
+
+"In this station? Alone? But why--"
+
+"Because I'm Io Welland and I want to, and I always get what I want,"
+she retorted calmly and superbly.
+
+"Welland," he repeated. "Miss I.O. Welland. And the address is New York,
+isn't it?"
+
+Her hands grew tense across her knee, and deep in her shadowed eyes
+there was a flash. But her voice suggested not only appeal, but almost a
+hint of caress as she said:
+
+"Are you going to betray a guest? I've always heard that Western
+hospitality--"
+
+"You're not my guest. You're the company's."
+
+"And you won't take me for yours?"
+
+"Be reasonable, Miss Welland."
+
+"I suppose it's a question of the conventionalities," she mocked.
+
+"I don't know or care anything about the conventionalities--"
+
+"Nor I," she interrupted. "Out here."
+
+"--but my guess would be that they apply only to people who live in the
+same world. We don't, you and I."
+
+"That's rather shrewd of you," she observed.
+
+"It isn't an easy matter to talk about to a young girl, you know."
+
+"Oh, yes, it is," she returned with composure. "Just take it for granted
+that I know about all there is to be known and am not afraid of it. I'm
+not afraid of anything, I think, except of--of having to go back just
+now." She rose and went to him, looking down into his eyes. "A woman
+knows whom she can trust in--in certain things. That's her gift, a gift
+no man has or quite understands. Dazed as I was last night, I knew I
+could trust you. I still know it. So we may dismiss that."
+
+"That is true," said Banneker, "so far as it goes."
+
+"What farther is there? If it's a matter of the inconvenience--"
+
+"No. You know it isn't that."
+
+"Then let me stay in this funny little shack just for a few days," she
+pleaded. "If you don't, I'll get on to-night's train and go on and--and
+do something I'll be sorry for all the rest of my life. And it'll be
+your fault! I was going to do it when the accident prevented. Do you
+believe in Providence?"
+
+"Not as a butt-in," he answered promptly. "I don't believe that
+Providence would pitch a rock into a train and kill a lot of people,
+just to prevent a girl from making a foo--a bad break."
+
+"Nor I," she smiled. "I suppose there's some kind of a General Manager
+over this queer world; but I believe He plays the game fair and square
+and doesn't break the rules He has made Himself. If I didn't, I wouldn't
+want to play at all!... Oh, my telegram! I must wire my aunt in New
+York. I'll tell her that I've stopped off to visit friends, if you don't
+object to that description as being too compromising," she added
+mischievously. She accepted a pad which he handed her and sat at the
+table, pondering. "Mr. Banneker," she said after a moment.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"If the telegram goes from here, will it be headed by the name of the
+station?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"So that inquiry might be made here for me?"
+
+"It might, certainly."
+
+"But I don't want it to be. Couldn't you leave off the station?"
+
+"Not very well."
+
+"Just for me?" she wheedled. "For your guest that you've been so
+insistent on keeping," she added slyly.
+
+"The message wouldn't be accepted."
+
+"Oh, dear! Then I won't send it."
+
+"If you don't notify your family, I must report you to the company."
+
+"What an irritating sense of duty you have! It must be dreadful to be
+afflicted that way. Can't you suggest something?" she flashed. "Won't
+you do a _thing_ to help me stay? I believe you don't want me, after
+all."
+
+"If the up-train gets through this evening, I'll give your wire to the
+engineer and he'll transmit it from any office you say."
+
+Childlike with pleasure she clapped her hands. "Of course! Give him
+this, will you?" From a bag at her wrist she extracted a five-dollar
+bill. "By the way, if I'm to be a guest I must be a paying guest, of
+course."
+
+"You can pay for a cot that I'll get in town," he agreed, "and your
+share of the food."
+
+"But the use of the house, and--and all the trouble I'm making you," she
+said doubtfully. "I ought to pay for that."
+
+"Do you think so?" He looked at her with a peculiar expression which,
+however, was not beyond the power of her intuition to interpret.
+
+"No; I don't," she declared.
+
+Banneker answered her smile with his own, as he resumed his dish-wiping.
+Io wrote out her telegram with care. Her next observation startled the
+agent.
+
+"Are you, by any chance, married?"
+
+"No; I'm not. What makes you ask that?"
+
+"There's been a woman in here before."
+
+Confusedly his thoughts flew back to Carlotta. But the Mexican girl had
+never been in the shack. He was quite absurdly and inexplicably glad now
+that she had not.
+
+"A woman?" he said. "Why do you think so?"
+
+"Something in the arrangement of the place. That hanging, yonder. And
+that little vase--it's good, by the way. The way that Navajo is placed
+on the door. One feels it."
+
+"It's true. A friend of mine came here one day and turned everything
+topsy-turvy."
+
+"I'm not asking questions just for curiosity. But is that the reason you
+didn't want me to stay?"
+
+He laughed, thinking of Miss Van Arsdale. "Heavens, no! Wait till you
+meet her. She's a very wonderful person; but--"
+
+"Meet her? Does she live near here, then?"
+
+"A few miles away."
+
+"Suppose she should come and find me here?"
+
+"It's what I've been wishing."
+
+"Is it! Well, it isn't what I wish at all."
+
+"In fact," continued the imperturbable Banneker, "I rather planned to
+ride over to her place this afternoon."
+
+"Why, if you please?"
+
+"To tell her about you and ask her advice."
+
+Io's face darkened rebelliously. "Do you think it necessary to tattle to
+a woman who is a total stranger to me?"
+
+"I think it would be wise to get her view," he replied, unmoved.
+
+"Well, I think it would be horrid. I think if you do any such thing, you
+are--Mr. Banneker! You're not listening to me."
+
+"Some one is coming through the woods trail," said he.
+
+"Perhaps it's your local friend."
+
+"That's my guess."
+
+"Please understand this, Mr. Banneker," she said with an obstinate
+outthrust of her little chin. "I don't know who your friend is and I
+don't care. If you make it necessary, I can go to the hotel in town; but
+while I stay here I won't have my affairs or even my presence discussed
+with any one else."
+
+"You're too late," said Banneker.
+
+Out from a hardly discernible opening in the brush shouldered a big
+roan. Tossing up his head, he stretched out in the long, easy lope of
+the desert-bred, his rider sitting him loosely and with slack bridle.
+
+"That's Miss Van Arsdale," said Banneker.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Seated in her saddle the newcomer hailed Banneker.
+
+"What news, Ban? Is the wreck cleared up?"
+
+"Yes. But the track is out twenty miles east. Every arroyo and barranca
+is bank-high and over."
+
+He had crossed the platform to her. Now she raised her deep-set, quiet
+eyes and rested them on the girl. That the station should harbor a
+visitor at that hour was not surprising. But the beauty of the stranger
+caught Miss Van Arsdale's regard, and her bearing held it.
+
+"A passenger, Ban?" she asked, lowering her voice.
+
+"Yes, Miss Camilla."
+
+"Left over from the wreck?"
+
+He nodded. "You came in the nick of time. I don't quite know what to do
+with her."
+
+"Why didn't she go on the relief train?"
+
+"She didn't show up until last night."
+
+"Where did she stay the night?"
+
+"Here."
+
+"In your office?"
+
+"In my room. I worked in the office."
+
+"You should have brought her to me."
+
+"She was hurt. Queer in the head. I'm not sure that she isn't so yet."
+
+Miss Van Arsdale swung her tall form easily out of the saddle. The girl
+came forward at once, not waiting for Banneker's introduction, with a
+formal gravity.
+
+"How do you do? I am Irene Welland."
+
+The older woman took the extended hand. There was courtesy rather than
+kindliness in her voice as she asked, "Are you much hurt?"
+
+"I'm quite over it, thank you. All but the bandage. Mr. Banneker was
+just speaking of you when you rode up, Miss Van Arsdale."
+
+The other smiled wanly. "It is a little startling to hear one's name
+like that, in a voice from another world. When do you go on?"
+
+"Ah, that's a point under discussion. Mr. Banneker would, I believe,
+summon a special train if he could, in his anxiety to get rid of me."
+
+"Not at all," disclaimed the agent.
+
+But Miss Van Arsdale interrupted, addressing the girl:
+
+"You must be anxious, yourself, to get back to civilization."
+
+"Why?" returned the girl lightly. "This seems a beautiful locality."
+
+"Were you traveling alone?"
+
+The girl flushed a little, but her eyes met the question without
+wavering. "Quite alone."
+
+"To the coast?"
+
+"To join friends there."
+
+"If they can patch up the washed-out track," put in Banneker, "Number
+Seven ought to get through to-night."
+
+"And Mr. Banneker in his official capacity was almost ready to put me
+aboard by force, when I succeeded in gaining a reprieve. Now he calls
+you to his rescue."
+
+"What do you want to do?" inquired Miss Van Arsdale with lifted brows.
+
+"Stay here for a few days, in that funny little house." She indicated
+the portable shack.
+
+"That is Mr. Banneker's own place."
+
+"I understand perfectly."
+
+"I don't think it would do, Miss Welland. It is _Miss_ Welland, isn't
+it?"
+
+"Yes, indeed. Why wouldn't it do, Miss Van Arsdale?"
+
+"Ask yourself."
+
+"I am quite capable of taking care of myself," returned the girl calmly.
+"As for Mr. Banneker, I assume that he is equally competent. And," she
+added with a smiling effrontery, "he's quite as much compromised already
+as he could possibly be by my staying."
+
+Banneker flushed angrily. "There's no question of my being compromised,"
+he began shortly.
+
+"You're wrong, Ban; there is," Miss Van Arsdale's quiet voice cut him
+short again. "And still more of Miss Welland's. What sort of escapade
+this may be," she added, turning to the girl, "I have no idea. But you
+cannot stay here alone."
+
+"Can't I?" retorted the other mutinously. "I think that rests with Mr.
+Banneker to say. Will you turn me out, Mr. Banneker? After our
+agreement?"
+
+"No," said Banneker.
+
+"You can hardly kidnap me, even with all the conventionalities on your
+side," Miss Welland pointed out to Miss Van Arsdale.
+
+That lady made no answer to the taunt. She was looking at the
+station-agent with a humorously expectant regard. He did not disappoint
+her.
+
+"If I get an extra cot for the shack, Miss Van Arsdale," he asked,
+"could you get your things and come over here to stay?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"I won't be treated like a child!" cried the derelict in exactly the
+tone of one, and a very naughty one. "I won't! I won't!" She stamped.
+
+Banneker laughed.
+
+"You're a coward," said Io.
+
+Miss Van Arsdale laughed.
+
+"I'll go to the hotel in the town and stay there."
+
+"Think twice before you do that," advised the woman.
+
+"Why?" asked Io, struck by the tone.
+
+"Crawly things," replied Miss Van Arsdale sententiously.
+
+"Big, hungry ones," added Banneker.
+
+He could almost feel the little rippling shudders passing across the
+girl's delicate skin. "Oh, I think you're _loathly_!" she cried. "Both
+of you."
+
+Tears of vexation made lucent the shadowed depths of her eyes. "I've
+never been treated so in my life!" she declared, overcome by the
+self-pity of a struggling soul trammeled by the world's injustice.
+
+"Why not be sensible and stay with me to-night while you think it all
+over?" suggested Miss Van Arsdale.
+
+"Thank you," returned the other with an unexpected and baffling change
+to the amenable and formal "You are very kind. I'd be delighted to."
+
+"Pack up your things, then, and I'll bring an extra horse from the town.
+I'll be back in an hour."
+
+The girl went up to Banneker's room, and got her few belongings
+together. Descending she found the agent busy among his papers. He put
+them aside and came out to her.
+
+"Your telegram ought to get off from Williams sometime to-morrow," he
+said.
+
+"That will be time enough," she answered.
+
+"Will there be any answer?"
+
+"How can there be? I haven't given any address."
+
+"I could wire Williams later."
+
+"No. I don't want to be bothered. I want to be let alone. I'm tired."
+
+He cast a glance about the lowering horizon. "More rain coming," he
+said. "I wish you could have seen the desert in the sunshine."
+
+"I'll wait."
+
+"Will you?" he cried eagerly. "It may be quite a while."
+
+"Perhaps Miss Van Arsdale will keep me, as you wouldn't."
+
+He shook his head. "You know that it isn't because I don't want you to
+stay. But she is right. It just wouldn't do.... Here she comes now."
+
+Io took a step nearer to him. "I've been looking at your books."
+
+He returned her gaze unembarrassed. "Odds and ends," he said. "You
+wouldn't find much to interest you."
+
+"On the contrary. Everything interested me. You're a mystery--and I hate
+mysteries."
+
+"That's rather hard."
+
+"Until they're solved. Perhaps I shall stay until I solve you."
+
+"Stay longer. It wouldn't take any time at all. There's no mystery to
+solve." He spoke with an air of such perfect candor as compelled her
+belief in his sincerity.
+
+"Perhaps you'll solve it for me. Here's Miss Van Arsdale. Good-bye, and
+thank you. You'll come and see me? Or shall I come and see you?"
+
+"Both," smiled Banneker. "That's fairest."
+
+The pair rode away leaving the station feeling empty and unsustained. At
+least Banneker credited it with that feeling. He tried to get back to
+work, but found his routine dispiriting. He walked out into the desert,
+musing and aimless.
+
+Silence fell between the two women as they rode. Once Miss Welland
+stopped to adjust her traveling-bag which had shifted a little in the
+straps.
+
+"Is riding cross-saddle uncomfortable for you?" asked Miss Van Arsdale.
+
+"Not in the least. I often do it at home."
+
+Suddenly her mount, a thick-set, soft-going pony shied, almost unseating
+her. A gun had banged close by. Immediately there was a second report.
+Miss Van Arsdale dismounted, replacing a short-barreled shot-gun in its
+saddle-holster, stepped from the trail, and presently returned carrying
+a brace of plump, slate-gray birds.
+
+"Wild dove," she said, stroking them. "You'll find them a welcome
+addition to a meager bill of fare."
+
+"I should be quite content with whatever you usually have."
+
+"Doubted," replied the other. "I live rather a frugal life. It saves
+trouble."
+
+"And I'm afraid I'm going to make you trouble. But you brought it upon
+yourself."
+
+"By interfering. Exactly. How old are you?"
+
+"Twenty."
+
+"Good Heavens! You have the aplomb of fifty."
+
+"Experience," smiled the girl, flattered.
+
+"And the recklessness of fifteen."
+
+"I abide by the rules of the game. And when I find myself--well, out of
+bounds, I make my own rules."
+
+Miss Van Arsdale shook her firmly poised head. "It won't do. The rules
+are the same everywhere, for honorable people."
+
+"Honorable!" There was a flash of resentful pride as the girl turned in
+the saddle to face her companion.
+
+"I have no intention of preaching at you or of questioning you,"
+continued the calm, assured voice. "If you are looking for
+sanctuary"--the fine lips smiled slightly--"though I'm sure I can't see
+why you should need it, this is the place. But there are rules of
+sanctuary, also."
+
+"I suppose," surmised the girl, "you want to know why I don't go back
+into the world at once."
+
+"No."
+
+"Then I'll tell you."
+
+"As you wish."
+
+"I came West to be married."
+
+"To Delavan Eyre?"
+
+Again the dun pony jumped, this time because a sudden involuntary
+contraction of his rider's muscles had startled him. "What do you know
+of Delavan Eyre, Miss Van Arsdale?"
+
+"I occasionally see a New York newspaper."
+
+"Then you know who I am, too?"
+
+"Yes. You are the pet of the society column paragraphers; the famous
+'Io' Welland." She spoke with a curious intonation.
+
+"Ah, you read the society news?"
+
+"With a qualmish stomach. I see the names of those whom I used to know
+advertising themselves in the papers as if they had a shaving-soap or a
+chewing-gum to sell."
+
+"Part of the game," returned the girl airily. "The newcomers, the
+climbers, would give their souls to get the place in print that we get
+without an effort."
+
+"Doesn't it seem to you a bit vulgar?" asked the other.
+
+"Perhaps. But it's the way the game is played nowadays."
+
+"With counters which you have let the parvenues establish for you. In my
+day we tried to keep out of the papers."
+
+"Clever of you," approved the girl. "The more you try to keep out, the
+more eager the papers are to print your picture. They're crazy over
+exclusiveness," she laughed.
+
+"Speculation, pro and con, as to who is going to marry whom, and who is
+about to divorce whom, and whether Miss Welland's engagement to Mr. Eyre
+is authentic, 'as announced exclusively in this column'--more
+exclusiveness--; or whether--"
+
+"It wasn't Del Eyre that I came out here to marry."
+
+"No?"
+
+"No. It's Carter Holmesley. Of course you know about him."
+
+"By advertisement, also; the society-column kind."
+
+"Really, you know, he couldn't keep out of the papers. He hates it with
+all his British soul. But being what he is, a prospective duke, an
+international poloist, and all that sort of thing, the reporters
+naturally swarm to him. Columns and columns; more pictures than a
+popular _danseuse_. And all without his lifting his hand."
+
+"_Une mariage de reclame_," observed Miss Van Arsdale. "Is it that that
+constitutes his charm for you?"
+
+Miss Van Arsdale's smile was still instinct with mockery, but there had
+crept into it a quality of indulgence.
+
+"No," answered the girl. Her face became thoughtful and serious. "It's
+something else. He--he carried me off my feet from the moment I met him.
+He was drunk, too, that first time. I don't believe I've ever seen him
+cold sober. But it's a joyous kind of intoxication; vine-leaves and
+Bacchus and that sort of thing 'weave a circle 'round him thrice'--_you_
+know. It _is_ honey-dew and the milk of Paradise to him." She laughed
+nervously. "And charm! It's in the very air about him. He can make me
+follow his lead like a little curly poodle when I'm with him."
+
+"Were you engaged to Delavan Eyre when you met him?"
+
+"Oh, engaged!" returned the girl fretfully. "There was never more than a
+sort of understanding. A _mariage de convenance_ on both sides, if it
+ever came off. I _am_ fond of Del, too. But he was South, and the other
+came like a whirlwind, and I'm--I'm queer about some things," she went
+on half shamefacedly. "I suppose I'm awfully susceptible to physical
+impressions. Are all girls that way? Or is that gross and--and
+underbred?"
+
+"It's part of us, I expect; but we're not all so honest with ourselves.
+So you decided to throw over Mr. Eyre and marry your Briton."
+
+"Well--yes. The new British Ambassador, who arrives from Japan next
+week, is Carty's uncle, and we were going to make him stage-manage the
+wedding, you see. A sort of officially certified elopement."
+
+"More advertisement!" said Miss Van Arsdale coldly. "Really, Miss
+Welland, if marriage seems to you nothing more than an opportunity to
+create a newspaper sensation I cannot congratulate you on your
+prospects."
+
+This time her tone stung. Io Welland's eyes became sullen. But her voice
+was almost caressingly amiable as she said:
+
+"Tastes differ. It is, I believe, possible to create a sensation in New
+York society without any newspaper publicity, and without at all meaning
+or wishing to. At least, it was, fifteen years ago; so I'm told."
+
+Camilla Van Arsdale's face was white and lifeless and still, as she
+turned it toward the girl.
+
+"You must have been a very precocious five-year-old," she said steadily.
+
+"All the Olneys are precocious. My mother was an Olney, a first cousin
+of Mrs. Willis Enderby, you know."
+
+"Yes; I remember now."
+
+The malicious smile on the girl's delicate lips faded. "I wish I, hadn't
+said that," she cried impulsively. "I hate Cousin Mabel. I always have
+hated her. She's a cat. And I think the way she, acted in--in
+the--the--well, about Judge Enderby and--".
+
+"Please!" Miss Van Arsdale's tone was peremptory. "Here is my place."
+She indicated a clearing with a little nest of a camp in it.
+
+"Shall I go back?" asked Io remorsefully.
+
+"No."
+
+Miss Van Arsdale dismounted and, after a moment's hesitancy, the other
+followed her example. The hostess threw open the door and a beautiful,
+white-ruffed collie rushed to her with barks of joy. She held out a hand
+to her new guest.
+
+"Be welcome," she said with a certain stately gravity, "for as long as
+you will stay."
+
+"It might be some time," answered Io shyly. "You're tempting me."
+
+"When is your wedding?"
+
+"Wedding! Oh, didn't I tell you? I'm not going to marry Carter Holmesley
+either."
+
+"You are not going--"
+
+"No. The bump on my head must have settled my brain. As soon as I came
+to I saw how crazy it would be. That is why I don't want to go on West."
+
+"I see. For fear of his overbearing you."
+
+"Yes. Though I don't think he could now. I think I'm over it. Poor old
+Del! He's had a narrow escape from losing me. I hope he never hears of
+it. Placid though he is, that might stir him up."
+
+"Then you'll go back to him?"
+
+The girl sighed. "I suppose so. How can I tell? I'm only twenty, and it
+seems to me that somebody has been trying to marry me ever since I
+stopped petting my dolls. I'm tired of men, men, men! That's why I want
+to live alone and quiet for a while in the station-agent's shack."
+
+"Then you don't consider Mr. Banneker as belonging to the tribe of men?"
+
+"He's an official. I could always see his uniform, at need." She fell
+into thought. "It's a curious thing," she mused.
+
+Miss Van Arsdale said nothing.
+
+"This queer young cub of a station-agent of yours is strangely like
+Carter Holmesley, not as much in looks as in--well--atmosphere. Only,
+he's ever so much better-looking."
+
+"Won't you have some tea? You must be tired," said Miss Van Arsdale
+politely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Somewhere within the soul of civilized woman burns a craving for that
+higher power of sensation which we dub sensationalism. Girls of Io
+Welland's upbringing live in an atmosphere which fosters it. To outshine
+their rivals in the startling things which they do, always within
+accepted limits, is an important and exciting phase of existence. Io had
+run away to marry the future Duke of Carfax, partly through the charm
+which a reckless, headlong, and romantic personality imposed upon her,
+but largely for the excitement of a reckless, headlong, and romantic
+escapade. The tragic interposition of the wreck seemed to her present
+consciousness, cooled and sobered by the spacious peace of the desert,
+to have been providential.
+
+Despite her disclaimer made to Banneker she felt, deep within the placid
+acceptances of subconsciousness, that the destruction of a train was not
+too much for a considerate Providence to undertake on behalf of her
+petted and important self. She clearly realized that she had had a
+narrow escape from Holmesley; that his attraction for her was transient
+and unsubstantial, a surface magnetism without real value or promise.
+
+In her revulsion of feeling she thought affectionately of Delavan Eyre.
+There lay the safe basis of habitude, common interests, settled liking.
+True, he bored her at times with his unimpeachable good-nature, his easy
+self-assurance that everything was and always would be "all right," and
+nothing "worth bothering over."
+
+If he knew of her escapade, that would at least shake him out of his
+soft and well-lined rut. Indeed, Io was frank enough with herself to
+admit that a perverse desire to explode a bomb under her imperturbable
+and too-assured suitor had been an element in her projected elopement.
+Never would that bomb explode. It would not even fizzle enough to alarm
+Eyre or her family. For not a soul knew of the frustrated scheme, except
+Holmesley and the reliable friend in Paradiso whom she was to visit; not
+her father, Sims Welland, traveling in Europe on business, nor her aunt,
+Mrs. Thatcher Forbes, in whose charge she had been left. Ostensibly she
+had been going to visit the Westerleys, that was all: Mrs. Forbes's
+misgivings as to a twenty-year-old girl crossing the continent alone had
+been unavailing against Io's calm willfulness.
+
+Well, she would go back and marry Del Eyre, and be comfortable ever
+after. After all, liking and comprehension were a sounder foundation for
+matrimony than the perishable glamour of an attraction like Holmesley's.
+Any sensible person would know that. She wished that she had some older
+and more experienced woman to talk it out with. Miss Van Arsdale, if
+only she knew her a little better....
+
+Camilla Van Arsdale, even on so casual an acquaintance, would have told
+Io, reckoning with the slumbering fire in her eyes, and the sensitive
+and passionate turn of the lips, but still more with the subtle and
+significant emanation of a femininity as yet unawakened to itself, that
+for her to marry on the pallid expectancies of mere liking would be to
+invite disaster and challenge ruin.
+
+Meantime Io wanted to rest and think.
+
+Time enough for that was to be hers, it appeared. Her first night as a
+guest had been spent in a semi-enclosed porch, to which every breeze
+wafted the spicy and restful balm of the wet pines. Io's hot brain
+cooled itself in that peace. Quite with a feeling of welcome she
+accepted the windy downpour which came with the morning to keep her
+indoors, as if it were a friendly and opportune jailer. Reaction from
+the mental strain and the physical shock had set in. She wanted only, as
+she expressed it to her hostess, to "laze" for a while.
+
+"Then this is the ideal spot for you," Miss Van Arsdale answered her.
+"I'm going to ride over to town."
+
+"In this gale?" asked the surprised girl.
+
+"Oh, I'm weather-proof. Tell Pedro not to wait luncheon for me. And keep
+an eye on him if you want anything fit to eat. He's the worst cook west
+of the plains. You'll find books, and the piano to amuse you when you
+get up."
+
+She rode away, straight and supple in the saddle, and Io went back to
+sleep again. Halfway to her destination, Miss Van Arsdale's
+woods-trained ear caught the sound of another horse's hooves, taking a
+short cut across a bend in the trail. To her halloo, Banneker's clear
+voice responded. She waited and presently he rode up to her.
+
+"Come back with me," she invited after acknowledging his greeting.
+
+"I was going over to see Miss Welland."
+
+"Wait until to-morrow. She is resting."
+
+A shade of disappointment crossed his face. "All right," he agreed. "I
+wanted to tell her that her messages got off all right."
+
+"I'll tell her when I go back."
+
+"That'll be just as well," he answered reluctantly. "How is she
+feeling?"
+
+"Exhausted. She's been under severe strain."
+
+"Oughtn't she to have a doctor? I could ride--"
+
+"She won't listen to it. And I think her head is all right now. But she
+ought to have complete rest for several days."
+
+"Well, I'm likely to be busy enough," he said simply. "The schedule is
+all shot to pieces, and, unless this rain lets up, we'll have more track
+out. What do you think of it?"
+
+Miss Van Arsdale looked up through the thrashing pines to the rush of
+the gray-black clouds. "I think we're in for a siege of it," was her
+pronouncement.
+
+They rode along single file in the narrow trail until they emerged into
+the open. Then Banneker's horse moved forward, neck and neck with the
+other. Miss Van Arsdale reined down her uneasy roan.
+
+"Ban."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Have you ever seen anything like her before?"
+
+"Only on the stage."
+
+She smiled. "What do you think of her?"
+
+"I hardly know how to express it," he answered frankly, though
+hesitantly. "She makes me think of all the poetry I've ever read."
+
+"That's dangerous. Ban, have you any idea what kind of a girl she is?"
+
+"What kind?" he repeated. He looked startled.
+
+"Of course you haven't. How should you? I'm going to tell you."
+
+"Do you know her, Miss Camilla?"
+
+"As well as if she were my own sister. That is, I know her type. It's
+common enough."
+
+"It can't be," he protested eagerly.
+
+"Oh, yes! The type is. She is an exquisite specimen of it; that's all.
+Listen, Ban. Io Welland is the petted and clever and willful daughter of
+a rich man; a very rich man he would be reckoned out here. She lives in
+a world as remote from this as the moon."
+
+"Of course. I realize that."
+
+"It's well that you do. And she's as casual a visitant here as if she
+had floated down on one moonbeam and would float back on the next."
+
+"She'll have to, to get out of here if this rain keeps up," observed the
+station-agent grimly.
+
+"I wish she would," returned Miss Van Arsdale.
+
+"Is she in your way?"
+
+"I shouldn't mind that if I could keep her out of yours," she answered
+bluntly.
+
+Banneker turned a placid and smiling face to her. "You think I'm a fool,
+don't you, Miss Camilla?"
+
+"I think that Io Welland, without ill-intent at all, but with a period
+of idleness on her hands, is a dangerous creature to have around. She's
+too lovely and, I think, too restless a spirit."
+
+"She's lovely, all right," assented Banneker.
+
+"Well; I've warned you, Ban," returned his friend in slightly dispirited
+tones.
+
+"What do you want me to do? Keep away from your place? I'll do whatever
+you say. But it's all nonsense."
+
+"I dare say it is," sighed Miss Van Arsdale. "Forget that I've said it,
+Ban. Meddling is a thankless business."
+
+"You could never meddle as far as I'm concerned," said Banneker warmly.
+"I'm a little worried," he added thoughtfully, "about not reporting her
+as found to the company. What do you think?"
+
+"Too official a question for me. You'll have to settle that for
+yourself."
+
+"How long does she intend to stay?"
+
+"I don't know. But a girl of her breeding and habits would hardly settle
+herself on a stranger for very long unless a point were made of urging
+her."
+
+"And you won't do that?"
+
+"I certainly shall not!"
+
+"No; I suppose not. You've been awfully good to her."
+
+"Hospitality to the shipwrecked," smiled Miss Van Arsdale as she crossed
+the track toward the village.
+
+Late afternoon, darkening into wilder winds and harsher rain, brought
+the hostess back to her lodge dripping and weary. On a bearskin before
+the smouldering fire lay the girl, her fingers intertwined behind her
+head, her eyes half closed and dreamy. Without directly responding to
+the other's salutation she said:
+
+"Miss Van Arsdale, will you be very good to me?"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"I'm tired," said Io. "So tired!"
+
+"Stay, of course," responded the hostess, answering the implication
+heartily, "as long as you will."
+
+"Only two or three days, until I recover the will to do something.
+You're awfully kind." Io looked very young and childlike, with her
+languid, mobile face irradiated by the half-light of the fire. "Perhaps
+you'll play for me sometime."
+
+"Of course. Now, if you like. As soon as the chill gets out of my
+hands."
+
+"Thank you. And sing?" suggested the girl diffidently.
+
+A fierce contraction of pain marred the serenity of the older woman's
+face. "No," she said harshly. "I sing for no one."
+
+"I'm sorry," murmured the girl.
+
+"What have you been doing all day?" asked Miss Van Arsdale, holding out
+her hands toward the fire.
+
+"Resting. Thinking. Scaring myself with bogy-thoughts of what I've
+escaped." Io smiled and sighed. "I hadn't known how worn out I was until
+I woke up this morning. I don't think I ever before realized the meaning
+of refuge."
+
+"You'll recover from the need of it soon enough," promised the other.
+She crossed to the piano. "What kind of music do you want? No; don't
+tell me. I should be able to guess." Half turning on the bench she gazed
+speculatively at the lax figure on the rug. "Chopin, I think. I've
+guessed right? Well, I don't think I shall play you Chopin to-day. You
+don't need that kind of--of--well, excitation."
+
+Musing for a moment over a soft mingling of chords she began with a
+little ripple of melody, MacDowell's lovely, hurrying, buoyant
+"Improvisation," with its aeolian vibrancies, its light, bright surges
+of sound, sinking at the last into cradled restfulness. Without pause or
+transition she passed on to Grieg; the wistful, remote appeal of the
+strangely misnamed "Erotique," plaintive, solemn, and in the fulfillment
+almost hymnal: the brusque pursuing minors of the wedding music, and the
+diamond-shower of notes of the sun-path song, bleak, piercing, Northern
+sunlight imprisoned in melody. Then, the majestic swing of Ase's
+death-chant, glorious and mystical.
+
+"Are you asleep?" asked the player, speaking through the chords.
+
+"No," answered Io's tremulous voice. "I'm being very unhappy. I love
+it!"
+
+Bang! It was a musical detonation, followed by a volley of chords and
+then a wild, swirling waltz; and Miss Van Arsdale jumped up and stood
+over her guest. "There!" she said. "That's better than letting you
+pamper yourself with the indulgence of unhappiness."
+
+"But I want to be unhappy," pouted Io. "I want to be pampered."
+
+"Naturally. You always will be, I expect, as long as there are men in
+the world to do your bidding. However, I must see to supper."
+
+So for two days Io Welland lolled and lazed and listened to Miss Van
+Arsdale's music, or read, or took little walks between showers. No
+further mention was made by her hostess of the circumstances of the
+visit. She was a reticent woman; almost saturnine, Io decided, though
+her perfect and effortless courtesy preserved her from being
+antipathetic to any one beneath her own roof. How much her silence as to
+the unusual situation was inspired by consideration for her guest, how
+much due to natural reserve, Io could not estimate.
+
+A little less reticence would have been grateful to her as the hours
+spun out and she felt her own spirit expand slowly in the calm. It was
+she who introduced the subject of Banneker.
+
+"Our quaint young station-agent seems to have abandoned his
+responsibilities so far as I'm concerned," she observed.
+
+"Because he hasn't come to see you?"
+
+"Yes. He said he would."
+
+"I told him not to."
+
+"I see," said Io, after thinking it over. "Is he a little--just a wee,
+little bit queer in his head?"
+
+"He's one of the sanest persons I've ever known. And I want him to stay
+so."
+
+"I see again," stated the girl.
+
+"So you thought him a bit unbalanced? That _is_ amusing." That the
+hostess meant the adjective in good faith was proved by her quiet
+laughter.
+
+Io regarded her speculatively and with suspicion. "He asked the same
+about me, I suppose." Such was her interpretation of the laugh.
+
+"But he gave you credit for being only temporarily deranged."
+
+"Either he or I ought to be up for examination by a medical board,"
+stated the girl poutingly. "One of us must be crazy. The night that I
+stole his molasses pie--it was pretty awful pie, but I was starved--I
+stumbled over something in the darkness and fell into it with an awful
+clatter. What do you suppose it was?"
+
+"I think I could guess," smiled the other.
+
+"Not unless you knew. Personally I couldn't believe it. It felt like a
+boat, and it rocked like a boat, and there were the seats and the oars.
+I could feel them. A steel boat! Miss Van Arsdale, it isn't reasonable."
+
+"Why isn't it reasonable?'
+
+"I looked on the map in his room and there isn't so much as a mud-puddle
+within miles and miles and miles. Is there?"
+
+"Not that I know of."
+
+"Then what does he want of a steel boat?"
+
+"Ask him."
+
+"It might stir him up. They get violent if you question their pet
+lunacies, don't they?"
+
+"It's quite simple. Ban is just an incurable romanticist. He loves the
+water. And his repository of romance is the catalogue of Sears, Roebuck
+and Co. When the new issue came, with an entrancing illustration of a
+fully equipped steel boat, he simply couldn't stand it. He had to have
+one, to remind him that some day he would be going back to the coast
+lagoons.... Does that sound to you like a fool?"
+
+"No; it sounds delicious," declared the girl with a ripple of mirth.
+"What a wonderful person! I'm going over to see him to-morrow. May I?"
+
+"My dear; I have no control over your actions."
+
+"Have you made any other plans for me to-morrow morning?" inquired Miss
+Welland in a prim and social tone, belied by the dancing light in her
+eyes.
+
+"I've told you that he was romantic," warned the other.
+
+"What higher recommendation could there be? I shall sit in the boat with
+him and talk nautical language. Has he a yachting cap? Oh, do tell me
+that he has a yachting cap!"
+
+Miss Van Arsdale, smiling, shook her head, but her eyes were troubled.
+There was compunction in Io's next remark.
+
+"I'm really going over to see about accommodations. Sooner or later I
+must face the music--meaning Carty. I'm fit enough now, thanks to you."
+
+"Wouldn't an Eastern trip be safer?" suggested her hostess.
+
+"An Eastern trip would be easier. But I've made my break, and it's in
+the rules, as I understand them, that I've got to see it through. If he
+can get me now"--she gave a little shrug--"but he can't. I've come to my
+senses."
+
+Sunlight pale, dubious, filtering through the shaken cloud veils,
+ushered in the morning. Meager of promise though it was, Io's spirits
+brightened. Declining the offer of a horse in favor of a pocket compass,
+she set out afoot, not taking the trail, but forging straight through
+the heavy forest for the line of desert. Around her, brisk and busy
+flocks of pinon jays darted and twittered confidentially. The warm spice
+of the pines was sweet in her nostrils. Little stirrings and rustlings
+just beyond the reach of vision delightfully and provocatively suggested
+the interest which she was inspiring by her invasion among the lesser
+denizens of the place. The sweetness and intimacy of an unknown life
+surrounded her. She sang happily as she strode, lithe and strong and
+throbbing with unfulfilled energies and potencies, through the
+springtide of the woods.
+
+But when she emerged upon the desert, she fell silent. A spaciousness as
+of endless vistas enthralled and, a little, awed her. On all sides were
+ranged the disordered ranks of the cacti, stricken into immobility in
+the very act of reconstituting their columns, so that they gave the
+effect of a discord checked on the verge of its resolution into form and
+harmony, yet with a weird and distorted beauty of its own. From a little
+distance, there came a murmur of love-words. Io moved softly forward,
+peering curiously, and from the arc of a wide curving ocatilla two wild
+doves sprang, leaving the branch all aquiver. Bolder than his companions
+of the air, a cactus owl, perched upon the highest column of a great
+green candelabrum, viewed her with a steady detachment, "sleepless, with
+cold, commemorative eyes." The girl gave back look for look, into the
+big, hard, unwavering circles.
+
+"You're a funny little bird," said she. "Say something!"
+
+Like his congener of the hortatory poem, the owl held his peace.
+
+"Perhaps you're a stuffed little bird," said Io, "and this not a real
+desert at all, but a National Park or something, full of educational
+specimens."
+
+She walked past the occupant of the cactus, and his head, turning,
+followed her with the slow, methodical movement of a toy mechanism.
+
+"You give me a crick in my neck," protested the intruder plaintively.
+"Now, I'll step over behind you and you'll _have_ to move or stop
+watching me."
+
+She walked behind the watcher. The eyes continued to hold her in direct
+range.
+
+"Now," said Io, "I know where the idea for that horrid advertisement
+that always follows you with its finger came from. However, I'll fix
+you."
+
+She fetched a deliberate circle. The bird's eyes followed her without
+cessation. Yet his feet and body remained motionless. Only the head had
+turned. That had made a complete revolution.
+
+"This is a very queer desert," gasped Io. "It's bewitched. Or am I? Now,
+I'm going to walk once more around you, little owl, or mighty magician,
+whichever you are. And after I've completely turned your head, you'll
+fall at my feet. Or else..."
+
+Again she walked around the feathered center of the circle. The head
+followed her, turning with a steady and uninterrupted motion, on its
+pivot. Io took a silver dime from her purse.
+
+"Heaven save us from the powers of evil!" she said appreciatively.
+"Aroint thee, witch!"
+
+She threw the coin at the cactus.
+
+"Chrr-rr-rrum!" burbled the owl, and flew away.
+
+"I'm dizzy," said Io. "I wonder if the owl is an omen and whether the
+other inhabitants of this desert are like him; however much you turn
+their heads, they won't fall for you. Charms and counter-charms!... Be a
+good child, Io," she admonished herself. "Haven't you got yourself into
+enough trouble with your deviltries? I can't help it," she defended
+herself. "When I see a new and interesting specimen, I've just _got_ to
+investigate its nature and habits. It's an inherited scientific spirit,
+I suppose. And he is new, and awfully interesting--even if he is only a
+station-agent." Wherefrom it will be perceived that her thoughts had
+veered from the cactus owl, to another perplexing local phenomenon.
+
+The glaring line of the railroad right-of-way rose before her feet, a
+discordant note of rigidity and order in the confused prodigality of
+desert growth. Io turned away from it, but followed its line until she
+reached the station. No sign of life greeted her. The door was locked,
+and the portable house unresponsive to her knocking. Presently, however,
+she heard the steady click of the telegraph instrument and, looking
+through the half-open office window, saw Banneker absorbed in his work.
+
+"Good-morning," she called.
+
+Without looking up he gave back her greeting in an absent echo.
+
+"As you didn't come to see me, I've come to see you," was her next
+attempt.
+
+Did he nod? Or had he made no motion at all?
+
+"I've come to ask important questions about trains," she pursued, a
+little aggrieved by his indifference to her presence.
+
+No reply from the intent worker.
+
+"And 'tell sad stories of the death of kings,'" she quoted with a fairy
+chuckle. She thought that she saw a small contortion pass over his
+features, only to be banished at once. He had retired within the walls
+of that impassive and inscrutable reserve which minor railroad officials
+can at will erect between themselves and the lay public. Only the broken
+rhythms of the telegraph ticker relieved the silence and furnished the
+justification.
+
+A little piqued but more amused, for she was far too confident of
+herself to feel snubbed, the girl waited smilingly. Presently she said
+in silken tones:
+
+"When you're quite through and can devote a little attention to
+insignificant me, I shall perhaps be sitting on the sunny corner of the
+platform, or perhaps I shall be gone forever."
+
+But she was not gone when, ten minutes later, Banneker came out. He
+looked tired.
+
+"You know, you weren't very polite to me," she remarked, glancing at him
+slantwise as he stood before her.
+
+If she expected apologies, she was disappointed, and perhaps thought
+none the less of him for his dereliction.
+
+"There's trouble all up and down the line," he said. "Nothing like a
+schedule left west of Allbright. Two passenger trains have come through,
+though. Would you like to see a paper? It's in my office."
+
+"Goodness, no! Why should I want a newspaper here? I haven't time for
+it. I want to see the world"--she swept a little, indicating hand about
+her; "all that I can take in in a day."
+
+"A day?" he echoed.
+
+"Yes. I'm going to-morrow."
+
+"That's as may be. Ten to one there's no space to be had."
+
+"Surely you can get something for me. A section will do if you can't get
+a stateroom."
+
+He smiled. "The president of the road might get a stateroom. I doubt if
+anybody else could even land an upper. Of course I'll do my best. But
+it's a question when there'll be another train through."
+
+"What ails your road?" she demanded indignantly. "Is it just stuck
+together with glue?"
+
+"You've never seen this desert country when it springs a leak. It can
+develop a few hundred Niagaras at the shortest notice of any place I
+know."
+
+"But it isn't leaking now," she objected.
+
+He turned his face to the softly diffused sunlight. "To be continued.
+The storm isn't over yet, according to the way I feel about it. Weather
+reports say so, too."
+
+"Then take me for a walk!" she cried. "I'm tired of rain and I want to
+go over and lean against that lovely white mountain."
+
+"Well, it's only sixty miles away," he answered. "Perhaps you'd better
+take some grub along or you might get hungry."
+
+"Aren't you coming with me?"
+
+"This is my busy morning. If it were afternoon, now--"
+
+"Very well. Since you are so urgent, I _will_ stay to luncheon. I'll
+even get it up myself if you'll let me into the shack."
+
+"That's a go!" said Banneker heartily. "What about your horse?"
+
+"I walked over."
+
+"No; did you?" He turned thoughtful, and his next observation had a
+slightly troubled ring. "Have you got a gun?"
+
+"A gun? Oh, you mean a pistol. No; I haven't. Why should I?"
+
+He shook his head. "This is no time to be out in the open without a gun.
+They had a dance at the Sick Coyote in Manzanita last night, and
+there'll be some tough specimens drifting along homeward all day."
+
+"Do you carry a gun?"
+
+"I would if I were going about with you."
+
+"Then you can loan me yours to go home with this afternoon," she said
+lightly.
+
+"Oh, I'll take you back. Just now I've got some odds and ends that will
+take a couple of hours to clear up. You'll find plenty to read in the
+shack, such as it is."
+
+Thus casually dismissed, Io murmured a "Thank you" which was not as meek
+as it sounded, and withdrew to rummage among the canned edibles drawn
+from the inexhaustible stock of Sears-Roebuck. Having laid out a
+selection, housewifely, and looked to the oil stove derived from the
+same source, she turned with some curiosity to the mental pabulum with
+which this strange young hermit had provided himself. Would this, too,
+bear the mail-order imprint and testify to mail-order standards? At
+first glance the answer appeared to be affirmative. The top shelf of the
+home-made case sagged with the ineffable slusheries of that most popular
+and pious of novelists, Harvey Wheelwright. Near by, "How to Behave on
+All Occasions" held forth its unimpeachable precepts, while a little
+beyond, "Botany Made Easy" and "The Perfect Letter Writer" proffered
+further aid to the aspiring mind. Improvement, stark, blatant
+Improvement, advertised itself from that culturous and reeking
+compartment. But just below--Io was tempted to rub her eyes--stood
+Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy"; a Browning, complete; that inimitably
+jocund fictional prank, Frederic's "March Hares," together with the same
+author's fine and profoundly just "Damnation of Theron Ware"; Taylor's
+translation of Faust; "The [broken-backed] Egoist"; "Lavengro" (Io
+touched its magic pages with tender fingers), and a fat, faded, reddish
+volume so worn and obscured that she at once took it down and made
+explorative entry. She was still deep in it when the owner arrived.
+
+"Have you found enough to keep you amused?"
+
+She looked up from the pages and seemed to take him all in anew before
+answering. "Hardly the word. Bewildered would be nearer the feeling."
+
+"It's a queerish library, I suppose," he said apologetically.
+
+"If I believed in dual personality--" she began; but broke off to hold
+up the bulky veteran. "Where did you get 'The Undying Voices'?"
+
+"Oh, that's a windfall. What a bully title for a collection of the great
+poetries, isn't it!"
+
+She nodded, one caressing hand on the open book, the other propping her
+chin as she kept the clear wonder of her eyes upon him.
+
+"It makes you think of singers making harmony together in a great open
+space. I'd like to know the man who made the selections," he concluded.
+
+"What kind of a windfall?" she asked.
+
+"A real one. Pullman travelers sometimes prop their windows open with
+books. You can see the window-mark on the cover of this one. I found it
+two miles out, beside the right-of-way. There was no name in it, so I
+kept it. It's the book I read most except one."
+
+"What's the one?"
+
+He laughed, holding up the still more corpulent Sears-Roebuck catalogue.
+
+"Ah," said she gravely. "That accounts, I suppose, for the top shelf."
+
+"Yes, mostly."
+
+"Do you like them? The Conscientious Improvers, I mean?"
+
+"I think they're bunk."
+
+"Then why did you get them?"
+
+"Oh, I suppose I was looking for something," he returned; and though his
+tone was careless, she noticed for the first time a tinge of
+self-consciousness.
+
+"Did you find it there?"
+
+"No. It isn't there."
+
+"Here?" She laid both hands on the "windfall."
+
+His face lighted subtly.
+
+"It _is_ there, isn't it! If one has the sense to get it out."
+
+"I wonder," mused the girl. And again, "I wonder." She rose, and taking
+out "March Hares" held it up. "I could hardly believe this when I saw
+it. Did it also drop out of a car window?"
+
+"No. I never heard of that until I wrote for it. I wrote to a Boston
+bookstore that I'd heard about and told 'em I wanted two books to cheer
+up a fool with the blues, and another to take him into a strange
+world--and keep the change out of five dollars. They sent me 'The Bab
+Ballads' and this, and 'Lavengro.'"
+
+"Oh, how I'd like to see that letter! If the bookstore has an ounce of
+real bookitude about it, they've got it preserved in lavender! And what
+do you think of 'March Hares'?"
+
+"Did you ever read any of the works of Harvey Wheelwright?" he
+questioned in turn.
+
+"Now," thought Io, "he is going to compare Frederic to Wheelwright, and
+I shall abandon him to his fate forever. So here's his chance ... I
+have," she replied aloud.
+
+"It's funny," ruminated Banneker. "Mr. Wheelwright writes about the kind
+of things that might happen any day, and probably do happen, and yet you
+don't believe a word of it. 'March Hares'--well, it just couldn't
+happen; but what do you care while you're in it! It seems realer than
+any of the dull things outside it. That's the literary part of it, I
+suppose, isn't it?"
+
+"That's the magic of it," returned Io, with a little, half-suppressed
+crow of delight. "Are you magic, too, Mr. Banneker?"
+
+"Me? I'm hungry," said he.
+
+"Forgive the cook!" she cried. "But just one thing more. Will you lend
+me the poetry book?"
+
+"It's all marked up," he objected, flushing.
+
+"Are you afraid that I'll surprise your inmost secrets?" she taunted.
+"They'd be safe. I can be close-mouthed, even though I've been
+chattering like a sparrow."
+
+"Take it, of course," he said. "I suppose I've marked all the wrong
+things."
+
+"So far," she laughed, "you're batting one hundred per cent as a
+literary critic." She poured coffee into a tin cup and handed it to him.
+"What do you think of my coffee?"
+
+He tasted it consideringly; then gave a serious verdict. "Pretty bad."
+
+"Really! I suppose it isn't according to the mail-order book recipe."
+
+"It's muddy and it's weak."
+
+"Are you always so frank in your expression of views?"
+
+"Well, you asked me."
+
+"Would you answer as plainly whatever I asked you?"
+
+"Certainly. I'd have too much respect for you not to."
+
+She opened wide eyes at this. Then provocatively: "What do you think of
+me, Mr. Banneker?"
+
+"I can't answer that."
+
+"Why not?" she teased.
+
+"I don't know you well enough to give an opinion."
+
+"You know me as well as you ever will."
+
+"Very likely."
+
+"Well, a snap judgment, for what it's worth.... What are you doing
+there?"
+
+"Making more coffee."
+
+Io stamped her foot. "You're the most enraging man I ever met."
+
+"It's quite unintentional," he replied patiently, but with no hint of
+compunction. "You may drink yours and I'll drink mine."
+
+"You're only making it worse!"
+
+"Very well; then I'll drink yours if you like."
+
+"And say it's good."
+
+"But what's the use?"
+
+"And say it's good," insisted Io.
+
+"It's marvelous," agreed her unsmiling host.
+
+Far from being satisfied with words and tone, which were correctness
+itself, Io was insensately exasperated.
+
+"You're treating me like a child," she charged.
+
+"How do you want me to treat you?"
+
+"As a woman," she flashed, and was suddenly appalled to feel the blood
+flush incredibly to her cheeks.
+
+If he noted the phenomenon, he gave no sign, simply assenting with his
+customary equanimity. During the luncheon she chattered vaguely. She was
+in two minds about calling off the projected walk. As he set aside his
+half-emptied cup of coffee--not even tactful enough to finish it out of
+compliment to her brew--Banneker said:
+
+"Up beyond the turn yonder the right-of-way crosses an arroyo. I want to
+take a look at it. We can cut through the woods to get there. Are you
+good for three miles?"
+
+"For a hundred!" cried Io.
+
+The wine of life was potent in her veins.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Before the walk was over, Io knew Banneker as she had never before, in
+her surrounded and restricted life, known any man; the character and
+evolution and essence of him. Yet with all his frankness, the rare,
+simple, and generous outgiving of a naturally rather silent nature
+yielding itself to an unrecognized but overmastering influence, he
+retained the charm of inner mystery. Her sudden understanding of him
+still did not enable her to place him in any category of life as she
+knew it to be arranged.
+
+The revelation had come about through her description of her encounter
+with the queer and attentive bird of the desert.
+
+"Oh," said Banneker. "You've been interviewing a cactus owl."
+
+"Did he unwind his neck carefully and privately after I had gone?"
+
+"No," returned Banneker gravely. "He just jumped in the air and his body
+spun around until it got back to its original relation."
+
+"How truly fascinating! Have you seen him do it?"
+
+"Not actually seen. But often in the evenings I've heard them buzzing as
+they unspin the day's wind-up. During the day, you see, they make as
+many as ten or fifteen revolutions until their eyes bung out. Reversing
+makes them very dizzy, and if you are around when they're doing it, you
+can often pick them up off the sand."
+
+"And doesn't it ever make _you_ dizzy? All this local lore, I mean, that
+you carry around in your head?"
+
+"It isn't much of a strain to a practiced intellect," he deprecated. "If
+you're interested in natural history, there's the Side-hill Wampus--"
+
+"Yes; I know. I've been West before, thank you! Pardon my curiosity, but
+are all you creatures of the desert queer and inexplicable?"
+
+"Not me," he returned promptly if ungrammatically, "if you're looking in
+my direction."
+
+"I'll admit that I find you as interesting as the owl--almost. And quite
+as hard to understand."
+
+"Nobody ever called me queer; not to my face."
+
+"But you are, you know. You oughtn't to be here at all."
+
+"Where ought I to be?"
+
+"How can I answer that riddle without knowing where you have been? Are
+you Ulysses--"
+
+"'Knowing cities and the hearts of men,'" he answered, quick to catch
+the reference. "No; not the cities, certainly, and very little of the
+men."
+
+"There, you see!" she exclaimed plaintively. "You're up on a classical
+reference like a college man. No; not like the college men I know,
+either. They are too immersed in their football and rowing and too
+afraid to be thought high-brow, to confess to knowing anything about
+Ulysses. What was your college?"
+
+"This," he said, sweeping a hand around the curve of the horizon.
+
+"And in any one else," she retorted, "that would be priggish as well as
+disingenuous."
+
+"I suppose I know what you mean. Out here, when a man doesn't explain
+himself, they think it's for some good reason of his own, or bad reason,
+more likely. In either case, they don't ask questions."
+
+"I really beg your pardon, Mr. Banneker!"
+
+"No; that isn't what I meant at all. If you're interested, I'd like to
+have you know about me. It isn't much, though."
+
+"You'll think me prying," she objected.
+
+"I think you a sort of friend of a day, who is going away very soon
+leaving pleasant memories," he answered, smiling. "A butterfly visit.
+I'm not much given to talking, but if you'd like it--"
+
+"Of course I should like it."
+
+So he sketched for her his history. His mother he barely remembered;
+"dark, and quite beautiful, I believe, though that might be only a
+child's vision; my father rarely spoke of her, but I think all the
+emotional side of his life was buried with her." The father, an American
+of Danish ancestry, had been ousted from the chair of Sociology in old,
+conservative Havenden College, as the logical result of his writings
+which, because they shrewdly and clearly pointed out certain ulcerous
+spots in the economic and social system, were denounced as "radical" by
+a Board of Trustees honestly devoted to Business Ideals. Having a small
+income of his own, the ex-Professor decided upon a life of investigatory
+vagrancy, with special reference to studies, at first hand, of the
+voluntarily unemployed. Not knowing what else to do with the only child
+of his marriage, he took the boy along. Contemptuous of, rather than
+embittered against, an academic system which had dispensed with his
+services because it was afraid of the light--"When you cast a light,
+they see only the resultant shadows," was one of his sayings which had
+remained with Banneker--he had resolved to educate the child himself.
+
+Their life was spent frugally in cities where they haunted libraries,
+or, sumptuously, upon the open road where a modest supply of ready cash
+goes a long way. Young Banneker's education, after the routine
+foundation, was curiously heterodox, but he came through it with his
+intellectual digestion unimpaired and his mental appetite avid. By
+example he had the competent self-respect and unmistakable bearing of a
+gentleman, and by careful precept the speech of a liberally educated
+man. When he was seventeen, his father died of a twenty-four hours'
+pneumonia, leaving the son not so much stricken as bewildered, for their
+relations had been comradely rather than affectionate. For a time it was
+a question whether the youngster, drifting from casual job to casual
+job, would not degenerate into a veritable hobo, for he had drunk deep
+of the charm of the untrammeled and limitless road. Want touched him,
+but lightly; for he was naturally frugal and hardy. He got a railroad
+job by good luck, and it was not until he had worked himself into a
+permanency that his father's lawyers found and notified him of the
+possession of a small income, one hundred dollars per annum of which,
+they informed him, was to be expended by them upon such books as they
+thought suitable to his circumstances, upon information provided by the
+deceased, the remainder to be at his disposal.
+
+Though quite unauthorized to proffer advice, as they honorably stated,
+they opined that the heir's wisest course would be to prepare himself at
+once for college, the income being sufficient to take him through, with
+care--and they were, his Very Truly, Cobb & Morse.
+
+Banneker had not the smallest idea of cooping up his mind in a college.
+As to future occupation, his father had said nothing that was definite.
+His thesis was that observation and thought concerning men and their
+activities, pointed and directed by intimate touch with what others had
+observed and set down--that is, through books--was the gist of life. Any
+job which gave opportunity or leisure for this was good enough.
+Livelihood was but a garment, at most; life was the body beneath.
+Furthermore, young Banneker would find, so his senior had assured him,
+that he possessed an open sesame to the minds of the really intelligent
+wheresoever he might encounter them, in the form of a jewel which he
+must keep sedulously untarnished and bright. What was that? asked the
+boy. His speech and bearing of a cultivated man.
+
+Young Banneker found that it was almost miraculously true. Wherever he
+went, he established contacts with people who interested him and whom he
+interested: here a brilliant, doubting, perturbed clergyman, slowly
+dying of tuberculosis in the desert; there a famous geologist from
+Washington who, after a night of amazing talk with the young prodigy
+while awaiting a train, took him along on a mountain exploration; again
+an artist and his wife who were painting the arid and colorful glories
+of the waste places. From these and others he got much; but not
+friendship or permanent associations. He did not want them. He was
+essentially, though unconsciously, a lone spirit; so his listener
+gathered. Advancement could have been his in the line of work which had
+by chance adopted him; but he preferred small, out-of-the-way stations,
+where he could be with his books and have room to breathe. So here he
+was at Manzanita. That was all there was to it. Nothing very mysterious
+or remarkable about it, was there?
+
+Io smiled in return. "What is your name?" she asked.
+
+"Errol. But every one calls me Ban."
+
+"Haven't you ever told this to any one before?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+"I don't know really," hesitated the girl, "except that it seems almost
+inhuman to keep one's self so shut off."
+
+"It's nobody else's business."
+
+"Yet you've told it to me. That's very charming of you."
+
+"You said you'd be interested."
+
+"So I am. It's an extraordinary life, though you don't seem to think
+so."
+
+"But I don't want to be extraordinary."
+
+"Of course you do," she refuted promptly. "To be ordinary is--is--well,
+it's like being a dust-colored beetle." She looked at him queerly.
+"Doesn't Miss Van Arsdale know all this?"
+
+"I don't see how she could. I've never told her."
+
+"And she's never asked you anything?"
+
+"Not a word. I don't quite see Miss Camilla asking any one questions
+about themselves. Did she ask you?"
+
+The girl's color deepened almost imperceptibly. "You're right," she
+said. "There's a standard of breeding that we up-to-date people don't
+attain. But I'm at least intelligent enough to recognize it. You reckon
+her as a friend, don't you?"
+
+"Why, yes; I suppose so."
+
+"Do you suppose you'd ever come to reckon me as one?" she asked, half
+bantering, half wistful.
+
+"There won't be time. You're running away."
+
+"Perhaps I might write you. I think I'd like to."
+
+"Would you?" he murmured. "Why?"
+
+"You ought to be greatly flattered," she reproved him. "Instead you
+shoot a 'why' at me. Well; because you've got something I haven't got.
+And when I find anything new like that, I always try to get some of it
+for myself."
+
+"I don't know what it could be, but--"
+
+"Call it your philosophy of life. Your contentment. Or is it only
+detachment? That can't last, you know."
+
+He turned to her, vaguely disturbed as by a threat. "Why not?"
+
+"You're too--well, distinctive. You're too rare and beautiful a
+specimen. You'll be grabbed." She laughed softly.
+
+"Who'll grab me?"
+
+"How should I know? Life, probably. Grab you and dry you up and put you
+in a case like the rest of us."
+
+"Perhaps that's why I like to stay out here. At least I can be myself."
+
+"Is that your fondest ambition?"
+
+However much he may have been startled by the swift stab, he gave no
+sign of hurt in his reply.
+
+"Call it the line of least resistance. In any case, I shouldn't like to
+be grabbed and dried up."
+
+"Most of us are grabbed and catalogued from our birth, and eventually
+dried up and set in our proper places."
+
+"Not you, certainly."
+
+"Because you haven't seen me in my shell. That's where I mostly live.
+I've broken out for a time."
+
+"Don't you like it outside, Butterfly?" he queried with a hint of
+playful caress in his voice.
+
+"I like that name for myself," she returned quickly. "Though a butterfly
+couldn't return to its chrysalis, no matter how much it wanted to, could
+it? But you may call me that, since we're to be friends."
+
+"Then you do like it outside your shell."
+
+"It's exhilarating. But I suppose I should find it too rough for my
+highly sensitized skin in the long run.... Are you going to write to me
+if I write to you?"
+
+"What about? That Number Six came in making bad steam, and that a
+west-bound freight, running extra, was held up on the siding at Marchand
+for half a day?"
+
+"Is that all you have to write about?"
+
+Banneker bethought himself of the very private dossier in his office.
+"No; it isn't."
+
+"You _could_ write in a way all your own. Have you ever written anything
+for publication?"
+
+"No. That is--well--I don't really know." He told her about Gardner and
+the description of the wreck.
+
+"How did you happen to do that?" she asked curiously.
+
+"Oh, I write a lot of things and put them away and forget them."
+
+"Show me," she wheedled. "I'd love to see them."
+
+He shook his head. "They wouldn't interest you." The words were those of
+an excuse. But in the tone was finality.
+
+"I don't think you're very responsive," she complained. "I'm awfully
+interested in you and your affairs, and you won't play back the least
+bit."
+
+They walked on in silence for a space. He had, she reflected, a most
+disconcerting trick of silence, of ignoring quite without embarrassment
+leads, which in her code imperatively called for return. Annoyance
+stirred within her, and the eternal feline which is a component part of
+the eternal feminine asserted itself.
+
+"Perhaps," she suggested, "you are afraid of me."
+
+"No; I'm not."
+
+"By that you mean 'Why should I be'?"
+
+"Something of the sort."
+
+"Didn't Miss Van Arsdale warn you against me?"
+
+"How did you know that?" he asked, staring.
+
+"A solemn warning not to fall in love with me?" pursued the girl calmly.
+
+He stopped short. "She told you that she had said something to me?"
+
+"Don't be idiotic! Of course she didn't."
+
+"Then how did you know?" he persisted.
+
+"How does one snake know what another snake will do?" she retorted.
+"Being of the same--"
+
+"Wait a moment. I don't like that word 'snake' in connection with Miss
+Van Arsdale."
+
+"Though you're willing to accept it as applying to me. I believe you are
+trying to quarrel with me," accused Io. "I only meant that, being a
+woman, I can make a guess at what another woman would do in any given
+conditions. And she did it!" she concluded in triumph.
+
+"No; she didn't. Not in so many words. But you're very clever."
+
+"Say, rather, that _you_ are very stupid," was the disdainful retort.
+"So you're not going to fall in love with me?"
+
+"Of course not," answered Banneker in the most cheerfully commonplace of
+tones.
+
+Once embarked upon this primrose path, which is always an imperceptible
+but easy down-slope, Io went farther than she had intended. "Why not?"
+she challenged.
+
+"Brass buttons," said Banneker concisely.
+
+She flushed angrily. "You _can_ be rather a beast, can't you!"
+
+"A beast? Just for reminding you that the Atkinson and St. Philip
+station-agent at Manzanita does not include in his official duties that
+of presuming to fall in love with chance passengers who happen to be
+more or less in his care."
+
+"Very proper and official! Now," added the girl in a different manner,
+"let's stop talking nonsense, and do you tell me one thing honestly. Do
+you feel that it would be presumption?"
+
+"To fall in love with you?"
+
+"Leave that part of it out; I put my question stupidly. I'm really
+curious to know whether you feel any--any difference between your
+station and mine."
+
+"Do you?"
+
+"Yes; I do," she answered honestly, "when I think of it. But you make it
+very hard for me to remember it when I'm with you."
+
+"Well, I don't," he said. "I suppose I'm a socialist in all matters of
+that kind. Not that I've ever given much thought to them. You don't have
+to out here."
+
+"No; you wouldn't. I don't know that _you_ would have to anywhere....
+Are we almost home?"
+
+"Three minutes' more walking. Tired?"
+
+"Not a bit. You know," she added, "I really would like it if you'd write
+me once in a while. There's something here I'd like to keep a hold on.
+It's tonic. I'll _make_ you write me." She flashed a smile at him.
+
+"How?"
+
+"By sending you books. You'll have to acknowledge them."
+
+"No. I couldn't take them. I'd have to send them back."
+
+"You wouldn't let me send you a book or two just as a friendly memento?"
+she cried, incredulous.
+
+"I don't take anything from anybody," he retorted doggedly.
+
+"Ah; that's small-minded," she accused. "That's ungenerous. I wouldn't
+think that of you."
+
+He strode along in moody thought for a few paces. Presently he turned to
+her a rigid face. "If you had ever had to accept food to keep you alive,
+you'd understand."
+
+For a moment she was shocked and sorry. Then her tact asserted itself.
+"But I have," she said readily, "all my life. Most of us do."
+
+The hard muscles around his mouth relaxed. "You remind me," he said,
+"that I'm not as real a socialist as I thought. Nevertheless, that
+rankles in my memory. When I got my first job, I swore I'd never accept
+anything from anybody again. One of the passengers on your train tried
+to tip me a hundred dollars."
+
+"He must have been a fool," said Io scornfully.
+
+Banneker held open the station-door for her. "I've got to send a wire or
+two," said he. "Take a look at this. It may give some news about general
+railroad conditions." He handed her the newspaper which had arrived that
+morning.
+
+When he came out again, the station was empty.
+
+Io was gone. So was the newspaper.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Deep in work at her desk, Camilla Van Arsdale noted, with the outer
+tentacles of her mind, slow footsteps outside and a stir of air that
+told of the door being opened. Without lifting her head she called:
+
+"You'll find towels and a bathrobe in the passageway."
+
+There was no reply. Miss Van Arsdale twisted in her chair, gave one
+look, rose and strode to the threshold where Io Welland stood rigid and
+still.
+
+"What is it?" she demanded sharply.
+
+The girl's hands gripped a folded newspaper. She lifted it as if for
+Miss Van Arsdale's acceptance, then let it fall to the floor. Her throat
+worked, struggling for utterance, as it might be against the pressure of
+invisible fingers.
+
+"The beast! Oh, the beast!" she whispered.
+
+The older woman threw an arm over her shoulders and led her to the big
+chair before the fireplace. Io let herself be thrust into it, stiff and
+unyielding as a manikin. Any other woman but Camilla Van Arsdale would
+have asked questions. She went more directly to the point. Picking up
+the newspaper she opened it. Halfway across an inside page ran the
+explanation of Io's collapse.
+
+BRITON'S BEAUTIFUL FIANCEE LOST
+
+read the caption, in the glaring vulgarity of extra-heavy type, and
+below;
+
+_Ducal Heir Offers Private Reward to Dinner Party of Friends_
+
+After an estimating look at the girl, who sat quite still with hot,
+blurred eyes, Miss Van Arsdale carefully read the article through.
+
+"Here is advertising enough to satisfy the greediest appetite for
+print," she remarked grimly.
+
+"He's on one of his brutal drunks." The words seemed to grit in the
+girl's throat. "I wish he were dead! Oh, I wish he were dead!"
+
+Miss Van Arsdale laid hold on her shoulders and shook her hard. "Listen
+to me, Irene Welland. You're on the way to hysterics or some such
+foolishness. I won't have it! Do you understand? Are you listening to
+me?"
+
+"I'm listening. But it won't make any difference what you say."
+
+"Look at me. Don't stare into nothingness that way. Have you read this?"
+
+"Enough of it. It ends everything."
+
+"I should hope so, indeed. My dear!" The woman's voice changed and
+softened. "You haven't found that you cared for him, after all, more
+than you thought? It isn't that?"
+
+"No; it isn't that. It's the beastliness of the whole thing. It's the
+disgrace."
+
+Miss Van Arsdale turned to the paper again.
+
+"Your name isn't given."
+
+"It might as well be. As soon as it gets back to New York, every one
+will know."
+
+"If I read correctly between the lines of this scurrilous thing, Mr.
+Holmesley gave what was to have been his bachelor dinner, took too much
+to drink, and suggested that every man there go on a separate search for
+the lost bride offering two thousand dollars reward for the one who
+found her. Apparently it was to have been quite private, but it leaked
+out. There's a hint that he had been drinking heavily for some days."
+
+"My fault," declared Io feverishly. "He told me once that if ever I
+played anything but fair with him, he'd go to the devil the quickest way
+he could."
+
+"Then he's a coward," pronounced Miss Van Arsdale vigorously.
+
+"What am I? I didn't play fair with him. I practically jilted him
+without even letting him know why."
+
+Miss Van Arsdale frowned. "Didn't you send him word?"
+
+"Yes. I telegraphed him. I told him I'd write and explain. I haven't
+written. How could I explain? What was there to say? But I ought to have
+said something. Oh, Miss Van Arsdale, why didn't I write!"
+
+"But you did intend to go on and face him and have it out. You told me
+that."
+
+A faint tinge of color relieved the white rigidity of Io's face. "Yes,"
+she agreed. "I did mean it. Now it's too late and I'm disgraced."
+
+"Don't be melodramatic. And don't waste yourself in self-pity. To-morrow
+you'll see things clearer, after you've slept."
+
+"Sleep? I couldn't." She pressed both hands to her temples, lifting
+tragic and lustrous eyes to her companion. "I think my head is going to
+burst from trying not to think."
+
+After some hesitancy Miss Van Arsdale went to a wall-cabinet, took out a
+phial, shook into her hand two little pellets, and returned the phial,
+carefully locking the cabinet upon it.
+
+"Take a hot bath," she directed. "Then I'm going to give you just a
+little to eat. And then these." She held out the drug.
+
+Io acquiesced dully.
+
+Early in the morning, before the first forelight of dawn had started the
+birds to prophetic chirpings, the recluse heard light movements in the
+outer room. Throwing on a robe she went in to investigate. On the
+bearskin before the flickering fire sat Io, an apparition of soft
+curves.
+
+"D--d--don't make a light," she whimpered. "I've been crying."
+
+"That's good. The best thing you could do."
+
+"I want to go home," wailed Io.
+
+"That's good, too. Though perhaps you'd better wait a little. Why, in
+particular do you want to go home?"
+
+"I w-w-w-want to m-m-marry Delavan Eyre."
+
+A quiver of humor trembled about the corners of Camilla Van Arsdale's
+mouth. "Echoes of remorse," she commented.
+
+"No. It isn't remorse. I want to feel safe, secure. I'm afraid of
+things. I want to go to-morrow. Tell Mr. Banneker he must arrange it for
+me."
+
+"We'll see. Now you go back to bed and sleep."
+
+"I'd rather sleep here," said Io. "The fire is so friendly." She curled
+herself into a little soft ball.
+
+Her hostess threw a coverlet over her and returned to her own room.
+
+When light broke, there was no question of Io's going that day, even had
+accommodations been available. A clogging lassitude had descended upon
+her, the reaction of cumulative nervous stress, anesthetizing her will,
+her desires, her very limbs. She was purposeless, ambitionless, except
+to lie and rest and seek for some resolution of peace out of the tangled
+web wherein her own willfulness had involved her.
+
+"The best possible thing," said Camilla Van Arsdale. "I'll write your
+people that you are staying on for a visit."
+
+"Yes; they won't mind. They're used to my vagaries. It's awfully good of
+you."
+
+At noon came Banneker to see Miss Welland. Instead he found a curiously
+reticent Miss Van Arsdale. Miss Welland was not feeling well and could
+not be seen.
+
+"Not her head again, is it?" asked Banneker, alarmed.
+
+"More nerves, though the head injury probably contributed."
+
+"Oughtn't I to get a doctor?"
+
+"No. All that she needs is rest."
+
+"She left the station yesterday without a word."
+
+"Yes," replied the non-committal Miss Van Arsdale.
+
+"I came over to tell her that there isn't a thing to be had going west.
+Not even an upper. There was an east-bound in this morning. But the
+schedule isn't even a skeleton yet."
+
+"Probably she won't be going for several days yet," said Miss Van
+Arsdale, and was by no means reassured by the unconscious brightness
+which illumined Banneker's face. "When she goes it will be east. She's
+changed her plans."
+
+"Give me as much notice as you can and I'll do my best for her."
+
+The other nodded. "Did you get any newspapers by the train?" she
+inquired.
+
+"Yes; there was a mail in. I had a letter, too," he added after a little
+hesitation, due to the fact that he had intended telling Miss Welland
+about that letter first. Thus do confidences, once begun, inspire even
+the self-contained to further confidences.
+
+"You know there was a reporter up from Angelica City writing up the
+wreck."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Gardner, his name is. A nice sort of fellow. I showed him some nonsense
+that I wrote about the wreck."
+
+"You? What kind of nonsense?"
+
+"Oh, just how it struck me, and the queer things people said and did. He
+took it with him. Said it might give him some ideas."
+
+"One might suppose it would. Did it?"
+
+"Why, he didn't use it. Not that way. He sent it to the New York Sphere
+for what he calls a 'Sunday special,' and what do you think! They
+accepted it. He had a wire."
+
+"As Gardner's?"
+
+"Oh, no. As the impressions of an eye-witness. What's more, they'll pay
+for it and he's to send me the check."
+
+"Then, in spite of a casual way of handling other people's ideas, Mr.
+Gardner apparently means to be honest."
+
+"It's more than square of him. I gave him the stuff to use as he wanted
+to. He could just as well have collected for it. Probably he touched it
+up, anyway."
+
+"The Goths and Vandals usually did 'touch up' whatever they acquired, I
+believe. Hasn't he sent you a copy?"
+
+"He's going to send it. Or bring it."
+
+"Bring it? What should attract him to Manzanita again?"
+
+"Something mysterious. He says that there's a big sensational story
+following on the wreck that he's got a clue to; a tip, he calls it."
+
+"That's strange. Where did this tip come from? Did he say?"
+
+Miss Van Arsdale frowned.
+
+"New York, I think. He spoke of its being a special job for The Sphere."
+
+"Are you going to help him?"
+
+"If I can. He's been white to me."
+
+"But this isn't white, if it's what I suspect. It's yellow. One of their
+yellow sensations. The Sphere goes in for that sort of thing."
+
+Miss Van Arsdale became silent and thoughtful.
+
+"Of course, if it's something to do with the railroad I'd have to be
+careful. I can't give away the company's affairs."
+
+"I don't think it is." Miss Van Arsdale's troubled eyes strayed toward
+the inner room.
+
+Following them, Banneker's lighted up with a flash of astonished
+comprehension.
+
+"You don't think--" he began.
+
+His friend nodded assent.
+
+"Why should the newspapers be after her?"
+
+"She is associated with a set that is always in the lime-light,"
+explained Miss Van Arsdale, lowering her voice to a cautious pitch. "It
+makes its own lime-light. Anything that they do is material for the
+papers."
+
+"Yes; but what has she done?"
+
+"Disappeared."
+
+"Not at all. She sent back messages. So there can't be any mystery about
+it."
+
+"But there might be what the howling headlines call 'romance.' In fact,
+there is, if they happen to have found out about it. And this looks very
+much as if they had. Ban, are you going to tell your reporter friend
+about Miss Welland?"
+
+Banneker smiled gently, indulgently. "Do you think it likely?"
+
+"No; I don't. But I want you to understand the importance of not
+betraying her in any way. Reporters are shrewd. And it might be quite
+serious for her to know that she was being followed and hounded now. She
+has had a shock."
+
+"The bump on the head, you mean?"
+
+"Worse than that. I think I'd better tell you since we are all in this
+thing together."
+
+Briefly she outlined the abortive adventure that had brought Io west,
+and its ugly outcome.
+
+"Publicity is the one thing we must protect her from," declared Miss Van
+Arsdale.
+
+"Yes; that's clear enough."
+
+"What shall you tell this Gardner man?"
+
+"Nothing that he wants to know."
+
+"You'll try to fool him?"
+
+"I'm an awfully poor liar, Miss Camilla," replied the agent with his
+disarming smile. "I don't like the game and I'm no good at it. But I can
+everlastingly hold my tongue."
+
+"Then he'll suspect something and go nosing about the village making
+inquiries."
+
+"Let him. Who can tell him anything? Who's even seen her except you and
+me?"
+
+"True enough. Nobody is going to see her for some days yet if I can help
+it. Not even you, Ban."
+
+"Is she as bad as that?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"She won't be any the better for seeing people," replied Miss Van
+Arsdale firmly, and with that the caller was forced to be content as he
+went back to his own place.
+
+The morning train of the nineteenth, which should have been the noon
+train of the eighteenth, deposited upon the platform Gardner of the
+Angelica City Herald, and a suitcase. The thin and bespectacled reporter
+shook hands with Banneker.
+
+"Well, Mr. Man," he observed. "You've made a hit with that story of
+yours even before it's got into print."
+
+"Did you bring me a copy of the paper?"
+
+Gardner grinned. "You seem to think Sunday specials are set up and
+printed overnight. Wait a couple of weeks."
+
+"But they're going to publish it?"
+
+"Surest thing you know. They've wired me to know who you are and what
+and why."
+
+"Why what?"
+
+"Oh, I dunno. Why a fellow who can do that sort of thing hasn't done it
+before or doesn't do it some more, I suppose. If you should ever want a
+job in the newspaper game, that story would be pretty much enough to get
+it for you."
+
+"I wouldn't mind getting a little local correspondence to do," announced
+Banneker modestly.
+
+"So you intimated before. Well, I can give you some practice right now.
+I'm on a blind trail that goes up in the air somewhere around here. Do
+you remember, we compared lists on the wreck?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you got any addition to your list since?"
+
+"No," replied Banneker. "Have you?" he added.
+
+"Not by name. But the tip is that there was a prominent New York society
+girl, one of the Four Hundred lot, on the train, and that she's
+vanished."
+
+"All the bodies were accounted for," said the agent.
+
+"They don't think she's dead. They think she's run away."
+
+"Run away?" repeated Banneker with an impassive face.
+
+"Whether the man was with her on the train or whether she was to join
+him on the coast isn't known. That's the worst of these society tips,"
+pursued the reporter discontentedly. "They're always vague, and usually
+wrong. This one isn't even certain about who the girl is. But they think
+it's Stella Wrightington," he concluded in the manner of one who has
+imparted portentous tidings.
+
+"Who's she?" said Banneker.
+
+"Good Lord! Don't you ever read the news?" cried the disgusted
+journalist. "Why, she's had her picture published more times than a
+movie queen. She's the youngest daughter of Cyrus Wrightington, the
+multi-millionaire philanthropist. Now did you see anything of that kind
+on the train?"
+
+"What does she look like?" asked the cautious Banneker.
+
+"She looks like a million dollars!" declared the other with enthusiasm.
+"She's a killer! She's tall and blonde and a great athlete: baby-blue
+eyes and general rosebud effect."
+
+"Nothing of that sort on the train, so far as I saw," said the agent.
+
+"Did you see any couple that looked lovey-dovey?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then, there's another tip that connects her up with Carter Holmesley.
+Know about him?"
+
+"I've seen his name."
+
+"He's been on a hell of a high-class drunk, all up and down the coast,
+for the last week or so. Spilled some funny talk at a dinner, that got
+into print. But he put up such a heavy bluff of libel, afterward, that
+the papers shied off. Just the same, I believe they had it right, and
+that there was to have been a wedding-party on. Find the girl: that's
+the stunt now."
+
+"I don't think you're likely to find her around here."
+
+"Maybe not. But there's something. Holmesley has beaten it for the Far
+East. Sailed yesterday. But the story is still in this country, if the
+lady can be rounded up.... Well, I'm going to the village to make
+inquiries. Want to put me up again for the night if there's no train
+back?"
+
+"Sure thing! There isn't likely to be, either."
+
+Banneker felt greatly relieved at the easy turn given to the inquiry by
+the distorted tip. True, Gardner might, on his return, enter upon some
+more embarrassing line of inquiry; in which case the agent decided to
+take refuge in silence. But the reporter, when he came back late in the
+evening disheartened and disgusted with the fallibility of long-distance
+tips, declared himself sick of the whole business.
+
+"Let's talk about something else," he said, having lighted his pipe.
+"What else have you written besides the wreck stuff?"
+
+"Nothing," said Banneker.
+
+"Come off! That thing was never a first attempt."
+
+"Well, nothing except random things for my own amusement."
+
+"Pass 'em over."
+
+Banneker shook his head. "No; I've never shown them to anybody."
+
+"Oh, all right. If you're shy about it," responded the reporter
+good-humoredly. "But you must have thought of writing as a profession."
+
+"Vaguely, some day."
+
+"You don't talk much like a country station-agent. And you don't act
+like one. And, judging from this room"--he looked about at the
+well-filled book-shelves--"you don't look like one. Quite a library.
+Harvey Wheelwright! Lord! I might have known. Great stuff, isn't it?"
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"Do I think so! I think it's the damndest spew that ever got into print.
+But it sells; millions. It's the piety touch does it. The worst of it is
+that Wheelwright is a thoroughly decent chap and not onto himself a bit.
+Thinks he's a grand little booster for righteousness, sweetness and
+light, and all that. I had to interview him once. Oh, if I could just
+have written about him and his stuff as it really is!"
+
+"Why didn't you?"
+
+"Why, he's a popular literary hero out our way, and the biggest
+advertised author in the game. I'd look fine to the business office,
+knocking their fat graft, wouldn't I!"
+
+"I don't believe I understand."
+
+"No; you wouldn't. Never mind. You will if you ever get into the game.
+Hello! This is something different again. 'The Undying Voices.' Do you
+go in for poetry?"
+
+"I like to read it once in a while."
+
+"Good man!" Gardner took down the book, which opened in his hand. He
+glanced into it, then turned an inquiring and faintly quizzical look
+upon Banneker. "So Rossetti is one of the voices that sings to you. He
+sang to me when I was younger and more romantic. Heavens! he can sing,
+can't he! And you've picked one of his finest for your floral
+decoration." He intoned slowly and effectively:
+
+"Ah, who shall dare to search in what sad maze Thenceforth their
+incommunicable ways Follow the desultory feet of Death?"
+
+Banneker took the book from him. Upon the sonnet a crushed bloom of the
+sage had left its spiced and fragrant stain. How came it there? Through
+but one possible agency of which Banneker could think. Io Welland!
+
+After the reporter had left him, Banneker bore the volume to his room
+and read the sonnet again and again, devout and absorbed, a seeker for
+the oracle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+"Wouldn't you like to know when I'm going home?"
+
+Io Welland looked up from beneath her dark lashes at her hostess with a
+mixture of mischief and deprecation.
+
+"No," said Miss Van Arsdale quietly.
+
+"Ah? Well, I would. Here it is two full weeks since I settled down on
+you. Why don't you evict me?"
+
+Miss Van Arsdale smiled. The girl continued:
+
+"Why don't I evict myself? I'm quite well and sane again--at least I
+think so--thanks to you. Very well, then, Io; why don't you go home?"
+
+"Instinct of self-preservation," suggested the other. "You're better off
+here until your strength is quite restored, aren't you?"
+
+The girl propped her chin in her hand and turned upon her companion a
+speculative regard. "Camilla Van Arsdale, you don't really like me," she
+asserted.
+
+"Liking is such an undefined attitude," replied the other,
+unembarrassed.
+
+"You find me diverting," defined Io. "But you resent me, don't you?"
+
+"That's rather acute in you. I don't like your standards nor those of
+your set."
+
+"I've abandoned them."
+
+"You'll resume them as soon as you get back."
+
+"Shall I ever get back?" The girl moved to the door. Her figure swayed
+forward yieldingly as if she would give herself into the keeping of the
+sun-drenched, pine-soaked air. "Enchantment!" she murmured.
+
+"It is a healing place," said the habitant of it, low, as if to herself.
+
+A sudden and beautiful pity softened and sobered Io's face. "Miss Van
+Arsdale," said she with quiet sincerity; "if there should ever come a
+time when I can do you a service in word or deed, I would come from the
+other side of the world to do it."
+
+"That is a kindly, but rather exaggerated gratitude."
+
+"It isn't gratitude. It's loyalty. Whatever you have done, I believe you
+were right. And, right or wrong, I--I am on your side. But I wonder why
+you have been so good to me. Was it a sort of class feeling?"
+
+"Sex feeling would be nearer it," replied the other. "There is something
+instinctive which makes women who are alone stand by each other."
+
+Io nodded. "I suppose so. Though I've never felt it, or the need of it
+before this. Well, I had to speak before I left, and I suppose I must go
+on soon."
+
+"I shall miss you," said the hostess, and added, smiling, "as one misses
+a stimulant. Stay through the rest of the month, anyway."
+
+"I'd like to," answered Io gratefully. "I've written Delavan that I'm
+coming back--and now I'm quite dreading it. Do you suppose there ever
+yet was a woman with understanding of herself?"
+
+"Not unless she was a very dull and stupid woman with little to
+understand," smiled Miss Van Arsdale. "What are you doing to-day?"
+
+"Riding down to lunch with your paragon of a station-agent."
+
+Miss Van Arsdale shook her head dubiously. "I'm afraid he'll miss his
+daily stimulant after you've gone. It has been daily, hasn't it?"
+
+"I suppose it has, just about," admitted the girl. "The stimulus hasn't
+been all on one side, I assure you. What a mind to be buried here in the
+desert! And what an annoying spirit of contentment! It's that that
+puzzles me. Sometimes it enrages me."
+
+"Are you going to spoil what you cannot replace?" The retort was swift,
+almost fierce.
+
+"Surely, you won't blame me if he looks beyond this horizon," protested
+Io. "Life is sure to reach out in one form or another and seize on him.
+I told him so."
+
+"Yes," breathed the other. "You would."
+
+"What were you intending to do with him?"
+
+There was a hint of challenge in the slight emphasis given to the query.
+
+"I? Nothing. He is under no obligation to me."
+
+"There you and he differ. He regards you as an infallible mentor." A
+twinkle of malice crept into the slumbrous eyes. "Why do you let him
+wear made-up bow ties?" demanded Io.
+
+"What does it matter?"
+
+"Out here, nothing. But elsewhere--well, it does define a man, doesn't
+it?"
+
+"Undoubtedly. I've never gone into it with him."
+
+"I wonder if I could guess why."
+
+"Very likely. You seem preternaturally acute in these matters."
+
+"Is it because the Sears-Roebuck mail-order double-bow knot in polka-dot
+pattern stands as a sign of pristine innocence?"
+
+In spite of herself Miss Van Arsdale laughed. "Something of that sort."
+
+Io's soft lips straightened. "It's rotten bad form. Why shouldn't he be
+right? It's so easy. Just a hint--"
+
+"From you?"
+
+"From either of us. Yes; from me, if you like."
+
+"It's quite an intimate interest, isn't it?"
+
+"'But never can battle of men compare With merciless feminine fray'"--
+quoted Io pensively.
+
+"Kipling is a sophomore about women," retorted Miss Van Arsdale. "We're
+not going to quarrel over Errol Banneker. The odds are too unfair."
+
+"Unfair?" queried Io, with a delicate lift of brow.
+
+"Don't misunderstand me. I know that whatever you do will be within the
+rules of the game. That's the touchstone of honor of your kind."
+
+"Isn't it good enough? It ought to be, for it's about the only one most
+of us have." Io laughed. "We're becoming very serious. May I take the
+pony?"
+
+"Yes. Will you be back for supper?"
+
+"Of course. Shall I bring the paragon?"
+
+"If you wish."
+
+Outside the gaunt box of the station, Io, from the saddle sent forth her
+resonant, young call:
+
+"Oh, Ban!"
+
+"'Tis the voice of the Butterfly; hear her declare, 'I've come down to
+the earth; I am tired of the air'"
+
+chanted Banneker's voice in cheerful paraphrase. "Light and preen your
+wings, Butterfly."
+
+Their tone was that of comrades without a shade of anything deeper.
+
+"Busy?" asked Io.
+
+"Just now. Give me another five minutes."
+
+"I'll go to the hammock."
+
+One lone alamo tree, an earnest of spring water amongst the dry-sand
+growth of the cactus, flaunted its bright verdency a few rods back of
+the station, and in its shade Banneker had swung a hammock for Io.
+Hitching her pony and unfastening her hat, the girl stretched herself
+luxuriously in the folds. A slow wind, spice-laden with the faint, crisp
+fragrancies of the desert, swung her to a sweet rhythm. She closed her
+eyes happily ... and when she opened them, Banneker was standing over
+her, smiling.
+
+"Don't speak to me," she murmured; "I want to believe that this will
+last forever."
+
+Silent and acquiescent, he seated himself in a camp-chair close by. She
+stretched a hand to him, closing her eyes again.
+
+"Swing me," she ordered.
+
+He aided the wind to give a wider sweep to the hammock. Io stirred
+restlessly.
+
+"You've broken the spell," she accused softly. "Weave me another one."
+
+"What shall it be?" He bent over the armful of books which he had
+brought out.
+
+"You choose this time."
+
+"I wonder," he mused, regarding her consideringly.
+
+"Ah, you may well wonder! I'm in a very special mood to-day."
+
+"When aren't you, Butterfly?" he laughed.
+
+"Beware that you don't spoil it. Choose well, or forever after hold your
+peace."
+
+He lifted the well-worn and well-loved volume of poetry. It parted in
+his hand to the Rossetti sonnet. He began to read at the lines:
+
+"When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze After their life sailed by,
+and hold their breath."
+
+Io opened her eyes again.
+
+"Why did you select that thing?"
+
+"Why did you mark it?"
+
+"Did I mark it?"
+
+"Certainly, I'm not responsible for the sage-blossom between the pages."
+
+"Ah, the sage! That's for wisdom," she paraphrased lightly.
+
+"Do you think Rossetti so wise a preceptor?"
+
+"It isn't often that he preaches. When he does, as in that sonnet--well,
+the inspiration may be a little heavy, but he does have something to
+say."
+
+"Then it's the more evident that you marked it for some special reason."
+
+"What supernatural insight," she mocked. "Can you read your name between
+the lines?"
+
+"What is it that you want me to do?"
+
+"You mean to ask what it is that Mr. Rossetti wants you to do. I didn't
+write the sonnet, you know."
+
+"You didn't fashion the arrow, but you aimed it."
+
+"Am I a good marksman?"
+
+"I suppose you mean that I'm wasting my time here."
+
+"Surely not!" she gibed. "Forming a link of transcontinental traffic.
+Helping to put a girdle 'round the earth in eighty days--or is it forty
+now?--enlightening the traveling public about the three-twenty-four
+train; dispensing time-tables and other precious mediums of education--"
+
+"I'm happy here," he said doggedly.
+
+"Are you going to be, always?"
+
+His face darkened with doubt. "Why shouldn't I be?" he argued. "I've got
+everything I need. Some day I thought I might write."
+
+"What about?" The question came sharp and quick.
+
+He looked vaguely around the horizon.
+
+"Oh, no, Ban!" she said. "Not this. You've got to know something besides
+cactuses and owls to write, these days. You've got to know men. And
+women," she added, in a curious tone, with a suspicion of effort, even
+of jealousy in it.
+
+"I've never cared much for people," he said.
+
+"It's an acquired taste, I suppose for some of us. There's something
+else." She came slowly to a sitting posture and fixed her questioning,
+baffling eyes on his. "Ban, don't you want to make a success in life?"
+
+For a moment he did not answer. When he spoke, it was with apparent
+irrelevance to what she had said. "Once I went to a revival. A reformed
+tough was running it. About every three minutes he'd thrust out his
+hands and grab at the air and say, 'Oh, brothers; don't you yearn for
+Jesus?'"
+
+"What has that to do with it?" questioned Io, surprised and impatient.
+
+"Only that, somehow, the way you said 'success in life' made me think of
+him and his 'yearn for Jesus.'"
+
+"Errol Banneker," said Io, amused in spite of her annoyance, "you are
+possessed of a familiar devil who betrays other people's inner thoughts
+to you. Success _is_ a species of religion to me, I suppose."
+
+"And you are making converts, like all true enthusiasts. Tell, tell me.
+What kind of success?"
+
+"Oh, power. Money. Position. Being somebody."
+
+"I'm somebody here all right. I'm the station-agent of the Atkinson and
+St. Philip Railroad Company."
+
+"Now you're trying to provoke me."
+
+"No. But to get success you've got to want it, haven't you?" he asked
+more earnestly. "To want it with all your strength."
+
+"Of course. Every man ought to."
+
+"I'm not so sure," he objected. "There's a kind of virtue in staying
+put, isn't there?"
+
+She made a little gesture of impatience.
+
+"I'll give you a return for your sonnet," he pursued, and repeated from
+memory:
+
+"What else is Wisdom? What of man's endeavor Or God's high grace, so
+lovely and so great? To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait;
+To hold a hand uplifted over Hate. And shall not Loveliness be loved
+forever?"
+
+"I don't know it. It's beautiful. What is it?"
+
+"Gilbert Murray's translation of 'The Bacchae.' My legal mentors had a
+lapse of dry-as-dustness and sent it to me."
+
+"'To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait,'" murmured the girl.
+"That is what I've been doing here. How good it is! But not for you,"
+she added, her tone changing from dreamy to practical. "Ban, I suspect
+there's too much poetry in your cosmos."
+
+"Very probably. Poetry isn't success, is it?"
+
+Her face grew eager. "It might be. The very highest. But you've got to
+make yourself known and felt among people."
+
+"Do you think I could? And how does one get that kind of desire?" he
+asked lazily.
+
+"How? I've known men to do it for love; and I've known them to do it for
+hate; and I've known them to do it for money. Yes; and there's another
+cause."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Restlessness."
+
+"That's ambition with its nerves gone bad, isn't it?"
+
+Again she smiled. "You'll know what it is some day."
+
+"Is it contagious?" he asked solicitously.
+
+"Don't be alarmed. I haven't it. Not now. I'd love to stay on and on and
+just 'breathe and wait,' if the gods were good."
+
+'"Dream that the gods are good,'" he echoed. "The last thing they ever
+think of being according to my reading."
+
+She capped his line;
+
+"We twain, once well in sunder, What will the mad gods do--'"
+
+she began; then broke off, jumping to her feet. "I'm talking sheer
+nonsense!" she cried. "Take me for a walk in the woods. The desert
+glares to-day."
+
+"I'll have to be back by twelve," he said. "Excuse me just a moment."
+
+He disappeared into the portable house. When he rejoined her, she asked:
+
+"What did you go in there for? To get your revolver?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I've carried one since the day you told me to. Not that I've met a soul
+that looked dangerous, nor that I'd know how to shoot or when, if I
+did."
+
+"The sight of it would be taken as evidence that you knew how to use
+it," he assured her.
+
+For a time, as they walked, she had many questions to put about the tree
+and bird life surrounding them. In the midst of it he asked her:
+
+"Do you ever get restless?"
+
+"I haven't, here. I'm getting rested."
+
+"And at home I suppose you're too busy."
+
+"Being busy is no preventive. Somebody has said that St. Vitus is the
+patron saint of New York society."
+
+"It must take almost all the time those people have to keep up with the
+theaters and with the best in poetry and what's being done and thought,
+and the new books and all that," he surmised.
+
+"I beg your pardon; what was that about poetry and books?"
+
+"Girls like you--society girls, I mean--read everything there is, don't
+they?"
+
+"Where do you get that extraordinary idea?"
+
+"Why, from knowing you."
+
+"My poor, innocent Ban! If you were to try and talk books and poetry,
+'Shakespeare and the musical glasses,' to the average society girl, as
+you call her, what do you suppose would happen?"
+
+"Why, I suppose I'd give myself away as an ignoramus."
+
+"Heaven save you for a woolly lambkin! The girl would flee, shrieking,
+and issue a warning against you as a high-brow, a prig, and a hopeless
+bore. They don't read books, except a few chocolate-cream novels. They
+haven't the time."
+
+"But you--"
+
+"Oh, I'm a freak! I get away with it because I'm passably good-looking
+and know how to dress, and do what I please by the divine right
+of--well, of just doing it. But, even so, a lot of the men are rather
+afraid of me in their hearts. They suspect the bluestocking. Let 'em
+suspect! The market is plenty good enough," declared Io flippantly.
+
+"Then you just took up books as a sort of freak; a side issue?" The
+disappointment in his face was almost ludicrous.
+
+"No." A quiet gravity altered her expression. "I'll tell you about me,
+if you want to hear. My mother was the daughter of a famous classical
+scholar, who was opposed to her marriage because Father has always been
+a man of affairs. From the first, Mother brought me up to love books and
+music and pictures. She died when I was twelve, and poor Father, who
+worshiped her, wanted to carry out her plans for me, though he had no
+special sympathy with them. To make things worse for him, nobody but
+Mother ever had any control over me; I was spoiled and self-willed and
+precocious, and I thought the world owed me a good time. Dad's business
+judgment of human nature saved the situation, he thoroughly understood
+one thing about me, that I'd keep a bargain if I made it. So we fixed up
+our little contract; I was to go through college and do my best, and
+after I graduated, I was to have a free hand and an income of my own, a
+nice one. I did the college trick. I did it well. I was third in my
+class, and there wasn't a thing in literature or languages that they
+could stop me from getting. At eighteen they turned me loose on the
+world, and here I am, tired of it, but still loving it. That's all of
+me. Aren't I a good little autobiographer. Every lady her own Boswell!
+What are you listening to?"
+
+"There's a horse coming along the old trail," said Banneker.
+
+"Who is it?" she asked. "Some one following us?"
+
+He shook his head. A moment later the figure of a mounted man loomed
+through the brush. He was young, strong-built, and not ill-looking.
+"Howdy, Ban," he said.
+
+Banneker returned the greeting.
+
+"Whee-ew!" shrilled the other, wiping his brow. "This sure does fetch
+the licker outen a man's hide. Hell of a wet night at the Sick Coyote
+last night. Why wasn't you over?"
+
+"Busy," replied Banneker.
+
+Something in his tone made the other raise himself from his weary droop.
+He sighted Io.
+
+"Howdy, ma'am," he said. "Didn't see there was ladies present."
+
+"Good-morning," said Io.
+
+"Visitin' hereabouts?" inquired the man, eyeing her curiously.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where, if I might be bold to ask?"
+
+"If you've got any questions to ask, ask them of me, Fred," directed
+Banneker.
+
+While there was nothing truculent in his manner, it left no doubt as to
+his readiness and determination.
+
+Fred looked both sullen and crestfallen.
+
+"It ain't nothin'," he said. "Only, inquiries was bein' made by a gent
+from a Angelica City noospaper last week."
+
+"Somebody else meant," asserted Banneker. "You keep that in mind, will
+you? And it isn't necessary that you should mention this lady at all.
+Savvy, Fred?"
+
+The other grunted, touched his sombrero to Io and rode on.
+
+"Has a reporter been here inquiring after me?" asked Io.
+
+"Not after you. It was some one else."
+
+"If the newspapers tracked me here, I'd have to leave at once."
+
+"They won't. At least, it isn't likely."
+
+"You'd get me out some way, wouldn't you, Ban?" she said trustfully.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ban; that Fred person seemed afraid of you."
+
+"He's got nothing to be afraid of unless he talks too much."
+
+"But you had him 'bluffed.' I'm sure you had. Ban, did you ever kill a
+man?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Or shoot one?"
+
+"Not even that."
+
+"Yet, I believe, from the way he looked at you, that you've got a
+reputation as a 'bad man'?"
+
+"So I have. But it's no fault of mine."
+
+"How did you get it?"
+
+"You'll laugh if I tell you. They say I've got a 'killer's' eye."
+
+The girl examined his face with grave consideration. "You've got nice
+eyes," was her verdict. "That deep brown is almost wasted on a man; some
+girl ought to have it. I used to hear a--a person, who made a deep
+impression on me at the time, insist that there was always a flaw in the
+character of a person with large, soft brown eyes."
+
+"Isn't there a flaw in every character?"
+
+"Human nature being imperfect, there must be. What is yours; suppressed
+murderousness?"
+
+"Not at all. My reputation is unearned, though useful. Just before I
+came here, a young chap showed up from nowhere and loafed around
+Manzanita. He was a pretty kind of lad, and one night in the Sick Coyote
+some of the old-timers tried to put something over on him. When the
+smoke cleared away, there was one dead and six others shot up, and
+Little Brownie was out on the desert, riding for the next place, awfully
+sore over a hole in his new sombrero. He was a two-gun man from down
+near the border. Well, when I arrived in town, I couldn't understand why
+every one looked so queerly at my eyes, until Mindle, the mail-driver,
+told me they were exactly like the hair-trigger boy's. Cheap and easy
+way to get a reputation, isn't it?"
+
+"But you must have something back of it," insisted the girl. "Are you a
+good shot?"
+
+"Nothing fancy; there are twenty better in town."
+
+"Yet you pin some faith to your 'gun,'" she pointed out.
+
+He glanced over his shoulder to right and left. Io jumped forward with a
+startled cry. So swift and secret had been his motion that she hardly
+saw the weapon before--PLACK--PLACK--PLACK--the three shots had sounded.
+The smoke drifted around him in a little circle, for the first two shots
+had been over his shoulder and the third as he whirled. Walking back, he
+carefully examined the trunks of three trees.
+
+"I'd have only barked that fellow, if he'd been a man," he observed,
+shaking his head at the second mark.
+
+"You frightened me," complained Io.
+
+"I'm sorry. I thought you wanted to see a little gun-play. Out here it
+isn't how straight you can shoot at a bull's-eye, but how quick you can
+plant your bullets, and usually in a mark that isn't obliging enough to
+be dead in line. So I practice occasionally, just in case."
+
+"Very interesting. But I've got luncheon to cook," said Io.
+
+They returned through the desert. As he opened the door of the shack for
+her, Banneker, reverting to her autobiographical sketch, remarked
+thoughtfully and without preliminary:
+
+"I might have known there couldn't be any one else like you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Although the vehicle of his professional activities had for some years
+been a small and stertorous automobile locally known as "Puffy Pete,"
+Mr. James Mindle always referred to his process of postal transfer from
+the station to the town as "teamin' over the mail." He was a frail,
+grinny man from the prairie country, much given to romantic imaginings
+and an inordinate admiration for Banneker.
+
+Having watched from the seat of his chariot the brief but ceremonial
+entry of Number Three, which, on regular schedule, roared through
+Manzanita at top speed, he descended, captured the mail-bag and, as the
+transcontinental pulled out, accosted the station-agent.
+
+"What'd she stop for, Ban?"
+
+"Special orders."
+
+"Didn't say nothin' about havin' a ravin' may-ni-ac aboard, did theh?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ban, was you ever in the State of Ohio?"
+
+"A long time ago."
+
+"Are Ohio folks liable to be loony?"
+
+"Not more than others, I reckon, Jimmy."
+
+"Pretty enthoosiastic about themselves, though, ain't theh?"
+
+"Why, I don't know. It's a nice country there, Jimmy."
+
+"There was one on Number Three sure thought so. Hadn't scarcely come to
+a stop when off he jumps and waves his fins and gives three cheers for
+it."
+
+"For what?"
+
+"Ohio. I'm tellin' you. He ramps across the track yippin' 'Ohio! Ohio!
+Ohio!' whoopity-yoop. He come right at me and I says, 'Watch yehself,
+Buddy. You'll git left.'"
+
+"What did he say to that?" asked Banneker indulgently.
+
+"Never looked at me no more than a doodle-bug. Just yelled 'Ohio!'
+again. So I come back at him with 'Missourah.' He grabs me by the
+shoulder and points to your shack. 'Who owns that little shed?' says he,
+very excited. 'My friend, Mr. Banneker,' says I, polite as always to
+strangers. 'But I own that shoulder you're leanin' on, and I'm about to
+take it away with me when I go,' I says. He leaned off and says, 'Where
+did that young lady come from that was standin' in the doorway a minute
+ago?' 'Young lady,' Ban. Do you get that? So I says, 'You're lucky, Bud.
+When I get 'em, it's usually snakes and bugs and such-like rep-tyles.
+Besides,' I says, 'your train is about to forgit that you got off it,' I
+says. With that he gives another screech that don't even mean as much as
+Ohio and tails onto the back platform just in time."
+
+Said Ban, after frowning consideration:
+
+"You didn't see any lady around the shack, did you, Jimmy?"
+
+"Not on your life," replied the little man indignantly. "I ain't had
+anything like that since I took the mail-teamin' contract."
+
+"How good time do you think Puffy Pete could make across-desert in case
+I should want it?" inquired the agent after a pause.
+
+The mail-man contemplated his "team," bubbling and panting a vaporous
+breath over the platform. "Pete ain't none too fond of sand," he
+confessed. "But if you want to _git_ anywhere, him and me'll git you
+there. You know that, Ban."
+
+Banneker nodded comradely and the post chugged away.
+
+Inside the shack Io had set out the luncheon-things. To Banneker's eyes
+she appeared quite unruffled, despite the encounter which he had
+surmised from Jimmy's sketch.
+
+"Get me some flowers for the table, Ban," she directed. "I want it to
+look festive."
+
+"Why, in particular?"
+
+"Because I'm afraid we won't have many more luncheons together."
+
+He made no comment, but went out and returned with the flowers. Meantime
+Io had made up her mind.
+
+"I've had an unpleasant surprise, Ban."
+
+"I was afraid so."
+
+She glanced up quickly. "Did you see him?"
+
+"No. Mindle, the mail transfer man, did."
+
+"Oh! Well, that was Aleck Babson. 'Babbling Babson,' he's called at the
+clubs. He's the most inveterate gossip in New York."
+
+"It's a long way from New York," pointed out Banneker.
+
+"Yes; but he has a long tongue. Besides, he'll see the Westerleys and my
+other friends in Paradiso, and babble to them."
+
+"Suppose he does?"
+
+"I won't have people chasing here after me or pestering me with
+letters," she said passionately. "Yet I don't want to go away. I want to
+get more rested, Ban, and forget a lot of things."
+
+He nodded. Comfort and comprehension were in his silence.
+
+"You can be as companionable as a dog," said Io softly. "Where did you
+get your tact, I wonder? Well, I shan't go till I must.... Lemonade,
+Ban! I brought over the lemons myself."
+
+They lunched a little soberly and thoughtfully.
+
+"And I wanted it to be festive to-day," said Io wistfully, speaking out
+her thoughts as usual. "Ban, does Miss Camilla smoke?"
+
+"I don't know. Why?"
+
+"Because if she does, you'll think it all right. And I want a cigarette
+now."
+
+"If you do, I'll _know_ it's all right, Butterfly," returned her
+companion fetching a box from a shelf.
+
+"Hold the thought!" cried Io gayly. "There's a creed for you! 'Whatever
+is, is right,' provided that it's Io who does it. Always judge me by
+that standard, Ban, won't you?... Where in the name of Sir Walter
+Raleigh's ghost did you get these cigarettes? 'Mellorosa' ... Ban, is
+this a Sears-Roebuck stock?"
+
+"No. It came from town. Don't you like it?"
+
+"It's quite curious and interesting. Never mind, my dear; I won't tease
+you."
+
+For all that Io's "my dear" was the most casual utterance imaginable, it
+brought a quick flush to Banneker's face. Chattering carelessly, she
+washed up the few dishes, put them away in the brackets, and then,
+smoking another of the despised Mellorosas, wandered to the
+book-shelves.
+
+"Read me something out of your favorite book, Ban.... No; this one."
+
+She handed him the thick mail-order catalogue. With a gravity equal to
+her own he took it.
+
+"What will you have?"
+
+"Let the spirit of Sears-Roebuck decide. Open at random and expound."
+
+He thrust a finger between the leaves and began:
+
+"Our Special, Fortified Black Fiber Trunk for Hard Travel. Made of
+Three-Ply Ven--"
+
+"Oh, to have my trunks again!" sighed the girl. "Turn to something else.
+I don't like that. It reminds me of travel."
+
+Obedient, Banneker made another essay:
+
+"Clay County Clay Target Traps. Easily Adjusted to the Elevation--"
+
+"Oh, dear!" she broke in again. "That reminds me that Dad wrote me to
+look up his pet shot-gun before his return. I don't like that either.
+Try again."
+
+This time the explorer plunged deep into the volume.
+
+"How to Make Home Home-like. An Invaluable Counselor for the Woman of
+the Household--"
+
+Io snatched the book from the reader's hand and tossed it into a corner.
+"Sears-Roebuck are very tactless," she declared. "Everything they have
+to offer reminds one of home. What do you think of home, Ban? Home, as
+an abstract proposition. Home as the what-d'you-call-'em of the nation;
+the palladium--no, the bulwark? Home as viewed by the homing pigeon?
+Home, Sweet Home, as sung by--Would you answer, Ban, if I stopped
+gibbering and gave you the chance?"
+
+"I've never had much opportunity to judge about home, you know."
+
+She darted out a quick little hand and touched his sleeve. The raillery
+had faded from her face. "So you haven't. Not very tactful of me, was
+it! Will you throw me into the corner with Mr. Sears and Mr. Roebuck,
+Ban? I'm sorry."
+
+"You needn't be. One gets used to being an air-plant without roots."
+
+"Yet you wouldn't have fitted out this shack," she pointed out shrewdly,
+"unless you had the instincts of home."
+
+"That's true enough. Fortunately it's the kind of home I can take along
+when they transfer me."
+
+Io went to the door and looked afar on the radiant splendor of the
+desert, and, nearer, into the cool peace of the forest.
+
+"But you can't take all this," she reminded him.
+
+"No. I can't take this."
+
+"Shall you miss it?"
+
+A shadow fell upon his face. "I'd miss something--I don't know what it
+is--that no other place has ever given me. Why do you talk as if I were
+going away from it? I'm not."
+
+"Oh, yes; you are," she laughed softly. "It is so written. I'm a
+seeress." She turned from the door and threw herself into a chair.
+
+"What will take me?"
+
+"Something inside you. Something unawakened. 'Something lost beyond the
+ranges.' You'll know, and you'll obey it."
+
+"Shall I ever come back, O seeress?"
+
+At the question her eyes grew dreamy and distant. Her voice when she
+spoke sank to a low-pitched monotone.
+
+"Yes, you'll come back. Sometime.... So shall I ... not for years ...
+but--" She jumped to her feet. "What kind of rubbish am I talking?" she
+cried with forced merriment. "Is your tobacco drugged with hasheesh,
+Ban?"
+
+He shook his head. "It's the pull of the desert," he murmured. "It's
+caught you sooner than most. You're more responsive, I suppose; more
+sens--Why, Butterfly! You're shaking."
+
+"A Scotchman would say that I was 'fey.' Ban, do you think it means that
+I'm coming back here to die?" She laughed again. "If I were fated to die
+here, I expect that I missed my good chance in the smash-up. Fortunately
+I'm not superstitious."
+
+"There might be worse places," said he slowly. "It is the place that
+would call me back if ever I got down and out." He pointed through the
+window to the distant, glowing purity of the mountain peak. "One could
+tell one's troubles to that tranquil old god."
+
+"Would he listen to mine, I wonder?"
+
+"Try him before you go. You can leave them all here and I'll watch over
+them for you to see that they don't get loose and bother you."
+
+"Absolution! If it were only as easy as that! This _is_ a haunted
+place.... Why should I be here at all? _Why_ didn't I go when I should?
+Why a thousand things?"
+
+"Chance."
+
+"Is there any such thing? Why can't I sleep at night yet, as I ought?
+Why do I still feel hunted? What's happening to me, Ban? What's getting
+ready to happen?"
+
+"Nothing. That's nerves."
+
+"Yes; I'll try not to think of it. But at night--Ban, suppose I should
+come over in the middle of the night when I can't sleep, and call
+outside your window?"
+
+"I'd come down, of course. But you'd have to be careful about rattlers,"
+answered the practical Ban.
+
+"Your friend, Camilla, would intercept me, anyway. I don't think she
+sleeps too well, herself. Do you know what she's doing out here?"
+
+"She came for her health."
+
+"That isn't what I asked you, my dear. Do you know what she's doing?"
+
+"No. She never told me."
+
+"Shall I tell you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"It's interesting. Aren't you curious?"
+
+"If she wanted me to know, she'd tell me."
+
+"Indubitably correct, and quite praiseworthy," mocked the girl. "Never
+mind; you know how to be staunch to your friends."
+
+"In this country a man who doesn't is reckoned a yellow dog."
+
+"He is in any decent country. So take that with you when you go."
+
+"I'm not going," he asserted with an obstinate set to his jaw.
+
+"Wait and see," she taunted. "So you won't let me send you books?" she
+questioned after a pause.
+
+"No."
+
+"No, I thank you," she prompted.
+
+"No, I thank you," he amended. "I'm an uncouth sort of person, but I
+meant the 'thank you.'"
+
+"Of course you did. And uncouthness is the last thing in the world you
+could be accused of. That's the wonder of it.... No; I don't suppose it
+really is. It's birth."
+
+"If it's anything, it's training. My father was a stickler for forms, in
+spite of being a sort of hobo."
+
+"Well, forms make the game, very largely. You won't find them
+essentially different when you go out into the--I forgot again. That
+kind of prophecy annoys you, doesn't it? There is one book I'm going to
+send you, though, which you can't refuse. Nobody can refuse it. It isn't
+done."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+Her answer surprised him. "The Bible."
+
+"Are you religious? Of course, a butterfly should be, shouldn't she?
+should believe in the release of the soul from its chrysalis--the
+butterfly's immortality. Yet I wouldn't have suspected you of a leaning
+in that direction."
+
+"Oh, religion!" Her tone set aside the subject as insusceptible of
+sufficient or satisfactory answer. "I go through the forms," she added,
+a little disdainfully. "As to what I believe and do--which is what one's
+own religion is--why, I assume that if the game is worth playing at all,
+there must be a Judge and Maker of the Rules. As far as I understand
+them, I follow them."
+
+"You have a sort of religious feeling for success, though, haven't you?"
+he reminded her slyly.
+
+"Not at all. Just human, common sense."
+
+"But your creed as you've just given it, the rules of the game and that;
+that's precisely the Bible formula, I believe."
+
+"How do you know?" she caught him up. "You haven't a Bible in the place,
+so far as I've noticed."
+
+"No; I haven't."
+
+"You should have."
+
+"Probably. But I can't, somehow, adjust myself to that advice as coming
+from you."
+
+"Because you don't understand what I'm getting at. It isn't religious
+advice."
+
+"Then what is it?"
+
+"Literary, purely. You're going to write, some day. Oh, don't look
+doubtful! That's foreordained. It doesn't take a seeress to prophesy
+that. And the Bible is the one book that a writer ought to read every
+day. Isaiah, Psalms, Proverbs. Pretty much all the Old Testament, and a
+lot of the New. It has grown into our intellectual life until its
+phrases and catchwords are full of overtones and sub-meanings. You've
+got to have it in your business; your coming business, I mean. I know
+what I'm talking about, Mr. Errol Banneker--_moi qui parle_. They
+offered me an instructorship in Literature when I graduated. I even
+threatened to take it, just for a joke on Dad. _Now_, will you be good
+and accept my fully explained and diagrammed Bible without fearing that
+I have designs on your soul?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And will you please go back to your work at once, and by and by take me
+home and stay to supper? Miss Van Arsdale told me to ask you."
+
+"All right. I'll be glad to. What will you do between now and four
+o'clock?"
+
+"Prowl in your library and unearth more of your secrets."
+
+"You're welcome if you can find any. I don't deal in 'em."
+
+When Banneker, released from his duties until evening train time,
+rejoined her, and they were riding along the forest trail, he said:
+
+"You've started me to theorizing about myself."
+
+"Do it aloud," she invited.
+
+"Well; all my boyhood I led a wandering life, as you know. We were never
+anywhere as much as a month at a time. In a way, I liked the change and
+adventure. In another way, I got dead sick of it. Don't you suppose that
+my readiness to settle down and vegetate is the reaction from that?"
+
+"It sounds reasonable enough. You might put it more simply by saying
+that you were tired. But by now you ought to be rested."
+
+"Therefore I ought to be stirring myself so as to get tired again?"
+
+"If you don't stir, you'll rust."
+
+"Rust is a painless death for useless mechanism."
+
+She shot an impatient side-glance at him. "Either you're a hundred years
+old," she said, "or that's sheer pose."
+
+"Perhaps it is a sort of pose. If so, it's a self-protective one."
+
+"Suppose I asked you to come to New York?"
+
+Intrepid though she was, her soul quaked a little at her own words,
+foreseeing those mail-order-cut clothes and the resolute butterflyness
+of the tie greeting her on Fifth Avenue.
+
+"What to do?"
+
+"Sell tickets at the Grand Central Station, of course!" she shot back at
+him. "Ban, you _are_ aggravating! 'What to do?' Father would find you
+some sort of place while you were fitting in."
+
+'No. I wouldn't take a job from you any more than I'd take anything
+else."
+
+"You carry principles to the length of absurdity. Come and get your own
+job, then. You're not timid, are you?"
+
+"Not particularly. I'm just contented."
+
+At that provocation her femininity flared. "Ban," she cried with
+exasperation and appeal enchantingly mingled, "aren't you going to miss
+me at all when I go?"
+
+"I've been trying not to think of that," he said slowly.
+
+"Well, think of it," she breathed. "No!" she contradicted herself
+passionately. "Don't think of it. I shouldn't have said that.... I don't
+know what is the matter with me to-day, Ban. Perhaps I _am_ fey." She
+smiled to him slantwise.
+
+"It's the air," he answered judicially. "There's another storm brewing
+somewhere or I'm no guesser. More trouble for the schedule."
+
+"That's right!" she cried eagerly. "_Be_ the Atkinson and St. Philip
+station-agent again. Let's talk about trains. It's--it's so reliable."
+
+"Far from it on this line," he answered, adopting her light tone.
+"Particularly if we have more rain. You may become a permanent resident
+yet."
+
+Some rods short of the Van Arsdale cabin the trail took a sharp turn
+amidst the brush. Halfway on the curve Io caught at Banneker's near
+rein.
+
+"Hark!" she exclaimed.
+
+The notes of a piano sounded faintly clear in the stillness. As the
+harmonies dissolved and merged, a voice rose above them, resonant and
+glorious, rose and sank and pleaded and laughed and loved, while the two
+young listeners leaned unconsciously toward each other in their saddles.
+Silence fell again. The very forest life itself seemed hushed in a
+listening trance.
+
+"Heavens!" whispered Banneker. "Who is it?"
+
+"Camilla Van Arsdale, of course. Didn't you know?"
+
+"I knew she was musical. I didn't know she had a voice like that."
+
+"Ten years ago New York was wild over it."
+
+"But why--"
+
+"Hush! She's beginning again."
+
+Once more the sweep of the chords was followed by the superb voice while
+the two wayfarers and all the world around them waited, breathless and
+enchained. At the end, Banneker said dreamily:
+
+"I've never heard anything like that before. It says everything that
+can't be said in words alone, doesn't it? It makes me think of
+something--What is it?" He groped for a moment, then repeated:
+
+"'A passionate ballad, gallant and gay, Singing afar in the springtime
+of life, Singing of youth and of love And of honor that cannot die.'"
+
+Io drew a deep, tremulous breath. "Yes; it's like that. What a voice!
+And what an art to be buried out here! It's one of her own songs, I
+think. Probably an unpublished one."
+
+"Her own? Does she write music?"
+
+"She is Royce Melvin, the composer. Does that mean anything to you?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Some day it will. They say that he--every one thinks it's a he--will
+take Massenet's place as a lyrical composer. I found her out by
+accidentally coming on the manuscript of a Melvin song that I knew.
+That's her secret that I spoke of. Do you mind my having told you?"
+
+"Why, no. It'll never go any further. I wonder why she never told me.
+And why she keeps so shut off from the world here."
+
+"Ah; that's another secret, and one that I shan't tell you," returned Io
+gravely. "There's the piano again."
+
+A few indeterminate chords came to their ears. There followed a jangling
+disharmony. They waited, but there was nothing more. They rode on.
+
+At the lodge Banneker took the horses around while Io went in.
+Immediately her voice, with a note of alarm in it, summoned him. He
+found her bending over Miss Van Arsdale, who lay across the divan in the
+living-room with eyes closed, breathing jerkily. Her lips were blue and
+her hands looked shockingly lifeless.
+
+"Carry her into her room," directed Io.
+
+Banneker picked up the tall, strong-built form without effort and
+deposited it on the bed in the inner room.
+
+"Open all the windows," commanded the girl. "See if you can find me some
+ammonia or camphor. Quick! She looks as if she were dying."
+
+One after another Banneker tried the bottles on the dresser. "Here it
+is. Ammonia," he said.
+
+In his eagerness he knocked a silver-mounted photograph to the floor. He
+thrust the drug into the girl's hand and watched her helplessly as she
+worked over the limp figure on the bed. Mechanically he picked up the
+fallen picture to replace it. There looked out at him the face of a man
+of early middle age, a face of manifest intellectual power, high-boned,
+long-lined, and of the austere, almost ascetic beauty which the
+Florentine coins have preserved for us in clear fidelity. Across the
+bottom was written in a peculiarly rhythmic script, the legend:
+
+"Toujours a toi. W."
+
+"She's coming back," said Io's voice. "No. Don't come nearer. You'll
+shut off the air. Find me a fan."
+
+He ran to the outer room and came back with a palm-leaf.
+
+"She wants something," said Io in an agonized half-voice. "She wants it
+so badly. What is it? Help me, Ban! She can't speak. Look at her
+eyes--so imploring. Is it medicine?... No! Ban, can't you help?"
+
+Banneker took the silver-framed portrait and placed it in the flaccid
+hand. The fingers closed over it. The filmiest wraith of a smile played
+about the blue lips.
+
+An hour later, Io came out to Banneker waiting fearfully in the big
+room.
+
+"She won't have a doctor. I've given her the strychnia and she insists
+she'll be all right."
+
+"Don't you think I ought to go for the doctor, anyway?"
+
+"She wouldn't see him. She's very strong-willed.... That's a wonderful
+woman, Ban." Io's voice shook a little.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How did you know about the picture?"
+
+"I saw it on the dresser. And when I saw her eyes, I guessed."
+
+"Yes; there's only one thing a woman wants like _that_, when she's
+dying. You're rather a wonderful person, yourself, to have known. That's
+her other secret, Ban. The one I said I couldn't tell you."
+
+"I've forgotten it," replied Banneker gravely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Attendance upon the sick-room occupied Io's time for several days
+thereafter. Morning and afternoon Banneker rode over from the station to
+make anxious inquiry. The self-appointed nurse reported progress as
+rapid as could be expected, but was constantly kept on the alert because
+of the patient's rebellion against enforced idleness. Seizures of the
+same sort she had suffered before, it appeared, but none hitherto so
+severe. Nothing could be done, she told Io, beyond the administration of
+the medicine, for which she had full directions. One day an attack would
+finish it all; meantime, in spite of her power of self-repression, she
+chafed at the monotony of her imprisonment.
+
+In the late afternoon of the day after the collapse, while Io was
+heating water at the fireplace, she heard a drawer open in the sick-room
+and hurried back to find Miss Van Arsdale hanging to the dresser, her
+face gray-splotched and her fingers convulsively crushing a letter which
+she had taken from under lock. Alarmed and angry, the amateur nurse got
+her back to bed only half conscious, but still cherishing her trove.
+When, an hour later, she dared leave her charge, she heard the rustle of
+smoothed-out paper and remained outside long enough to allow for the
+reading. On her return there was no sign of the letter. Miss Van
+Arsdale, a faint and hopeful color in her cheeks, was asleep.
+
+For Banneker these were days of trial and tribulation. Added to the
+anxiety that he felt for his best friend was the uncertainty as to what
+he ought to do about the developments affecting her guest. For he had
+heard once more from Gardner.
+
+"It's on the cards," wrote the reporter, "that I may be up to see you
+again. I'm still working, on and off, on the tip that took me on that
+wild-goose chase. If I come again I won't quit without some of the wild
+goose's tail feathers, at least. There's a new tip locally; it leaked
+out from Paradise. ["The Babbling Babson," interjected the reader
+mentally.] It looks as though the bird were still out your way. Though
+how she could be, and you not know it, gets me. It's even a bigger game
+than Stella Wrightington, if my information is O.K. Have you heard or
+seen anything lately of a Beautiful Stranger or anything like that
+around Manzanita?... I enclose clipping of your story. What do you think
+of yourself in print?"
+
+Banneker thought quite highly of himself in print as he read the
+article, which he immediately did. The other matter could wait; not that
+it was less important; quite the contrary; but he proposed to mull it
+over carefully and with a quiet mind, if he could ever get his mind back
+to its peaceful current again: meantime it was good for him to think of
+something quite dissociated from the main problem.
+
+What writer has not felt the conscious red tingle in his cheeks at first
+sight of himself in the magnified personification of type? Here is
+something, once himself, now expanded far beyond individual limits, into
+the proportions of publicity, for all the world to measure and estimate
+and criticize. Ought it to have been done in just that way? Is there not
+too much "I" in the presentation? Would not the effect have been greater
+had the method been less personal? It seemed to Banneker that he himself
+stood forth in a stark nakedness of soul and thought, through those
+blatantly assertive words, shameless, challenging to public opinion, yet
+delightful to his own appreciation. On the whole it was good; better
+than he would have thought he could do.
+
+What he had felt, in the writing of it, to be jerks and bumps were
+magically smoothed out in the finished product. At one point where the
+copy-reader's blue pencil had elided an adjective which the writer had
+deemed specially telling, he felt a sharp pang of disappointed
+resentment. Without that characterization the sentence seemed lifeless.
+Again, in another passage he wished that he had edited himself with more
+heed to the just word. Why had he designated the train as "rumbling"
+along the cut? Trains do not rumble between rock walls, he remembered;
+they move with a sustained and composite roar. And the finger-wringing
+malcontent who had vowed to "soom"; the editorial pencil had altered
+that to "sue 'em," thereby robbing it of its special flavor. Perhaps
+this was in accordance with some occult rule of the trade. But it
+spoiled the paragraph for Banneker. Nevertheless he was thrilled and
+elate.... He wanted to show the article to Io. What would she think of
+it? She had read him accurately: it _was_ in him to write. And she could
+help him, if only by--well, if only by being at hand.... But Gardner's
+letter! That meant that the pursuit was on again, more formidably this
+time. Gardner, the gadfly, stinging this modern Io out of her refuge of
+peace and safety!
+
+He wrote and dispatched a message to the reporter in care of the
+Angelica City Herald:
+
+Glad to see you, but you are wasting your time. No such person could be
+here without my knowing it. Thanks for article.
+
+That was as near an untruth as Banneker cared to go. In his own mind he
+defended it on the ground that the projected visit would, in fact, be
+time wasted for the journalist since he, Banneker, intended fully that
+Gardner should not see Io. Deep would have been his disgust and
+self-derision could he have observed the effect of the message upon the
+cynical and informed journalist who, however, did not receive it until
+the second day after its transmission, as he had been away on another
+assignment.
+
+"The poor fish!" was Gardner's comment. "He doesn't even say that she
+isn't there. He's got to lie better than that if he goes into the
+newspaper game."
+
+Further, the reporter had received a note from the cowman whom Ban and
+Io had encountered in the woods, modestly requesting five dollars in
+return for the warranted fact that a "swell young lady" had been seen in
+Banneker's company. Other journalistic matters were pressing, however;
+he concluded that the "Manzanita Mystery," as he built it up
+headline-wise in his ready mind, could wait a day or two longer.
+
+Banneker, through the mechanical course of his office, debated the
+situation. Should he tell Io of the message? To do so would only add to
+her anxieties, probably to no good purpose, for he did not believe that
+she would desert Miss Van Arsdale, ill and helpless, on any selfish
+consideration. Fidelity was one of the virtues with which he had
+unconsciously garlanded Io. Then, too, Gardner might not come anyway. If
+he did Banneker was innocently confident of his own ability to outwit
+the trained reporter and prevent his finding the object of his quest. A
+prospective and possible ally was forecast in the weather. Warning of
+another rainfall impending had come over the wire. As yet there was no
+sign visible from his far-horizoned home, except a filmy and changeful
+wreath of palest cloud with which Mount Carstairs was bedecked. Banneker
+decided for silence.
+
+Miss Van Arsdale was much better when he rode over in the morning, but
+Io looked piteously worn and tired.
+
+"You've had no rest," he accused her, away from the sick woman's
+hearing.
+
+"Rest enough of its kind, but not much sleep," said Io.
+
+"But you've got to have sleep," he insisted. "Let me stay and look after
+her to-night."
+
+"It wouldn't be of any use."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I shouldn't sleep anyway. This house is haunted by spirits of unrest,"
+said the girl fretfully. "I think I'll take a blanket and go out on the
+desert."
+
+"And wake up to find a sidewinder crawling over you, and a tarantula
+nestling in your ear. Don't think of it."
+
+"Ban," called the voice of Camilla Van Arsdale from the inner room,
+clear and firm as he had ever heard it.
+
+He went in. She stretched out a hand to him. "It's good to see you, Ban.
+Have I worried you? I shall be up and about again to-morrow."
+
+"Now, Miss Camilla," protested Banneker, "you mustn't--"
+
+"I'm going to get up to-morrow," repeated the other immutably. "Don't be
+absurd about it. I'm not ill. It was only the sort of knock-down that I
+must expect from time to time. Within a day or two you'll see me riding
+over.... Ban, stand over there in that light.... What's that you've got
+on?"
+
+"What, Miss Camilla?"
+
+"That necktie. It isn't in your usual style. Where did you get it?"
+
+"Sent to Angelica City for it. Don't you like it?" he returned, trying
+for the nonchalant air, but not too successfully.
+
+"Not as well as your spotty butterflies," answered the woman jealously.
+"That's nonsense, though. Don't mind me, Ban," she added with a wry
+smile. "Plain colors are right for you. Browns, or blues, or reds, if
+they're not too bright. And you've tied it very well. Did it take you
+long to do it?"
+
+Reddening and laughing, he admitted a prolonged and painful session
+before his glass. Miss Van Arsdale sighed. It was such a faint,
+abandoning breath of regret as might come from the breast of a mother
+when she sees her little son in his first pride of trousers.
+
+"Go out and say good-night to Miss Welland," she ordered, "and tell her
+to go to bed. I've taken a sleeping powder."
+
+Banneker obeyed. He rode home slowly and thoughtfully. His sleep was
+sound enough that night.
+
+Breakfast-getting processes did not appeal to him when he awoke in the
+morning. He walked over, through the earliest light, to the hotel, where
+he made a meal of musty eggs, chemical-looking biscuits, and coffee of a
+rank hue and flavor, in an atmosphere of stale odors and flies,
+sickeningly different from the dainty ceremonials of Io's preparation.
+Rebuking himself for squeamishness, the station-agent returned to his
+office, caught an O.S. from the wire, took some general instructions,
+and went out to look at the weather. His glance never reached the
+horizon.
+
+In the foreground where he had swung the hammock under the alamo it
+checked and was held, absorbed. A blanketed figure lay motionless in the
+curve of the meshwork. One arm was thrown across the eyes, warding a
+strong beam which had forced its way through the lower foliage. He
+tiptoed forward.
+
+Io's breast was rising and falling gently in the hardly perceptible
+rhythm of her breathing. From the pale yellow surface of her dress,
+below the neck, protruded a strange, edged something, dun-colored,
+sharply defined and alien, which the man's surprised eyes failed to
+identify. Slowly the edge parted and flattened out, broadwise,
+displaying the marbled brilliance of the butterfly's inner wings,
+illumining the pale chastity of the sleeping figure as if with a
+quivering and evanescent jewel. Banneker, shaken and thrilled, closed
+his eyes. He felt as if a soul had opened its secret glories to him.
+When, commanding himself, he looked again, the living gem was gone. The
+girl slept evenly.
+
+Conning the position of the sun and the contour of the sheltering tree,
+Banneker estimated that in a half-hour or less a flood of sunlight would
+pour in upon the slumberer's face to awaken her. Cautiously withdrawing,
+he let himself into the shack, lighted his oil stove, put on water to
+boil, set out the coffee and the stand. He felt different about
+breakfast-getting now. Having prepared the arrangements for his
+prospective guest, he returned and leaned against the alamo, filling his
+eyes with still delight of the sleeper.
+
+Youthful, untouched, fresh though the face was, in the revealing
+stillness of slumber, it suggested rather than embodied something
+indefinably ancient, a look as of far and dim inheritances, subtle,
+ironic, comprehending, and aloof; as if that delicate and strong beauty
+of hers derived intimately from the wellsprings of the race; as if
+womanhood, eternal triumphant, and elusive were visibly patterned there.
+
+Banneker, leaning against the slender tree-trunk, dreamed over her,
+happily and aimlessly.
+
+Io opened her eyes to meet his. She stirred softly and smiled at him.
+
+"So you discovered me," she said.
+
+"How long have you been here?"
+
+She studied the sun a moment before replying. "Several hours."
+
+"Did you walk over in the night?"
+
+"No. You told me not to, you know. I waited till the dawn. Don't scold
+me, Ban. I was dead for want of sleep and I couldn't get it in the
+lodge. It's haunted, I tell you, with unpeaceful spirits. So I
+remembered this hammock."
+
+"I'm not going to scold you. I'm going to feed you. The coffee's on."
+
+"How good!" she cried, getting to her feet. "Am I a sight? I feel
+frowsy."
+
+"There's a couple of buckets of water up in my room. Help yourself while
+I set out the breakfast."
+
+In fifteen minutes she was down, freshened and joyous.
+
+"I'll just take a bite and then run back to my patient," she said. "You
+can bring the blanket when you come. It's heavy for a three-mile
+tramp.... What are you looking thoughtful and sober about, Ban? Do you
+disapprove of my escapade?"
+
+"That's a foolish question."
+
+"It's meant to be. And it's meant to make you smile. Why don't you? You
+_are_ worried. 'Fess up. What's happened?"
+
+"I've had a letter from the reporter in Angelica City."
+
+"Oh! Did he send your article?"
+
+"He did. But that isn't the point. He says he's coming up here again."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"You."
+
+"Does he know I'm here? Did he mention my name?"
+
+"No. But he's had some information that probably points to you."
+
+"What did you answer?"
+
+Ban told her. "I think that will hold him off," he said hopefully.
+
+"Then he's a very queer sort of reporter," returned Io scornfully out of
+her wider experience. "No; he'll come. And if he's any good, he'll find
+me."
+
+"You can refuse to see him."
+
+"Yes; but it's the mere fact of my being here that will probably give
+him enough to go on and build up a loathsome article. How I hate
+newspapers!... Ban," she appealed wistfully, "can't you stop him from
+coming? Must I go?"
+
+"You must be ready to go."
+
+"Not until Miss Camilla is well again," she declared obstinately. "But
+that will be in a day or two. Oh, well! What does it all matter! I've
+not much to pack up, anyway. How are you going to get me out?"
+
+"That depends on whether Gardner comes, and how he comes."
+
+He pointed to a darkening line above the southwestern horizon. "If that
+is what it looks like, we may be in for another flood, though I've never
+known two bad ones in a season."
+
+Io beckoned quaintly to the far clouds. "Hurry! Hurry!" she summoned.
+"You wrecked me once. Now save me from the Vandal. Good-bye, Ban. And
+thank you for the lodging and the breakfast."
+
+Emergency demands held the agent at his station all that day and
+evening. Trainmen brought news of heavy rains beyond the mountains. In
+the morning he awoke to find his little world hushed in a murky light
+and with a tingling apprehension of suspense in the atmosphere. High,
+gray cloud shapes hurried across the zenith to a conference of the storm
+powers, gathering at the horizon. Weather-wise from long observation,
+Banneker guessed that the outbreak would come before evening, and that,
+unless the sullen threat of the sky was deceptive, Manzanita would be
+shut off from rail communication within twelve hours thereafter. Having
+two hours' release at noon, he rode over to the lodge in the forest to
+return Io's blanket. He found the girl pensive, and Miss Van Arsdale
+apparently recovered to the status of her own normal and vigorous self.
+
+"I've been telling Io," said the older woman, "that, since the rumor is
+out of her being here, she will almost certainly be found by the
+reporter. Too many people in the village know that I have a guest."
+
+"How?" asked Banneker.
+
+"From my marketing. Probably from Pedro."
+
+"Very likely from the patron of the Sick Coyote that you and I met on
+our walk," added the girl.
+
+"So the wise thing is for her to go," concluded Miss Van Arsdale.
+"Unless she is willing to risk the publicity."
+
+"Yes," assented Io. "The wise thing is for me to go." She spoke in a
+curious tone, not looking at Banneker, not looking at anything outward
+and visible; her vision seemed somberly introverted.
+
+"Not now, though," said Banneker.
+
+"Why not?" asked both women. He answered Io.
+
+"You called for a storm. You're going to get it. A big one. I could send
+you out on Number Eight, but that's a way-train and there's no telling
+where it would land you or when you'd get through. Besides, I don't
+believe Gardner is coming. I'd have heard from him by now. Listen!"
+
+The slow pat-pat-pat of great raindrops ticked like a started clock on
+the roof. It ceased, and far overhead the great, quiet voice of the wind
+said, "Hush--sh--sh--sh--sh!", bidding the world lie still and wait.
+
+"What if he does come?" asked Miss Van Arsdale
+
+"I'll get word to you and get her out some way."
+
+The storm burst on Banneker, homebound, just as he emerged from the
+woodland, in a wild, thrashing wind from the southwest and a downpour
+the most fiercely, relentlessly insistent that he had ever known. A
+cactus desert in the rare orgy of a rainstorm is a place of wonder. The
+monstrous, spiky forms trembled and writhed in ecstasy, heat-damned
+souls in their hour of respite, stretching out exultant arms to the
+bounteous sky. Tiny rivulets poured over the sand, which sucked them
+down with a thirsting, crisping whisper. A pair of wild doves, surprised
+and terrified, bolted close past the lone rider, so near that his mount
+shied and headed for the shelter of the trees again. A small snake,
+curving indecisively and with obvious bewilderment amidst the growth,
+paused to rattle a faint warning, half coiled in case the horse's step
+meant a new threat, then went on with a rather piteous air of not
+knowing where to find refuge against this cataclysm of the elements.
+
+Lashing in the wind, a long tentacle of the giant ocatilla drew its
+cimeter-set thong across Ban's horse which incontinently bolted. The
+rider lifted up his voice and yelled in sheer, wild, defiant joy of the
+tumult. A lesser ocatilla thorn gashed his ear so that the blood mingled
+with the rain that poured down his face. A pod of the fishhook-barbed
+cholla drove its points through his trousers into the flesh of his knee
+and, detaching itself from the stem, as is the detestable habit of this
+vegetable blood-seeker, clung there like a live thing of prey, from
+barbs which must later be removed delicately and separately with the
+cold steel. Blindly homing, a jack-rabbit ran almost beneath the horse's
+hooves, causing him to shy again, this time into a bulky vizcaya, as big
+as a full-grown man, and inflicting upon Ban a new species of
+scarification. It did not matter. Nothing mattered. He rode on, knees
+tight, lines loose, elate, shouting, singing, acclaiming the storm which
+was setting its irrefragable limits to the world wherein he and Io would
+still live close, a few golden days longer.
+
+What he picked from the wire when he reached it confirmed his hopes. The
+track was threatened in a dozen places. Repair crews were gathering.
+Already the trains were staggering along, far behind their schedule.
+They would, of course, operate as far as possible, but no reliance was
+to be placed upon their movements until further notice. Through the
+night traffic continued, but with the coming of the morning and the
+settling down of a soft, seeping, unintermittent pour of gray rain, the
+situation had clarified. Nothing came through. Complete stoppage, east
+and west. Between Manzanita and Stanwood the track was out, and in the
+other direction Dry Bed Arroyo was threatening. Banneker reported
+progress to the lodge and got back, soaked and happy. Io was thoughtful
+and content.
+
+Late that afternoon the station-agent had a shock which jarred him quite
+out of his complacent security. Denny, the operator at Stanwood, wired,
+saying:
+
+Party here anxious to get through to Manzanita quick. Could auto make
+upper desert?
+
+No (clicked Banneker in response). Describe party.
+
+The answer came back confirming his suspicion:
+
+Thin, nice-spoken, wears goggles, smokes cork-tips. Arrived Five from
+Angelica held here.
+
+Tell impossible by any route (instructed Banneker). Wire result.
+
+An hour later came the reply:
+
+Won't try to-night. Probably horse to-morrow.
+
+Here was a problem, indeed, fit to chill the untimely
+self-congratulations of Banneker. Should the reporter come in--and come
+he would if it were humanly possible, by Banneker's estimate of him--it
+would be by the only route which gave exit to the west. On the other
+side the flooded arroyo cut off escape. To try to take Io out through
+the forest, practically trackless, in that weather, or across the
+channeled desert, would be too grave a risk. To all intents and purposes
+they were marooned on an island with no reasonable chance of
+exit--except! To Banneker's feverishly searching mind reverted a local
+legend. Taking a chance on missing some emergency call, he hurried over
+to the village and interviewed, through the persuasive interpretation of
+sundry drinks, an aged and bearded wreck whose languid and chipped
+accents spoke of a life originally far alien to the habitudes of the
+Sick Coyote where he was fatalistically awaiting his final attack of
+delirium tremens.
+
+Banneker returned from that interview with a map upon which had been
+scrawled a few words in shaky, scholarly writing.
+
+"But one doesn't say it's safe, mind you," had warned the shell of
+Lionel Streatham in his husky pipe. "It's only as a sporting offer that
+one would touch it. And the courses may have changed in seven years."
+
+Denny wired in the morning that the inquiring traveler had set out from
+Manzanita, unescorted, on horseback, adding the prediction that he would
+have a hell of a trip, even if he got through at all. Late that
+afternoon Gardner arrived at the station, soaked, hollow-eyed, stiff,
+exhausted, and cheerful. He shook hands with the agent.
+
+"How do you like yourself in print?" he inquired.
+
+"Pretty well," answered Banneker. "It read better than I expected."
+
+"It always does, until you get old in the business. How would you like a
+New York job on the strength of it?"
+
+Banneker stared. "You mean that I could get on a paper just by writing
+that?"
+
+"I didn't say so. Though I've known poorer stuff land more experienced
+men."
+
+"More experienced; that's the point, isn't it? I've had none at all."
+
+"So much the better. A metropolitan paper prefers to take a man fresh
+and train him to its own ways. There's your advantage if you can show
+natural ability. And you can."
+
+"I see," muttered Banneker thoughtfully.
+
+"Where does Miss Van Arsdale live?" asked the reporter without the
+smallest change of tone.
+
+"What do you want to see Miss Van Arsdale for?" returned the other, his
+instantly defensive manner betraying him to the newspaper man.
+
+"You know as well as I do," smiled Gardner.
+
+"Miss Van Arsdale has been ill. She's a good deal of a recluse. She
+doesn't like to see people."
+
+"Does her visitor share that eccentricity?"
+
+Banneker made no reply.
+
+"See here, Banneker," said the reporter earnestly; "I'd like to know why
+you're against me in this thing."
+
+"What thing?" fenced the agent.
+
+"My search for Io Welland."
+
+"Who is Io Welland, and what are you after her for?" asked Banneker
+steadily.
+
+"Apart from being the young lady that you've been escorting around the
+local scenery," returned the imperturbable journalist, "she's the most
+brilliant and interesting figure in the younger set of the Four Hundred.
+She's a newspaper beauty. She's copy. She's news. And when she gets into
+a railroad wreck and disappears from the world for weeks, and her
+supposed fiance, the heir to a dukedom, makes an infernal ass of himself
+over it all and practically gives himself away to the papers, she's big
+news."
+
+"And if she hasn't done any of these things," retorted Banneker, drawing
+upon some of Camilla Van Arsdale's wisdom, brought to bear on the case,
+"she's libel, isn't she?"
+
+"Hardly libel. But she isn't safe news until she's identified. You see,
+I'm playing an open game with you. I'm here to identify her, with half a
+dozen newspaper photos. Want to see 'em?"
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"Not interested? Are you going to take me over to Miss Van Arsdale's?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Why should I? It's no part of my business as an employee of the road."
+
+"As to that, I've got a letter from the Division Superintendent asking
+you to further my inquiry in any possible way. Here it is."
+
+Banneker took and read the letter. While not explicit, it was
+sufficiently direct.
+
+"That's official, isn't it?" said Gardner mildly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"And this is official," added Banneker calmly. "The company can go to
+hell. Tell that to the D.S. with my compliments, will you?"
+
+"Certainly not. I don't want to get you into trouble. I like you. But
+I've got to land this story. If you won't take me to the place, I'll
+find some one in the village that will. You can't prevent my going
+there, you know."
+
+"Can't I?" Banneker's voice had grown low and cold. A curious light
+shone in his eyes. There was an ugly flicker of smile on his set mouth.
+
+The reporter rose from the chair into which he had wetly slumped. He
+walked over to face his opponent who was standing at his desk. Banneker,
+lithe, powerful, tense, was half again as large as the other; obviously
+more muscular, better-conditioned, more formidable in every way. But
+there is about a man, singly and selflessly intent upon his job in hand,
+an inner potency impossible to obstruct. Banneker recognized it;
+inwardly admitted, too, the unsoundness of the swift, protective rage
+rising within, himself.
+
+"I don't propose to make trouble for you or to have trouble with you,"
+said the reporter evenly. "But I'm going to Miss Van Arsdale's unless
+I'm shot on the way there."
+
+"That's all right," returned the agent, mastering himself. "I beg your
+pardon for threatening you. But you'll have to find your own way. Will
+you put up here for the night, again?"
+
+"Thanks. Glad to, if it won't trouble you. See you later."
+
+"Perhaps not. I'm turning in early. I'll leave the shack unlocked for
+you."
+
+Gardner opened the outer door and was blown back into the station by an
+explosive gust of soaking wind.
+
+"On second thought," said he, "I don't think I'll try to go out there
+this evening. The young lady can't very well get away to-night, unless
+she has wings, and it's pretty damp for flying. Can I get dinner over at
+the village?"
+
+"Such as it is. I'll go over with you."
+
+At the entrance to the unclean little hotel they parted, Banneker going
+further to find Mindle the "teamer," whom he could trust and with whom
+he held conference, brief and very private. They returned to the station
+together in the gathering darkness, got a hand car onto the track, and
+loaded it with a strange burden, after which Mindle disappeared into the
+storm with the car while Banneker wired to Stanwood an imperative call
+for a relief for next day even though the substitute should have to walk
+the twenty-odd miles. Thereafter he made, from the shack, a careful
+selection of food with special reference to economy of bulk, fastened it
+deftly beneath his poncho, saddled his horse, and set out for the Van
+Arsdale lodge. The night was pitch-black when he entered the area of the
+pines, now sonorous with the rush of the upper winds.
+
+Io saw the gleam of his flashlight and ran to the door to meet him.
+
+"Are you ready?" he asked briefly.
+
+"I can be in fifteen minutes." She turned away, asking no questions.
+
+"Dress warmly," he said. "It's an all-night trip. By the way, can you
+swim?"
+
+"For hours at a time."
+
+Camilla Van Arsdale entered the room. "Are you taking her away, Ban?
+Where?"
+
+"To Miradero, on the Southwestern and Sierra."
+
+"But that's insanity," protested the other. "Sixty miles, isn't it? And
+over trailless desert."
+
+"All of that. But we're not going across country. We're going by water."
+
+"By water? Ban, you _are_ out of your mind. Where is there any
+waterway?"
+
+"Dry Bed Arroyo. It's running bank-full. My boat is waiting there."
+
+"But it will be dangerous. Terribly dangerous. Io, you mustn't."
+
+"I'll go," said the girl quietly, "if Ban says so."
+
+"There's no other way out. And it isn't so dangerous if you're used to a
+boat. Old Streatham made it seven years ago in the big flood. Did it in
+a bark canoe on a hundred-dollar bet. The Arroyo takes you out to the
+Little Bowleg and that empties into the Rio Solano, and there you are!
+I've got his map."
+
+"Map?" cried Miss Van Arsdale. "What use is a map when you can't see
+your hand before your face?"
+
+"Give this wind a chance," answered Banneker. "Within two hours the
+clouds will have broken and we'll have moonlight to go by.... The
+Angelica Herald man is over at the hotel now," he added.
+
+"May I take a suitcase?" asked Io.
+
+"Of course. I'll strap it to your pony if you'll get it ready. Miss
+Camilla, what shall we do with the pony? Hitch him under the bridge?"
+
+"If you're determined to take her, I'll ride over with you and bring him
+back. Io, think! Is it worth the risk? Let the reporter come. I can keep
+him away from you."
+
+A brooding expression was in the girl's deep eyes as she turned them,
+not to the speaker, but to Banneker. "No," she said. "I've got to get
+away sooner or later. I'd rather go this way. It's more--it's more of a
+pattern with all the rest; better than stupidly waving good-bye from the
+rear of a train."
+
+"But the danger."
+
+"_Che sara, sara_," returned Io lightly. "I'll trust him to take care of
+me."
+
+While Ban went out to prepare the horses with the aid of Pedro, strictly
+enjoined to secrecy, the two women got Io's few things together.
+
+"I can't thank you," said the girl, looking up as she snapped the lock
+of her case. "It simply isn't a case for thanking. You've done too much
+for me."
+
+The older woman disregarded it. "How much are you hurting Ban?" she
+said, with musing eyes fixed on the dim and pure outline of the girlish
+face.
+
+"I? Hurt him?"
+
+"Of course he won't realize it until you've gone. Then I'm afraid to
+think what is coming to him."
+
+"And I'm afraid to think what is coming to me," replied the girl, very
+low.
+
+"Ah, you!" retorted her hostess, dismissing that consideration with
+contemptuous lightness. "You have plenty of compensations, plenty of
+resources."
+
+"Hasn't he?"
+
+"Perhaps. Up to now. What will he do when he wakes up to an empty
+world?"
+
+"Write, won't he? And then the world won't be empty."
+
+"He'll think it so. That is why I'm sorry for him."
+
+"Won't you be sorry a little for me?" pleaded the girl. "Anyway, for the
+part of me that I'm leaving here? Perhaps it's the very best of me."
+
+Miss Van Arsdale shook her head. "Oh, no! A pleasantly vivid dream of
+changed and restful things. That's all. Your waking will be only a
+sentimental and perfumed regret--a sachet-powder sorrow."
+
+"You're bitter."
+
+"I don't want him hurt," protested the other. "Why did you come here?
+What should a girl like you, feverish and sensation-loving and
+artificial, see in a boy like Ban to charm you?"
+
+"Ah, don't you understand? It's just because my world has been too
+dressed up and painted and powdered that I feel the charm of--of--well,
+of ease of existence. He's as easy as an animal. There's something about
+him--you must have felt it--sort of impassioned sense of the gladness of
+life; when he has those accesses he's like a young god, or a faun. But
+he doesn't know his own power. At those times he might do anything."
+
+She shivered a little and her lids drooped over the luster of her
+dreaming eyes.
+
+"And you want to tempt him out of this to a world where he would be a
+wretched misfit," accused the older woman.
+
+"Do I? No; I think I don't. I think I'd rather hold him in my mind as he
+is here: a happy eremite; no, a restrained pagan. Oh, it's foolish to
+seek definitions for him. He isn't definable. He's Ban...."
+
+"And when you get back into the world, what will you do, I wonder?"
+
+"I won't send for him, if that's what you mean."
+
+"But what _will_ you do, I wonder?"
+
+"I wonder," repeated Io somberly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Silently they rode through the stir and thresh of the night, the two
+women and the man. For guidance along the woods trail they must trust to
+the finer sense of their horses whose heads they could not see in the
+closed-in murk. A desultory spray fell upon them as the wind wrenched at
+the boughs overhead, but the rain had ceased. Infinitely high,
+infinitely potent sounded the imminent tumult of the invisible Powers of
+the night, on whose sufferance they moved, tiny, obscure, and unharmed.
+It filled all the distances.
+
+Debouching upon the open desert, they found their range of vision
+slightly expanded. They could dimly perceive each other. The horses drew
+closer together. With his flash covered by his poncho, Banneker
+consulted a compass and altered their course, for he wished to give the
+station, to which Gardner might have returned, a wide berth. Io moved up
+abreast of him as he stood, studying the needle. Had he turned the light
+upward he would have seen that she was smiling. Whether he would have
+interpreted that smile, whether, indeed, she could have interpreted it
+herself, is doubtful.
+
+Presently they picked up the line of telegraph poles, well beyond the
+station, just the faintest suggestion of gaunt rigor against the
+troubled sky, and skirted them, moving more rapidly in the confidence of
+assured direction. A very gradual, diffused alleviation of the darkness
+began to be felt. The clouds were thinning. Something ahead of them
+hissed in a soft, full, insistent monosonance. Banneker threw up a
+shadowy arm. They dismounted on the crest of a tiny desert clifflet, now
+become the bank of a black current which nuzzled and nibbled into its
+flanks.
+
+Io gazed intently at the flood which was to deliver her out of the hands
+of the Philistine. How far away the other bank of the newborn stream
+might be, she could only guess from the vague rush in her ears. The
+arroyo's water slipped ceaselessly, objectlessly away from beneath her
+strained vision, smooth, suave, even, effortless, like the process of
+some unhurried and mighty mechanism. Now and again a desert plant,
+uprooted from its arid home, eddied joyously past her, satiated for once
+of its lifelong thirst; and farther out she thought to have a glimpse of
+some dead and whitish animal. But these were minor blemishes on a great,
+lustrous ribbon of silken black, unrolled and re-rolled from darkness
+into darkness.
+
+"It's beckoning us," said Io, leaning to Banneker, her hand on his
+shoulder.
+
+"We must wait for more light," he answered.
+
+"Will you trust yourself to _that_?" asked Camilla Van Arsdale, with a
+gesture of fear and repulsion toward the torrent.
+
+"Anywhere!" returned Io. There was exaltation in her voice.
+
+"I can't understand it," cried the older woman. "How do you know what
+may lie before you?"
+
+"That is the thrill of it."
+
+"There may be death around the first curve. It's so unknown; so secret
+and lawless."
+
+"Ah, and I'm lawless!" cried Io. "I could defy the gods on a night like
+this!"
+
+She flung her arms aloft, in a movement of sweet, wild abandon, and, as
+if in response to an incantation, the sky was reft asunder and the moon
+rushed forth, free for the moment of the clutching clouds, fugitive,
+headlong, a shining Maenad of the heavens, surrounded by the rush and
+whirl that had whelmed earth and its waters and was hurrying them to an
+unknown, mad destiny.
+
+"Now we can see our way," said Banneker, the practical.
+
+He studied the few rods of sleek, foamless water between him and the
+farther bank, and, going to the steel boat which Mindle had brought to
+the place on the hand car, took brief inventory of its small cargo.
+Satisfied, he turned to load in Io's few belongings. He shipped the
+oars.
+
+"I'll let her go stem-first," he explained; "so that I can see what
+we're coming to and hold her if there's trouble."
+
+"But can you see?" objected Miss Van Arsdale, directing a troubled look
+at the breaking sky.
+
+"If we can't, we'll run her ashore until we can."
+
+He handed Io the flashlight and the map.
+
+"You'll want me in the bow seat if we're traveling reversed," said she.
+
+He assented. "Good sailorwoman!"
+
+"I don't like it," protested Miss Van Arsdale. "It's a mad business.
+Ban, you oughtn't to take her."
+
+"It's too late to talk of that," said Io.
+
+"Ready?" questioned Banneker.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He pushed the stern of the boat into the stream, and the current laid it
+neatly and powerfully flat to the sheer bank. Io kissed Camilla Van
+Arsdale quickly and got in.
+
+"We'll wire you from Miradero," she promised. "You'll find the message
+in the morning."
+
+The woman, mastering herself with a difficult effort, held out her hand
+to Banneker.
+
+"If you won't be persuaded," she said, "then good--"
+
+"No," he broke in quickly. "That's bad luck. We shall be all right."
+
+"Good luck, then," returned his friend, and turned away into the night.
+
+Banneker, with one foot in the boat, gave a little shove and caught up
+his oars. An unseen hand of indeterminable might grasped the keel and
+moved them quietly, evenly, outward and forward, puppets given into the
+custody of the unregarding powers. Oars poised and ready, Ban sat with
+his back toward his passenger, facing watchfully downstream.
+
+Leaning back into the curve of the bow, Io gave herself up to the
+pulsing sweep of the night. Far, far above her stirred a cosmic tumult.
+The air might have been filled with vast wings, invisible and incessant
+in the night of wonders. The moon plunged headlong through the clouds,
+now submerged, now free, like a strong swimmer amidst surf. She moved to
+the music of a tremendous, trumpeting note, the voice of the unleashed
+Spring, male and mighty, exulting in his power, while beneath, the
+responsive, desirous earth thrilled and trembled and was glad.
+
+The boat, a tiny speck on the surface of chaos, darted and checked and
+swerved lightly at the imperious bidding of unguessed forces, reaching
+up from the depths to pluck at it in elfish sportiveness. Only when Ban
+thrust down the oar-blades, as he did now and again to direct their
+course or avoid some obstacle, was Io made sensible, through the jar and
+tremor of the whole structure, how swiftly they moved. She felt the
+spirit of the great motion, of which they were a minutely inconsiderable
+part, enter into her soul. She was inspired of it, freed, elated,
+glorified. She lifted up her voice and sang. Ban, turning, gave her one
+quick look of comprehension, then once more was intent and watchful of
+their master and servitor, the flood.
+
+"Ban," she called.
+
+He tossed an oar to indicate that he had heard.
+
+"Come back and sit by me."
+
+He seemed to hesitate.
+
+"Let the boat go where it wants to! The river will take care of us. It's
+a good river, and so strong! I think it loves to have us here."
+
+Ban shook his head.
+
+"'Let the great river bear us to the sea,'" sang Io in her fresh and
+thrilling voice, stirring the uttermost fibers of his being with
+delight. "Ban, can't you trust the river and the night and--and the mad
+gods? I can."
+
+Again he shook his head. In his attitude she sensed a new concentration
+upon something ahead. She became aware of a strange stir that was not of
+the air nor the water.
+
+"Hush--sh--sh--sh--sh!" said something unseen, with an immense effect of
+restraint and enforced quiet.
+
+The boat slewed sharply as Banneker checked their progress with a
+downthrust of oars. He edged in toward the farther bank which was quite
+flat, studying it with an eye to the most favoring spot, having selected
+which, he ran the stern up with several hard shoves, leapt out, hauled
+the body of the craft free from the balked and snatching current, and
+held out a hand to his passenger.
+
+"What is it?" she asked as she joined him.
+
+"I don't know. I'm trying to think where I've heard that noise before."
+He pondered. "Ah, I've got it! It was when I was out on the coast in the
+big rains, and a few million tons of river-bank let go all holds and
+smushed down into the stream.... What's on your map?"
+
+He bent over it, conning its detail by the light of the flash which she
+turned on.
+
+"We should be about here," he indicated, touching the paper, "I'll go
+ahead and take a look."
+
+"Shan't I go with you?"
+
+"Better stay quiet and get all the rest you can."
+
+He was gone some twenty minutes. "There's a big, fresh-looking split-off
+in the opposite bank," he reported; "and the water looks fizzy and
+whirly around there. I think we'll give her a little time to settle. A
+sudden shift underneath might suck us down. The water's rising every
+minute, which makes it worth while waiting. Besides, it's dark just
+now."
+
+"Do you believe in fate?" asked the girl abruptly, as he seated himself
+on the sand beside her. "That's a silly, schoolgirl thing to say, isn't
+it?" she added. "But I was thinking of this boat being there in the
+middle of the dry desert, just when we needed it most."
+
+"It had been there some time," pointed out Banneker. "And if we couldn't
+have come this way, I'd have found some other."
+
+"I believe you would," crowed Io softly.
+
+"So, I don't believe in fate; not the ready-made kind. Things aren't
+that easy. If I did--"
+
+"If you did?" she prompted as he paused.
+
+"I'd get back into the boat with you and throw away the oars."
+
+"I dare you!" she cried recklessly.
+
+"We'd go whirling and spinning along," he continued with dreams in his
+voice, "until dawn came, and then we'd go ashore and camp."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"How should I know? In the Enchanted Canyon where it enters the
+Mountains of Fulfillment.... They're not on this map."
+
+"They're not on any map. More's the pity. And then?"
+
+"Then we'd rest. And after that we'd climb to the Plateau Beyond the
+Clouds where the Fadeless Gardens are, and there..."
+
+"And there?"
+
+"There we'd hear the Undying Voices singing."
+
+"Should we sing, too?"
+
+"Of course. 'For they who attain these heights, through pain of upward
+toil and the rigors of abstention, are as the demigods, secure above
+evil and the fear thereof.'"
+
+"I don't know what that is, but I hate the 'upward toil' part of it, and
+the 'abstention' even more. We ought to be able to become demigods
+without all that, just because we wish it. In a fairy-tale, anyway. I
+don't think you're a really competent fairy-tale-monger, Ban."
+
+"You haven't let me go on to the 'live happy ever after' part," he
+complained.
+
+"Ah, that's the serpent, the lying, poisoning little serpent, always
+concealed in the gardens of dreams. They don't, Ban; people don't live
+happy ever after. I could believe in fairy-tales up to that point. Just
+there ugly old Experience holds up her bony finger--she's a horrid hag,
+Ban, but we'd all be dead or mad without her--and points to the
+wriggling little snake."
+
+"In my garden," said he, "she'd have shining wings and eyes that could
+look to the future as well as to the past, and immortal Hope for a
+lover. It would be worth all the toil and the privation."
+
+"Nobody ever made up a Paradise," said the girl fretfully, "but what the
+Puritan in him set the road with sharp stones and bordered it with
+thorns and stings.... Look, Ban! Here's the moon come back to us.... And
+see what's laughing at us and our dreams."
+
+On the crest of a sand-billow sprawled a huge organ-cactus, brandishing
+its arms in gnomish derision of their presence.
+
+"How can one help but believe in foul spirits with that thing to prove
+their existence?" she said. "And, look! There's the good spirit in front
+of that shining cloud."
+
+She pointed to a yucca in full, creamy flower; a creature of unearthly
+purity in the glow of the moon, a dream-maiden beckoning at the gates of
+darkness to a world of hidden and ineffable beauty.
+
+"When I saw my first yucca in blossom," said Banneker, "it was just
+before sunrise after I had been riding all night, and I came on it
+around a dip in the hills, standing alone against a sky of pearl and
+silver. It made me think of a ghost, the ghost of a girl who had died
+too young to know womanhood, died while she was asleep and dreaming
+pale, soft dreams, never to be fulfilled."
+
+"That's the injustice of death," she answered. "To take one before one
+knows and has felt and been all that there is to know and feel and be."
+
+"Yet"--he turned a slow smile to her--"you were just now calling
+Experience bad names; a horrid hag, wasn't it?"
+
+"At least, she's life," retorted the girl.
+
+"Yes. She's life."
+
+"Ban, I want to go on. The whole universe is in motion. Why must we
+stand still?"
+
+They reembarked. The grip of the hurrying depths took them past crinkly
+water, lustrously bronze in the moonlight where the bank had given way,
+and presently delivered them, around the shoulder of a low,
+brush-crowned bluff, into the keeping of a swollen creek. Here the going
+was more tricky. There were shoals and whirls at the bends, and plunging
+flotsam to be avoided. Banneker handled the boat with masterly address,
+easing her through the swift passages, keeping her, with a touch here
+and a dip there, to the deepest flow, swerving adroitly to dodge the
+trees and brush which might have punctured the thin metal. Once he cried
+out and lunged at some object with an unshipped oar. It rolled and sank,
+but not before Io had caught the contour of a pasty face. She was
+startled rather than horrified at this apparition of death. It seemed an
+accessory proper to the pattern of the bewitched night.
+
+Through a little, silvered surf of cross-waves, they were shot, after an
+hour of this uneasy going, into the broad, clean sweep of the Little
+Bowleg River. After the troubled progress of the lesser current it
+seemed very quiet and secure; almost placid. But the banks slipped by in
+an endless chain. Presently they came abreast of three horsemen riding
+the river trail, who urged their horses into a gallop, keeping up with
+them for a mile or more. As they fell away, Io waved a handkerchief at
+them, to which they made response by firing a salvo from their revolvers
+into the air.
+
+"We're making better than ten miles an hour," Banneker called over his
+shoulder to his passenger.
+
+They shot between the split halves of a little, scraggly, ramshackle
+town, danced in white water where the ford had been, and darted onward.
+Now Banneker began to hold against the current, scanning the shores
+until, with a quick wrench, he brought the stern around and ran it up on
+a muddy bit of strand.
+
+"Grub!" he announced gayly.
+
+Languor had taken possession of Io, the languor of one who yields to
+unknown and fateful forces. Passive and at peace, she wanted nothing but
+to be wafted by the current to whatever far bourne might await her. That
+there should be such things as railway trains and man-made schedules in
+this world of winds and mystery and the voice of great waters, was hard
+to believe; hardly worth believing in any case. Better not to think of
+it: better to muse on her companion, building fire as the first man had
+built for the first woman, to feed and comfort her in an environment of
+imminent fears.
+
+Coffee, when her man brought it, seemed too artificial for the time and
+place. She shook her head. She was not hungry.
+
+"You must," insisted Ban. He pointed downstream where the murk lay
+heavy. "We shall run into more rain. You will need the warmth and
+support of food."
+
+So, because there were only they two on the face of the known earth,
+woman and man, the woman obeyed the man. To her surprise, she found that
+she was hungry, ardently hungry. Both ate heartily. It was a silent
+meal; little spoken except about the chances and developments of the
+journey, until she got to her feet. Then she said:
+
+"I shall never, as long as I live, wherever I go, whatever I do, know
+anything like this again. I shall not want to. I want it to stand
+alone."
+
+"It will stand alone," he answered.
+
+They met the rain within half an hour, a wall-like mass of it. It
+blotted out everything around them. The roar of it cut off sound, as the
+mass of it cut off sight. Fortunately the boat was now going evenly as
+in an oiled groove. By feeling, Io knew that her guide was moving from
+his seat, and guessed that he was bailing. The spare poncho, put in by
+Miss Van Arsdale, protected her. She was jubilant with the thresh of the
+rain in her face, the sweet, smooth motion of the boat beneath her, the
+wild abandon of the night, which, entering into her blood, had
+transmuted it into soft fire.
+
+How long she crouched, exultant and exalted, under the beat of the
+storm, she could not guess. She half emerged from her possession with a
+strange feeling that the little craft was being irresistibly drawn
+forward and downward in what was now a suction rather than a current. At
+the same time she felt the spring and thrust of Banneker's muscles,
+straining at the oars. She dipped a hand into the water. It ridged high
+around her wrists with a startling pressure. What was happening?
+
+Through the uproar she could dimly hear Ban's voice. He seemed to be
+swearing insanely. Dropping to her hands and knees, for the craft was
+now swerving and rocking, she crept to him.
+
+"The dam! The dam! The dam!" he shouted. "I'd forgotten about it. Go
+back. Turn on the flash. Look for shore."
+
+Against rather than into that impenetrable enmeshment of rain, the glow
+dispersed itself ineffectually. Io sat, not frightened so much as
+wondering. Her body ached in sympathy with the panting, racking toil of
+the man at the oars, the labor of an indomitable pigmy, striving to
+thwart a giant's will. Suddenly he shouted. The boat spun. Something low
+and a shade blacker than the dull murk about them, with a white,
+whispering ripple at its edge, loomed. The boat's prow drove into soft
+mud as Banneker, all but knocking her overboard in his dash, plunged to
+the land and with one powerful lift, brought boat and cargo to safety.
+
+For a moment he leaned, gasping, against a stump. When he spoke, it was
+to reproach himself bitterly.
+
+"We must have come through the town. There's a dam below it. I'd
+forgotten it. My God! If we hadn't had the luck to strike shore."
+
+"Is it a high dam?" she asked.
+
+"In this flood we'd be pounded to death the moment we were over. Listen!
+You can hear it."
+
+The rain had diminished a little. Above its insistence sounded a deeper,
+more formidable beat and thrill.
+
+"We must be quite close to it," she said.
+
+"A few rods, probably. Let me have the light. I want to explore before
+we start out."
+
+Much sooner than she had expected, he was back. He groped for and took
+her hand. His own was steady, but his voice shook as he said:
+
+"Io."
+
+"It's the first time you've called me that. Well, Ban?"
+
+"Can you stand it to--to have me tell you something?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"We're not on the shore."
+
+"Where, then? An island?"
+
+"There aren't any islands here. It must be a bit of the mainland cut off
+by the flood."
+
+"I'm not afraid, if that's what you mean. We can stand it until dawn."
+
+A wavelet lapped quietly across her foot. She withdrew it and with that
+involuntary act came understanding. Her hand, turning in his, pressed
+close, palm cleaving to palm.
+
+"How much longer?" she asked in a whisper.
+
+"Not long. It's just a tiny patch. And the river is rising every
+minute."
+
+"How long?" she persisted.
+
+"Perhaps two hours. Perhaps less. My good God! If there's any special
+hell for criminal fools, I ought to go to it for bringing you to this,"
+he burst out in agony.
+
+"I brought you. Whatever there is, we'll go to it together."
+
+"You're wonderful beyond all wonders. Aren't you afraid?"
+
+"I don't know. It isn't so much fear, though I dread to think of that
+hammering-down weight of water."
+
+"Don't!" he cried brokenly. "I can't bear to think of you--" He lifted
+his head sharply. "Isn't it lightening up? Look! Can you see shore? We
+might be quite near."
+
+She peered out, leaning forward. "No; there's nothing." Her hand turned
+within his, released itself gently. "I'm not afraid," she said, speaking
+clear and swift. "It isn't that. But I'm--rebellious. I hate the idea of
+it, of ending everything; the unfairness of it. To have to die without
+knowing the--the realness of life. Unfulfilled. It isn't fair," she
+accused breathlessly. "Ban, it's what we were saying. Back there on the
+river-bank where the yucca stands. I don't want to go--I can't bear to
+go--before I've known ... before...."
+
+Her arms crept to enfold him. Her lips sought his, tremulous,
+surrendering, demanding in surrender. With all the passion and longing
+that he had held in control, refusing to acknowledge even their
+existence, as if the mere recognition of them would have blemished her,
+he caught her to him. He heard her, felt her sob once. The roar of the
+cataract was louder, more insistent in his ears ... or was it the rush
+of the blood in his veins?... Io cried out, a desolate and hungry cry,
+for he had wrenched his mouth from hers. She could feel the inner man
+abruptly withdrawn, concentrated elsewhere. She opened her eyes upon an
+appalling radiance wherein his face stood out clear, incredulous, then
+suddenly eager and resolute.
+
+"It's a headlight!" he cried. "A train! Look, Io! The mainland. It's
+only a couple of rods away."
+
+He slipped from her arms, ran to the boat.
+
+"What are you going to do?" she called weakly. "Ban! You can never make
+it."
+
+"I've got to. It's our only chance."
+
+As he spoke, he was fumbling under the seat. He brought out a coil of
+rope. Throwing off poncho, coat, and waistcoat, he coiled the lengths
+around his body.
+
+"Let me swim with you," she begged.
+
+"You're not strong enough."
+
+"I don't care. We'd go together ... I--I can't face it alone, Ban."
+
+"You'll have to. Or give up our only chance of life. You must, Io. If I
+shouldn't get across, you may try it; the chances of the current might
+help you. But not until after you're sure I haven't made it. You must
+wait."
+
+"Yes," she said submissively.
+
+"As soon as I get to shore, I'll throw the rope across to you. Listen
+for it. I'll keep throwing until it strikes where you can get it."
+
+"I'll give you the light."
+
+"That may help. Then you make fast under the forward seat of the boat.
+Be sure it's tight."
+
+"Yes, Ban."
+
+"Twitch three times on the rope to let me know when you're ready and
+shove out and upstream as strongly as you can."
+
+"Can you hold it against the current?"
+
+"I must. If I do, you'll drift around against the bank. If I don't--I'll
+follow you."
+
+"No, Ban," she implored. "Not you, too. There's no need--"
+
+"I'll follow you," said he. "Now, Io."
+
+He kissed her gently, stepped back, took a run and flung himself upward
+and outward into the ravening current.
+
+She saw a foaming thresh that melted into darkness....
+
+Time seemed to have stopped for her. She waited, waited, waited in a
+world wherein only Death waited with her.... Ban was now limp and
+lifeless somewhere far downstream, asprawl in the swiftness, rolling a
+pasty face to the sky like that grisly wayfarer who had hailed them
+silently in the upper reach of the river, a messenger and prophet of
+their fate. The rising waters eddied about her feet. The boat stirred
+uneasily. Mechanically she drew it back from the claim of the flood. A
+light blow fell upon her cheek and neck.
+
+It was the rope.
+
+Instantly and intensely alive, Io tautened it and felt the jerk of Ban's
+signal. With expert hands she made it fast, shipped the oars, twitched
+the cord thrice, and, venturing as far as she dared into the deluge,
+pushed with all her force and threw herself over the stern.
+
+The rope twanged and hummed like a gigantic bass-string. Io crawled to
+the oars, felt the gunwale dip and right again, and, before she could
+take a stroke, was pressed against the far bank. She clambered out and
+went to Banneker, guiding herself by the light. His face, in the feeble
+glow, shone, twisted in agony. He was shaking from head to foot. The
+other end of the rope which had brought her to safety was knotted fast
+around his waist.... So he would have followed, as he said!
+
+Through Io's queer, inconsequent brain flitted a grotesque conjecture:
+what would the newspapers make of it if she had been found, washed up on
+the river-bank, and the Manzanita agent of the Atkinson and St. Philip
+Railroad Company drowned and haltered by a long tether to his boat, near
+by? A sensational story!...
+
+She went to Banneker, still helplessly shaking, and put her firm, slight
+hands on his shoulders.
+
+"It's all right, Ban," she said soothingly. "We're out of it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+"Arrived safe" was the laconic message delivered to Miss Camilla Van
+Arsdale by Banneker's substitute when, after a haggard night, she rode
+over in the morning for news.
+
+Banneker himself returned on the second noon, after much and roundabout
+wayfaring. He had little to say of the night journey; nothing of the
+peril escaped. Miss Welland had caught a morning train for the East. She
+was none the worse for the adventurous trip. Camilla Van Arsdale, noting
+his rapt expression and his absent, questing eyes, wondered what
+underlay such reticence.... What had been the manner of their parting?
+
+It had, indeed, been anti-climax. Both had been a little shy, a little
+furtive. Each, perhaps feeling a mutual strain, wanted the parting over,
+restlessly desiring the sedative of thought and quiet memory after that
+stress. The desperate peril from which they had been saved seemed a
+lesser crisis, leading from a greater and more significant one; leading
+to--what? For his part Banneker was content to "breathe and wait." When
+they should meet again, it would be determined. How and when the
+encounter might take place, he did not trouble himself to consider. The
+whole universe was moulded and set for that event. Meantime the glory
+was about him; he could remember, recall, repeat, interpret....
+
+For the hundredth time--or was it the thousandth?--he reconstructed that
+last hour of theirs together in the station at Miradero, waiting for the
+train. What had they said to each other? Commonplaces, mostly, and at
+times with effort, as if they were making conversation. They two! After
+that passionate and revealing moment between life and death on the
+island. What should he have said to her? Begged her to stay? On what
+basis? How could he?.... As the distant roar of the train warned them
+that the time of parting was close, it was she who broke through that
+strange restraint, turning upon him her old-time limpid and resolute
+regard.
+
+"Ban; promise me something."
+
+"Anything."
+
+"There may be a time coming for us when you won't understand."
+
+"Understand what?"
+
+"Me. Perhaps I shan't understand myself."
+
+"You'll always understand yourself, Io."
+
+"If that comes--when that comes--Ban, there's something in the book,
+_our_ book, that I've left you to read."
+
+"'The Voices'?"
+
+"Yes. I've fastened the pages together so that you can't read it too
+soon."
+
+"When, then?"
+
+"When I tell you ... No; not when I tell you. When--oh, when you must!
+You'll read it, and afterward, when you think of me, you'll think of
+that, too. Will you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Always?"
+
+"Always."
+
+"No matter what happens?"
+
+"No matter what happens."
+
+"It's like a litany." She laughed tremulously.... "Here's the train.
+Good-bye, dear."
+
+He felt the tips of slender fingers on his temples, the light, swift
+pressure of cold lips on his mouth.... While the train pulled out, she
+stood on the rear platform, looking, looking. She was very still. All
+motion, all expression seemed centered in the steady gaze which dwindled
+away from him, became vague ... featureless ... vanished in a lurch of
+the car.
+
+Banneker, at home again, planted a garden of dreams, and lived in it,
+mechanically acceptant of the outer world, resentful of any intrusion
+upon that flowerful retreat. Even of Miss Van Arsdale's.
+
+Not for days thereafter did the Hunger come. It began as a little
+gnawing doubt and disappointment. It grew to a devastating, ravening
+starvation of the heart, for sign or sight or word of Io Welland. It
+drove him out of his withered seclusion, to seek Miss Van Arsdale, in
+the hope of hearing Io's name spoken. But Miss Van Arsdale scarcely
+referred to Io. She watched Banneker with unconcealed anxiety.
+
+... Why had there been no letter?...
+
+Appeasement came in the form of a package addressed in her handwriting.
+Avidly he opened it. It was the promised Bible, mailed from New York
+City. On the fly-leaf was written "I.O.W. to E.B."--nothing more. He
+went through it page by page, seeking marked passages. There was none.
+The doubt settled down on him again. The Hunger bit into him more
+savagely.
+
+... Why didn't she write? A word! Anything!
+
+... Had she written Miss Van Arsdale?
+
+At first it was intolerable that he should be driven to ask about her
+from any other person; about Io, who had clasped him in the Valley of
+the Shadow, whose lips had made the imminence of death seem a light
+thing! The Hunger drove him to it.
+
+Yes; Miss Van Arsdale had heard. Io Welland was in New York, and well.
+That was all. But Banneker felt an undermining reserve.
+
+Long days of changeless sunlight on the desert, an intolerable glare.
+From the doorway of the lonely station Banneker stared out over leagues
+of sand and cactus, arid, sterile, hopeless, promiseless. Life was like
+that. Four weeks now since Io had left him. And still, except for the
+Bible, no word from her. No sign. Silence.
+
+Why that? Anything but that! It was too unbearable to his helpless
+masculine need of her. He could not understand it. He could not
+understand anything. Except the Hunger. That he understood well enough
+now....
+
+At two o'clock of a savagely haunted night, Banneker staggered from his
+cot. For weeks he had not known sleep otherwise than in fitful passages.
+His brain was hot and blank. Although the room was pitch-dark, he
+crossed it unerringly to a shelf and look down his revolver. Slipping on
+overcoat and shoes, he dropped the weapon into his pocket and set out up
+the railroad track. A half-mile he covered before turning into the
+desert. There he wandered aimlessly for a few minutes, and after that
+groped his way, guarding with a stick against the surrounding threat of
+the cactus, for his eyes were tight closed. Still blind, he drew out the
+pistol, gripped it by the barrel, and threw it, whirling high and far,
+into the trackless waste. He passed on, feeling his uncertain way
+patiently.
+
+It took him a quarter of an hour to find the railroad track and set a
+sure course for home, so effectually had he lost himself.... No chance
+of his recovering that old friend. It had been whispering to him, in the
+blackness of empty nights, counsels that were too persuasive.
+
+Back in his room over the station he lighted the lamp and stood before
+the few books which he kept with him there; among them Io's Bible and
+"The Undying Voices," with the two pages still joined as her fingers had
+left them. He was summoning his courage to face what might be the final
+solution. When he must, she had said, he was to open and read. Well ...
+he must. He could bear it no longer, the wordless uncertainty. He lifted
+down the volume, gently parted the fastened pages and read. From out the
+still, ordered lines, there rose to him the passionate cry of protest
+and bereavement:
+
+"............................Nevermore Alone upon the threshold of my
+door Of individual life I shall command The uses of my soul, nor lift my
+hand Serenely in the sunshine as before, Without the sense of that which
+I forbore--Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land Doom takes to part
+us, leaves thy heart in mine With pulses that beat double. What I do And
+what I dream include thee, as the wine Must taste of its own grapes. And
+when I sue God for myself, He hears that name of thine And sees within
+my eyes the tears of two."
+
+Over and over he read it with increasing bewilderment, with increasing
+fear, with slow-developing comprehension. If that was to be her farewell
+... but why! Io, the straightforward, the intrepid, the exponent of fair
+play and the rules of the game!... Had it been only a game? No; at least
+he knew better than that.
+
+What could it all mean? Why that medium for her message? Should he write
+and ask her? But what was there to ask or say, in the face of her
+silence? Besides, he had not even her address. Miss Camilla could
+doubtless give him that. But would she? How much did she understand? Why
+had she turned so unhelpful?
+
+Banneker sat with his problem half through a searing night; and the
+other half of the night he spent in writing. But not to Io.
+
+At noon Camilla Van Arsdale rode up to the station.
+
+"Are you ill, Ban?" was her greeting, as soon as she saw his face.
+
+"No, Miss Camilla. I'm going away."
+
+She nodded, confirming not so much what he said as a fulfilled suspicion
+of her own. "New York is a very big city," she said.
+
+"I haven't said that I was going to New York."
+
+"No; there is much you haven't said."
+
+"I haven't felt much like talking. Even to you."
+
+"Don't go, Ban."
+
+"I've got to. I've got to get away from here."
+
+"And your position with the railroad?"
+
+"I've resigned. It's all arranged." He pointed to the pile of letters,
+his night's work.
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"How do I know! I beg your pardon, Miss Camilla. Write, I suppose."
+
+"Write here."
+
+"There's nothing to write about."
+
+The exile, who had spent her years weaving exquisite music from the
+rhythm of desert winds and the overtones of the forest silence, looked
+about her, over the long, yellow-gray stretches pricked out with hints
+of brightness, to the peaceful refuge of the pines, and again to the
+naked and impudent meanness of the town. Across to her ears, borne on
+the air heavy with rain still unshed, came the rollicking, ragging
+jangle of the piano at the Sick Coyote.
+
+"Aren't there people to write about there?" she said. "Tragedies and
+comedies and the human drama? Barrie found it in a duller place."
+
+"Not until he had seen the world first," he retorted quickly. "And I'm
+not a Barrie.... I can't stay here, Miss Camilla."
+
+"Poor Ban! Youth is always expecting life to fulfill itself. It
+doesn't."
+
+"No; it doesn't--unless you make it."
+
+"And how will you make it?"
+
+"I'm going to get on a newspaper."
+
+"It isn't so easy as all that, Ban."
+
+"I've been writing."
+
+In the joyous flush of energy, evoked under the spell of Io's
+enchantment, he had filled his spare hours with work, happy, exuberant,
+overflowing with a quaint vitality. A description of the desert in
+spate, thumb-nail sketches from a station-agent's window, queer little
+flavorous stories of crime and adventure and petty intrigue in the town;
+all done with a deftness and brevity that was saved from being too
+abrupt only by broad touches of color and light. And he had had a
+letter. He told Miss Van Arsdale of it.
+
+"Oh, if you've a promise, or even a fair expectation of a place. But,
+Ban, I wouldn't go to New York, anyway."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It's no use."
+
+His strong eyebrows went up. "Use?"
+
+"You won't find her there."
+
+"She's not in New York?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You've heard from her, then? Where is she?"
+
+"Gone abroad."
+
+Upon that he meditated. "She'll come back, though."
+
+"Not to you."
+
+He waited, silent, attentive, incredulous.
+
+"Ban; she's married."
+
+"Married!"
+
+The telegraph instrument clicked in the tiny rhythm of an elfin
+bass-drum. "O.S. O.S." Click. Click. Click-click-click. Mechanically
+responsive to his office he answered, and for a moment was concerned
+with some message about a local freight. When he raised his face again,
+Miss Van Arsdale read there a sick and floundering skepticism.
+
+"Married!" he repeated. "Io! She couldn't."
+
+The woman, startled by the conviction in his tone, wondered how much
+that might imply.
+
+"She wrote me," said she presently.
+
+"That she was married?"
+
+"That she would be by the time the letter reached me."
+
+("You will think me a fool," the girl had written impetuously, "and
+perhaps a cruel fool. But it is the wise thing, really. Del Eyre is so
+safe! He is safety itself for a girl like me. And I have discovered that
+I can't wholly trust myself.... Be gentle with him, and make him do
+something worth while.")
+
+"Ah!" said Ban. "But that--"
+
+"And I have the newspaper since with an account of the wedding.... Ban!
+Don't look like that!"
+
+"Like what?" said he stupidly.
+
+"You look like Pretty Willie as I saw him when he was working himself up
+for the killing." Pretty Willie was the soft-eyed young desperado who
+had cleaned out the Sick Coyote.
+
+"Oh, I'm not going to kill anybody," he said with a touch of grim
+amusement for her fears. "Not even myself." He rose and went to the
+door. "Do you mind, Miss Camilla?" he added appealingly.
+
+"You want me to leave you now?"
+
+He nodded. "I've got to think."
+
+"When would you leave, Ban, if you do go?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+On the following morning he went, after a night spent in arranging,
+destroying, and burning. The last thing to go into the stove, 67 S 4230,
+was a lock of hair, once glossy, but now stiffened and stained a dull
+brown, which he had cut from the wound on Io's head that first, strange
+night of theirs, the stain of her blood that had beaten in her heart,
+and given life to the sure, sweet motion of her limbs, and flushed in
+her cheeks, and pulsed in the warm lips that she had pressed to his--Why
+could they not have died together on their dissolving island, with the
+night about them, and their last, failing sentience for each other!
+
+The flame of the greedy stove licked up the memento, but not the memory.
+
+"You must not worry about me," he wrote in the note left with his
+successor for Miss Van Arsdale. "I shall be all right. I am going to
+succeed."
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+THE VISION
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Mrs. Brashear's rooming-house on Grove Street wore its air of
+respectability like a garment, clean and somber, in an environment of
+careful behavior. Greenwich Village, not having fully awakened to the
+commercial advantages of being a _locale_, had not yet stretched between
+itself and the rest of New York that gauzy and iridescent curtain of
+sprightly impropriety and sparkling intellectual naughtiness, since
+faded to a lather tawdry pattern. An early pioneer of the Villager type,
+emancipated of thought and speech, chancing upon No. 11 Grove, would
+have despised it for its lack of atmosphere and its patent conservatism.
+It did not go out into the highways and byways, seeking prospective
+lodgers. It folded its hands and waited placidly for them to come. When
+they came, it pondered them with care, catechized them tactfully, and
+either rejected them with courteous finality or admitted them on
+probation. Had it been given to self-exploitation, it could have boasted
+that never had it harbored a bug or a scandal within its doors.
+
+Now, on this filmy-soft April day it was nonplussed. A type new to its
+experience was applying for a room, and Mrs. Brashear, who was not only
+the proprietress, but, as it were, the familiar spirit and incarnation
+of the institution, sat peering near-sightedly and in some perturbation
+of soul at the phenomenon. He was young, which was against him, and of a
+winning directness of manner, which was in his favor, and extremely good
+to look at, which was potential of complications, and encased in
+clothing of an uncompromising cut and neutral pattern (to wit; No. 45 T
+370, "an ideal style for a young business man of affairs; neat,
+impressive and dignified"), which was reassuring.
+
+"My name is Banneker," he had said, immediately the door was opened to
+him. "Can I get a room here?"
+
+"There is a room vacant," admitted the spirit of the house unwillingly.
+
+"I'd like to see it."
+
+As he spoke, he was mounting the stairs; she must, perforce, follow. On
+the third floor she passed him and led the way to a small, morosely
+papered front room, almost glaringly clean.
+
+"All right, if I can have a work-table in it and if it isn't too much,"
+he said, after one comprehensive glance around.
+
+"The price is five dollars a week."
+
+Had Banneker but known it, this was rather high. The Brashear
+rooming-house charged for its cleanliness, physical and moral. "Can I
+move in at once?" he inquired.
+
+"I don't know you nor anything about you, Mr. Banneker," she replied,
+but not until they had descended the stairs and were in the cool, dim
+parlor. At the moment of speaking, she raised a shade, as if to help in
+the determination.
+
+"Is that necessary? They didn't ask me when I registered at the hotel."
+
+Mrs. Brashear stared, then smiled. "A hotel is different. Where are you
+stopping?"
+
+"At the St. Denis."
+
+"A very nice place. Who directed you here?"
+
+"No one. I strolled around until I found a street I liked, and looked
+around until I found a house I liked. The card in the window--"
+
+"Of course. Well, Mr. Banneker, for the protection of the house I must
+have references."
+
+"References? You mean letters from people?"
+
+"Not necessarily. Just a name or two from whom I can make inquiries. You
+have friends, I suppose."
+
+"No."
+
+"Your family--"
+
+"I haven't any."
+
+"Then the people in the place where you work. What is your business, by
+the way?"
+
+"I expect to go on a newspaper."
+
+"Expect?" Mrs. Brashear stiffened in defense of the institution. "You
+have no place yet?"
+
+He answered not her question, but her doubt. "As far as that is
+concerned, I'll pay in advance."
+
+"It isn't the financial consideration," she began loftily--"alone," she
+added more honestly. "But to take in a total stranger--"
+
+Banneker leaned forward to her. "See here, Mrs. Brashear; there's
+nothing wrong about me. I don't get drunk. I don't smoke in bed. I'm
+decent of habit and I'm clean. I've got money enough to carry me.
+Couldn't you take me on my say-so? Look me over."
+
+Though it was delivered with entire gravity, the speech provoked a tired
+and struggling smile on the landlady's plain features. She looked.
+
+"Well?" he queried pleasantly. "What do you think? Will you take a
+chance?"
+
+That suppressed motherliness which, embodying the unformulated desire to
+look after and care for others, turns so many widows to taking lodgers,
+found voice in Mrs. Brashear's reply:
+
+"You've had a spell of sickness, haven't you?"
+
+"No," he said, a little sharply. "Where did you get that idea?"
+
+"Your eyes look hot."
+
+"I haven't been sleeping very well. That's all."
+
+"Too bad. You've had a loss, maybe," she ventured sympathetically.
+
+"A loss? No.... Yes. You might call it a loss. You'll take me, then?"
+
+"You can move in right away," said Mrs. Brashear recklessly.
+
+So the Brashear rooming-house took into its carefully guarded interior
+the young and unknown Mr. Banneker--who had not been sleeping well. Nor
+did he seem to be sleeping well in his new quarters, since his light was
+to be seen glowing out upon the quiet street until long after midnight;
+yet he was usually up betimes, often even before the moving spirit of
+the house, herself. A full week had he been there before his fellow
+lodgers, self-constituted into a Committee on Membership, took his case
+under consideration in full session upon the front steps. None had had
+speech with him, but it was known that he kept irregular hours.
+
+"What's his job: that's what I'd like to know," demanded in a tone of
+challenge, young Wickert, a man of the world who clerked in the
+decorative department of a near-by emporium.
+
+"Newsboy, I guess," said Lambert, the belated art-student of thirty-odd
+with a grin. "He's always got his arms full of papers when he comes in."
+
+"And he sits at his table clipping pieces out of them and arranging them
+in piles," volunteered little Mrs. Bolles, the trained nurse on the top
+floor. "I've seen him as I go past."
+
+"Help-wanted ads," suggested Wickert, who had suffered experience in
+that will-o'-the-wisp chase.
+
+"Then he hasn't got a job," deduced Mr. Hainer, a heavy man of heavy
+voice and heavy manner, middle-aged, a small-salaried accountant.
+
+"Maybe he's got money," suggested Lambert.
+
+"Or maybe he's a dead beat; he looks on the queer," opined young
+Wickert.
+
+"He has a very fine and sensitive face. I think he has been ill." The
+opinion came from a thin, quietly dressed woman of the early worn-out
+period of life, who sat a little apart from the others. Young Wickert
+started a sniff, but suppressed it, for Miss Westlake was held locally
+in some degree of respect, as being "well-connected" and having
+relatives who called on her in their own limousines, though seldom.
+
+"Anybody know his name?" asked Lambert.
+
+"Barnacle," said young Wickert wittily. "Something like that, anyway.
+Bannsocker, maybe. Guess he's some sort of a Swede."
+
+"Well, I only hope he doesn't clear out some night with his trunk on his
+back and leave poor Mrs. Brashear to whistle," declared Mrs. Bolles
+piously.
+
+The worn face of the landlady, with its air of dispirited motherliness,
+appeared in the doorway. "Mr. Banneker is a _gentleman_," she said.
+
+"Gentleman" from Mrs. Brashear, with that intonation, meant one who, out
+of or in a job, paid his room rent. The new lodger had earned the title
+by paying his month in advance. Having settled that point, she withdrew,
+followed by the two other women. Lambert, taking a floppy hat from the
+walnut rack in the hall, went his way, leaving young Wickert and Mr.
+Hainer to support the discussion, which they did in tones less discreet
+than the darkness warranted.
+
+"Where would he hail from, would you think?" queried the elder. "Iowa,
+maybe? Or Arkansas?"
+
+"Search me," answered young Wickert. "But it was a small-town carpenter
+built those honest-to-Gawd clothes. I'd say the corn-belt."
+
+"Dressed up for the monthly meeting of the Farmers' Alliance, all but
+the oil on his hair. He forgot that," chuckled the accountant.
+
+"He's got a fine chance in Nuh Yawk--of buying a gold brick cheap,"
+prophesied the worldly Wickert out of the depths of his metropolitan
+experience. "Somebody ought to put him onto himself."
+
+A voice from the darkened window above said, with composure, "That will
+be all right. I'll apply to you for advice."
+
+"Oh, Gee!" whispered young Wickert, in appeal to his companion. "How
+long's he been there?"
+
+Acute hearing, it appeared, was an attribute of the man above, for he
+answered at once:
+
+"Just put my head out for a breath of air when I heard your kind
+expressions of solicitude. Why? Did I miss something that came earlier?"
+
+Mr. Hainer melted unostentatiously into the darkness. While young
+Wickert was debating whether his pride would allow him to follow this
+prudent example, the subject of their over-frank discussion appeared at
+his elbow. Evidently he was as light of foot as he was quick of ear.
+Meditating briefly upon these physical qualities, young Wickert said, in
+a deprecatory tone:
+
+"We didn't mean to get fresh with you. It was just talk."
+
+"Very interesting talk."
+
+Wickert produced a suspiciously jeweled case. "Have a cigarette?"
+
+"I have some of my own, thank you."
+
+"Give you a light?"
+
+The metropolitan worldling struck a match and held it up. This was on
+the order of strategy. He wished to see Banneker's face. To his relief
+it did not look angry or even stern. Rather, it appeared thoughtful.
+Banneker was considering impartially the matter of his apparel.
+
+"What is the matter with my clothes?" he asked.
+
+"Why--well," began Wickert, unhappy and fumbling with his ideas; "Oh,
+_they_'re all right."
+
+"For a meeting of the Farmers' Alliance." Banneker was smiling
+good-naturedly. "But for the East?"
+
+"Well, if you really want to know," began Wickert doubtfully. "If you
+won't get sore--" Banneker nodded his assurance. "Well, they're jay. No
+style. No snap. Respectable, and that lets 'em out."
+
+"They don't look as if they were made in New York or for New York?"
+
+Young Mr. Wickert apportioned his voice equitably between a laugh and a
+snort. "No: nor in Hoboken!" he retorted. "Listen, 'bo," he added, after
+a moment's thought. "You got to have a smooth shell in Nuh Yawk. The
+human eye only sees the surface. Get me? And it judges by the surface."
+He smoothed his hands down his dapper trunk with ineffable complacency.
+"Thirty-eight dollars, this. Bernholz Brothers, around on Broadway. Look
+it over. That's a cut!"
+
+"Is that how they're making them in the East?" doubtfully asked the
+neophyte, reflecting that the pinched-in snugness of the coat, and the
+flare effect of the skirts, while unquestionably more impressive than
+his own box-like garb, still lacked something of the quiet distinction
+which he recalled in the clothes of Herbert Cressey. The thought of that
+willing messenger set him to groping for another sartorial name. He
+hardly heard Wickert say proudly:
+
+"If Bernholz's makes 'em that way, you can bet it's up to the
+split-second of date, and _maybe_ they beat the pistol by a jump. I
+bluffed for a raise of five dollars, on the strength of this outfit, and
+got it off the bat. There's the suit paid for in two months and a pair
+of shoes over." He thrust out a leg, from below the sharp-pressed
+trouser-line of which protruded a boot trimmed in a sort of bizarre
+fretwork. "Like me to take you around to Bernholz's?"
+
+Banneker shook his head. The name for which he sought had come to him.
+"Did you ever hear of Mertoun, somewhere on Fifth Avenue?"
+
+"Yes. And I've seen Central Park and the Statue of Liberty," railed the
+other. "Thinkin' of patternizing Mertoun, was you?"
+
+"Yes, I'd like to."
+
+"Like to! There's a party at the Astorbilt's to-morrow night; you'd
+_like_ to go to that, wouldn't you? Fat chance!" said the disdainful and
+seasoned cit. "D'you know what Mertoun would do to you? Set you back a
+hundred simoleons soon as look at you. And at that you got to have a
+letter of introduction like gettin' in to see the President of the
+United States or John D. Rockefeller. Come off, my boy! Bernholz's 'll
+fix you just as good, all but the label. Better come around to-morrow."
+
+"Much obliged, but I'm not buying yet. Where would you say a fellow
+would have a chance to see the best-dressed men?"
+
+Young Mr. Wickert looked at once self-conscious and a trifle miffed, for
+in his own set he was regarded as quite the mould of fashion. "Oh, well,
+if you want to pipe off the guys that _think_ they're the whole thing,
+walk up the Avenue and watch the doors of the clubs and the swell
+restaurants. At that, they haven't got anything on some fellows that
+don't spend a quarter of the money, but know what's what and don't let
+grafters like Mertoun pull their legs," said he. "Say, you seem to know
+what you want, all right, all right," he added enviously. "You ain't
+goin' to let this little old town bluff you; ay?"
+
+"No. Not for lack of a few clothes. Good-night," replied Banneker,
+leaving in young Wickert's mind the impression that he was "a queer
+gink," but also, on the whole, "a good guy." For the worldling was only
+small, not mean of spirit.
+
+Banneker might have added that one who had once known cities and the
+hearts of men from the viewpoint of that modern incarnation of Ulysses,
+the hobo, contemptuous and predatory, was little likely to be overawed
+by the most teeming and headlong of human ant-heaps. Having joined the
+ant-heap, Banneker was shrewdly concerned with the problem of conforming
+to the best type of termite discoverable. The gibes of the doorstep
+chatterers had not aroused any new ambition; they had merely given point
+to a purpose deferred because of other and more immediate pressure.
+Already he had received from Camilla Van Arsdale a letter rich in
+suggestion, hint, and subtly indicated advice, with this one passage of
+frank counsel:
+
+If I were writing, spinster-aunt-wise, to any one else in your position,
+I should be tempted to moralize and issue warnings about--well, about
+the things of the spirit. But you are equipped, there. Like the
+"Master," you will "go your own way with inevitable motion." With the
+outer man--that is different. You have never given much thought to that
+phase. And you have an asset in your personal appearance. I should not
+be telling you this if I thought there were danger of your becoming
+vain. But I really think it would be a good investment for you to put
+yourself into the hands of a first-class tailor, and follow his advice,
+in moderation, of course. Get the sense of being fittingly turned out by
+going where there are well-dressed people; to the opera, perhaps, and
+the theater occasionally, and, when you can afford it, to a good
+restaurant. Unless the world has changed, people will look at you. _But
+you must not know it_. Important, this is!... I could, of course, give
+you letters of introduction. "_Les morts vont vite_," it is true, and I
+am dead to that world, not wholly without the longings of a would-be
+_revenant_; but a ghost may still claim some privileges of memory, and
+my friends would be hospitable to you. Only, I strongly suspect that you
+would not use the letters if I gave them. You prefer to make your own
+start; isn't it so? Well; I have written to a few. Sooner or later you
+will meet with them. Those things always happen even in New York.... Be
+sure to write me all about the job when you get it--
+
+Prudence dictated that he should be earning something before he invested
+in expensive apparel, be it never so desirable and important. However,
+he would outfit himself just as soon as a regular earning capacity
+justified his going into his carefully husbanded but dwindling savings.
+He pictured himself clad as a lily of the field, unconscious of
+perfection as Herbert Cressey himself, in the public haunts of fashion
+and ease; through which vision there rose the searing prospect of thus
+encountering Io Welland. What was her married name? He had not even
+asked when the news was broken to him; had not wanted to ask; was done
+with all that for all time.
+
+He was still pathetically young and inexperienced. And he had been badly
+hurt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Dust was the conspicuous attribute of the place. It lay, flat and
+toneless, upon the desk, the chairs, the floor; it streaked the walls.
+The semi-consumptive office "boy's" middle-aged shoulders collected it.
+It stirred in the wake of quiet-moving men, mostly under thirty-five,
+who entered the outer door, passed through the waiting-room, and
+disappeared behind a partition. Banneker felt like shaking himself lest
+he should be eventually buried under its impalpable sifting. Two hours
+and a half had passed since he had sent in his name on a slip of paper,
+to Mr. Gordon, managing editor of the paper. On the way across Park Row
+he had all but been persuaded by a lightning printer on the curb to have
+a dozen tasty and elegant visiting-cards struck off, for a quarter; but
+some vague inhibition of good taste checked him. Now he wondered if a
+card would have served better.
+
+While he waited, he checked up the actuality of a metropolitan newspaper
+entrance-room, as contrasted with his notion of it, derived from motion
+pictures. Here was none of the bustle and hurry of the screen. No brisk
+and earnest young figures with tense eyes and protruding notebooks
+darted feverishly in and out; nor, in the course of his long wait, had
+he seen so much as one specimen of that invariable concomitant of all
+screen journalism, the long-haired poet with his flowing tie and neatly
+ribboned manuscript. Even the office "boy," lethargic, neutrally polite,
+busy writing on half-sheets of paper, was profoundly untrue to the
+pictured type. Banneker wondered what the managing editor would be like;
+would almost, in the wreckage of his preconceived notions, have accepted
+a woman or a priest in that manifestation, when Mr. Gordon appeared and
+was addressed by name by the hollow-chested Cerberus. Banneker at once
+echoed the name, rising.
+
+The managing editor, a tall, heavy man, whose smoothly fitting cutaway
+coat seemed miraculously to have escaped the plague of dust, stared at
+him above heavy glasses.
+
+"You want to see me?"
+
+"Yes. I sent in my name."
+
+"Did you? When?"
+
+"At two-forty-seven, thirty," replied the visitor with railroad
+accuracy.
+
+The look above the lowered glasses became slightly quizzical. "You're
+exact, at least. Patient, too. Good qualities for a newspaper man.
+That's what you are?"
+
+"What I'm going to be," amended Banneker.
+
+"There is no opening here at present."
+
+"That's formula, isn't it?" asked the young man, smiling.
+
+The other stared. "It is. But how do you know?"
+
+"It's the tone, I suppose. I've had to use it a good deal myself, in
+railroading."
+
+"Observant, as well as exact and patient. Come in. I'm sorry I misplaced
+your card. The name is--?"
+
+"Banneker, E. Banneker."
+
+Following the editor, he passed through a large, low-ceilinged room,
+filled with desk-tables, each bearing a heavy crystal ink-well full of a
+fluid of particularly virulent purple. A short figure, impassive as a
+Mongol, sat at a corner desk, gazing out over City Hall Park with a rapt
+gaze. Across from him a curiously trim and graceful man, with a strong
+touch of the Hibernian in his elongated jaw and humorous gray eyes,
+clipped the early evening editions with an effect of highly judicious
+selection. Only one person sat in all the long files of the work-tables,
+littered with copy-paper and disarranged newspapers; a dark young giant
+with the discouraged and hurt look of a boy kept in after school. All
+this Banneker took in while the managing editor was disposing, usually
+with a single penciled word or number, of a sheaf of telegraphic
+"queries" left upon his desk. Having finished, he swiveled in his chair,
+to face Banneker, and, as he spoke, kept bouncing the thin point of a
+letter-opener from the knuckles of his left hand. His hands were fat and
+nervous.
+
+"So you want to do newspaper work?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I think I can make a go of it."
+
+"Any experience?"
+
+"None to speak of. I've written a few things. I thought you might
+remember my name."
+
+"Your name? Banneker? No. Why should I?"
+
+"You published some of my things in the Sunday edition, lately. From
+Manzanita, California."
+
+"No. I don't think so. Mr. Homans." A graying man with the gait of a
+marionnette and the precise expression of a rocking-horse, who had just
+entered, crossed over. "Have we sent out any checks to a Mr. Banneker
+recently, in California?"
+
+The new arrival, who was copy-reader and editorial selecter for the
+Sunday edition, repeated the name in just such a wooden voice as was to
+be expected. "No," he said positively.
+
+"But I've cashed the checks," returned Banneker, annoyed and bewildered.
+"And I've seen the clipping of the article in the Sunday Sphere of--"
+
+"Just a moment. You're not in The Sphere office. Did you think you were?
+Some one has directed you wrong. This is The Ledger."
+
+"Oh!" said Banneker. "It was a policeman that pointed it out. I suppose
+I saw wrong." He paused; then looked up ingenuously. "But, anyway, I'd
+rather be on The Ledger."
+
+Mr. Gordon smiled broadly, the thin blade poised over a plump, reddened
+knuckle.
+
+"Would you! Now, why?"
+
+"I've been reading it. I like the way it does things."
+
+The editor laughed outright. "If you didn't look so honest, I would
+think that somebody of experience had been tutoring you. How many other
+places have you tried?"
+
+"None."
+
+"You were going to The Sphere first? On the promise of a job?"
+
+"No. Because they printed what I wrote."
+
+"The Sphere's ways are not our ways," pronounced Mr. Gordon primly.
+"It's a fundamental difference in standards."
+
+"I can see that."
+
+"Oh, you can, can you?" chuckled the other. "But it's true that we have
+no opening here."
+
+(The Ledger never did have an "opening"; but it managed to wedge in a
+goodly number of neophytes, from year to year, ninety per cent of whom
+were automatically and courteously ejected after due trial. Mr. Gordon
+performed a surpassing rataplan upon his long-suffering thumb-joint and
+wondered if this queer and direct being might qualify among the
+redeemable ten per cent.)
+
+"I can wait." (They often said that.) "For a while," added the youth
+thoughtfully.
+
+"How long have you been in New York?"
+
+"Thirty-three days."
+
+"And what have you been doing?"
+
+"Reading newspapers."
+
+"No! Reading--That's rather surprising. All of them?"
+
+"All that I could manage."
+
+"Some were so bad that you couldn't worry through them, eh?" asked the
+other with appreciation.
+
+"Not that. But I didn't know the foreign languages except French, and
+Spanish, and a little Italian."
+
+"The foreign-language press, too. Remarkable!" murmured the other. "Do
+you mind telling me what your idea was?"
+
+"It was simple enough. As I wanted to get on a newspaper, I thought I
+ought to find out what newspapers were made of."
+
+"Simple, as you say. Beautifully simple! So you've devised for yourself
+the little job of perfecting yourself in every department of journalism;
+politics, finances, criminal, sports, society; all of them, eh?"
+
+"No; not all," replied Banneker.
+
+"Not? What have you left out?"
+
+"Society news" was the answer, delivered less promptly than the other
+replies.
+
+Bestowing a twinkle of mingled amusement and conjecture upon the
+applicant's clothing, Mr. Gordon said:
+
+"You don't approve of our social records? Or you're not interested? Or
+why is it that you neglect this popular branch?"
+
+"Personal reasons."
+
+This reply, which took the managing editor somewhat aback, was accurate
+if not explanatory. Miss Van Arsdale's commentaries upon Gardner and his
+quest had inspired Banneker with a contemptuous distaste for this type
+of journalism. But chiefly he had shunned the society columns from dread
+of finding there some mention of her who had been Io Welland. He was
+resolved to conquer and evict that memory; he would not consciously put
+himself in the way of anything that recalled it.
+
+"Hum! And this notion of making an intensive study of the papers; was
+that original with you?"
+
+"Well, no, not entirely. I got it from a man who made himself a bank
+president in seven years."
+
+"Yes? How did he do that?"
+
+"He started by reading everything he could find about money and coinage
+and stocks and bonds and other financial paper. He told me that it was
+incredible the things that financial experts didn't know about their own
+business--the deep-down things--and that he guessed it was so with any
+business. He got on top by really knowing the things that everybody was
+supposed to know."
+
+"A sound theory, I dare say. Most financiers aren't so revealing."
+
+"He and I were padding the hoof together. We were both hoboes then."
+
+The managing editor looked up, alert, from his knuckle-tapping. "From
+bank president to hobo. Was his bank an important one?"
+
+"The biggest in a medium-sized city."
+
+"And does that suggest nothing to you, as a prospective newspaper man?"
+
+"What? Write him up?"
+
+"It would make a fairly sensational story."
+
+"I couldn't do that. He was my friend. He wouldn't like it."
+
+Mr. Gordon addressed his wedding-ring finger which was looking a bit
+scarified. "Such an article as that, properly done, would go a long way
+toward getting you a chance on this paper--Sit down, Mr. Banneker."
+
+"You and I," said Banneker slowly and in the manner of the West, "can't
+deal."
+
+"Yes, we can." The managing editor threw his steel blade on the desk.
+"Sit down, I tell you. And understand this. If you come on this
+paper--I'm going to turn you over to Mr. Greenough, the city editor,
+with a request that he give you a trial--you'll be expected to
+subordinate every personal interest and advantage to the interests and
+advantages of the paper, _except_ your sense of honor and fair-play. We
+don't ask you to give that up; and if you do give it up, we don't want
+you at all. What have you done besides be a hobo?"
+
+"Railroading. Station-agent."
+
+"Where were you educated?"
+
+"Nowhere. Wherever I could pick it up."
+
+"Which means everywhere. Ever read George Borrow?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The heavy face of Mr. Gordon lighted up. "Ree-markable! Keep on. He's a
+good offset to--to the daily papers. Writing still counts, on The
+Ledger. Come over and meet Mr. Greenough."
+
+The city editor unobtrusively studied Banneker out of placid,
+inscrutable eyes, soft as a dove's, while he chatted at large about
+theaters, politics, the news of the day. Afterward the applicant met the
+Celtic assistant, Mr. Mallory, who broadly outlined for him the
+technique of the office. With no further preliminaries Banneker found
+himself employed at fifteen dollars a week, with Monday for his day off
+and directions to report on the first of the month.
+
+As the day-desk staff was about departing at six o'clock, Mr. Gordon
+sauntered over to the city desk looking mildly apologetic.
+
+"I practically had to take that young desert antelope on," said he.
+
+"Too ingenuous to turn down," surmised the city editor.
+
+"Ingenuous! He's heir to the wisdom of the ages. And now I'm afraid I've
+made a ghastly mistake."
+
+"Something wrong with him?"
+
+"I've had his stuff in the Sunday Sphere looked up."
+
+"Pretty weird?" put in Mallory, gliding into his beautifully fitting
+overcoat.
+
+"So damned good that I don't see how The Sphere ever came to take it.
+Greenough, you'll have to find some pretext for firing that young
+phenomenon as soon as possible."
+
+Perfectly comprehending his superior's mode of indirect expression the
+city editor replied:
+
+"You think so highly of him as that?"
+
+"Not one of our jobs will be safe from him if he once gets his foot
+planted," prophesied the other with mock ruefulness. "Do you know," he
+added, "I never even asked him for a reference."
+
+"You don't need to," pronounced Mallory, shaking the last wrinkle out of
+himself and lighting the cigarette of departure. "He's got it in his
+face, if I'm any judge."
+
+Highly elate, Banneker walked on springy pavements all the way to Grove
+Street. Fifteen a week! He could live on that. His other income and
+savings could be devoted to carrying out Miss Camilla's advice. For he
+need not save any more. He would go ahead, fast, now that he had got his
+start. How easy it had been.
+
+Entering the Brashear door, he met plain, middle-aged little Miss
+Westlake. A muffler was pressed to her jaw. He recalled having heard her
+moving about her room, the cheapest and least desirable in the house,
+and groaning softly late in the night; also having heard some lodgers
+say that she was a typist with very little work. Obviously she needed a
+dentist, and presumably she had not the money to pay his fee. In the
+exultation of his good luck, Banneker felt a stir of helpfulness toward
+this helpless person.
+
+"Oh!" said he. "How do you do! Could you find time to do some typing for
+me quite soon?"
+
+It was said impulsively and was followed by a surge of dismay. Typing?
+Type what? He had absolutely nothing on hand!
+
+Well, he must get up something. At once. It would never do to disappoint
+that pathetic and eager hope, as of a last-moment rescue, expressed in
+the little spinster's quick flush and breathless, thankful affirmative.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Ten days' leeway before entering upon the new work. To which of scores
+of crowding purposes could Banneker best put the time? In his offhand
+way the instructive Mallory had suggested that he familiarize himself
+with the topography and travel-routes of the Island of Manhattan.
+Indefatigably he set about doing this; wandering from water-front to
+water-front, invading tenements, eating at queer, Englishless
+restaurants, picking up chance acquaintance with chauffeurs, peddlers,
+street-fakers, park-bench loiterers; all that drifting and iridescent
+scum of life which variegates the surface above the depths. Everywhere
+he was accepted without question, for his old experience on the hoof had
+given him the uncoded password which loosens the speech of furtive men
+and wise. A receptivity, sensitized to a high degree by the inspiration
+of new adventure, absorbed these impressions. The faithful pocket-ledger
+was filling rapidly with notes and phrases, brisk and trenchant, set
+down with no specific purpose; almost mechanically, in fact, but
+destined to future uses. Mallory, himself no mean connoisseur of the
+tumultuous and flagrant city, would perhaps have found matter foreign to
+his expert apprehension could he have seen and translated the pages of 3
+T 9901.
+
+Banneker would go forward in the fascinating paths of exploration; but
+there were other considerations.
+
+The outer man, for example. The inner man, too; the conscious inner man
+strengthened upon the strong milk of the philosophers, the priests, and
+the prophets so strangely mingled in that library now stored with
+Camilla Van Arsdale; exhilarated by the honey-dew of "The Undying
+Voices," of Keats and Shelley, and of Swinburne's supernal rhythms,
+which he had brought with him. One visit to the Public Library had quite
+appalled him; the vast, chill orderliness of it. He had gone there,
+hungry to chat about books! To the Public Library! Surely a Homeric joke
+for grim, tomish officialdom. But tomish officialdom had not even
+laughed at him; it was too official to appreciate the quality of such
+side-splitting innocence.... Was he likely to meet a like
+irresponsiveness when he should seek clothing for the body?
+
+Watch the clubs, young Wickert had advised. Banneker strolled up Fifth
+Avenue, branching off here and there, into the more promising side
+streets.
+
+It was the hour of the First Thirst; the institutions which cater to
+this and subsequent thirsts drew steadily from the main stream of human
+activity flowing past. Many gloriously clad specimens passed in and out
+of the portals, socially sacred as in the quiet Fifth Avenue clubs,
+profane as in the roaring, taxi-bordered "athletic" foundations; but
+there seemed to the anxious observer no keynote, no homogeneous
+character wherefrom to build as on a sure foundation. Lacking knowledge,
+his instinct could find no starting-point; he was bewildered in vision
+and in mind. Just off the corner of the quietest of the Forties, he met
+a group of four young men, walking compactly by twos. The one nearest
+him in the second line was Herbert Cressey. His heavy and rather dull
+eye seemed to meet Banneker's as they came abreast. Banneker nodded,
+half checking himself in his slow walk.
+
+"How are you?" he said with an accent of surprise and pleasure.
+
+Cressey's expressionless face turned a little. There was no response in
+kind to Banneker's smile.
+
+"Oh! H'ware you!" said he vaguely, and passed on.
+
+Banneker advanced mechanically until he reached the corner. There he
+stopped. His color had heightened. The smile was still on his lips; it
+had altered, taken on a quality of gameness. He did not shake his fist
+at the embodied spirit of metropolitanism before him, as had a famous
+Gallic precursor of his, also a determined seeker for Success in a
+lesser sphere; but he paraphrased Rastignac's threat in his own terms.
+
+"I reckon I'll have to lick this town and lick it good before it learns
+to be friendly."
+
+A hand fell on his arm. He turned to face Cressey.
+
+"You're the feller that bossed the wreck out there in the desert, aren't
+you? You're--lessee--Banneker."
+
+"I am." The tone was curt.
+
+"Awfully sorry I didn't spot you at once." Cressey's genuineness was a
+sufficient apology. "I'm a little stuffy to-day. Bachelor dinner last
+night. What are you doing here? Looking around?"
+
+"No. I'm living here."
+
+"That so? So am I. Come into my club and let's talk. I'm glad to see
+you, Mr. Banneker."
+
+Even had Banneker been prone to self-consciousness, which he was not,
+the extreme, almost monastic plainness of the small, neutral-fronted
+building to which the other led him would have set him at ease. It gave
+no inkling of its unique exclusiveness, and equally unique
+expensiveness. As for Cressey, that simple, direct, and confident soul
+took not the smallest account of Banneker's standardized clothing, which
+made him almost as conspicuous in that environment as if he had entered
+clad in a wooden packing-case. Cressey's creed in such matters was
+complete; any friend of his was good enough for any environment to which
+he might introduce him, and any other friend who took exceptions might
+go farther!
+
+"Banzai!" said the cheerful host over his cocktail. "Welcome to our
+city. Hope you like it."
+
+"I do," said Banneker, lifting his glass in response.
+
+"Where are you living?"
+
+"Grove Street."
+
+Cressey knit his brows. "Where's that? Harlem?"
+
+"No. Over west of Sixth Avenue."
+
+"Queer kind of place to live, ain't it? There's a corkin' little suite
+vacant over at the Regalton. Cheap at the money. Oh!-er-I-er-maybe--"
+
+"Yes; that's it," smiled Banneker. "The treasury isn't up to bachelor
+suites, yet awhile. I've only just got a job."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Newspaper work. The Morning Ledger."
+
+"Reporting?" A dubious expression clouded the candid cheerfulness of the
+other's face.
+
+"Yes. What's the matter with that?"
+
+"Oh; I dunno. It's a piffling sort of job, ain't it?"
+
+"Piffling? How do you mean?"
+
+"Well, I supposed you had to ask a lot of questions and pry into other
+people's business and--and all that sorta thing."
+
+"If nobody asked questions," pointed out Banneker, remembering Gardner's
+resolute devotion to his professional ideals, "there wouldn't be any
+news, would there?"
+
+"Sure! That's right," agreed the gilded youth. "The Ledger's the
+decentest paper in town, too. It's a gentleman's paper. I know a feller
+on it; Guy Mallory; was in my class at college. Give you a letter to him
+if you like."
+
+Informed that Banneker already knew Mr. Mallory, his host expressed the
+hope of being useful to him in any other possible manner--"any tips I
+can give you or anything of that sort, old chap?"--so heartily that the
+newcomer broached the subject of clothes.
+
+"Nothin' easier," was the ready response. "I'll take you right down to
+Mertoun. Just one more and we're off."
+
+The one more having been disposed of: "What is it you want?" inquired
+Cressey, when they were settled in the taxi which was waiting at the
+club door for them.
+
+"Well, what _do_ I want? You tell me."
+
+"How far do you want to go? Will five hundred be too much?"
+
+"No."
+
+Cressey lost himself in mental calculations out of which he presently
+delivered himself to this effect:
+
+"Evening clothes, of course. And a dinner-jacket suit. Two business
+suits, a light and a dark. You won't need a morning coat, I expect, for
+a while. Anyway, we've got to save somethin' out for shirts and boots,
+haven't we?"
+
+"I haven't the money with me" remarked Banneker, his innocent mind on
+the cash-with-order policy of Sears-Roebuck.
+
+"Now, see here," said Cressey, good-humoredly, yet with an effect of
+authority. "This is a game that's got to be played according to the
+rules. Why, if you put down spot cash before Mertoun's eyes he'd faint
+from surprise, and when he came to, he'd have no respect for you. And a
+tailor's respect for you," continued Cressey, the sage, "shows in your
+togs."
+
+"When do I pay, then?"
+
+"Oh, in three or four months he sends around a bill. That's more of a
+reminder to come in and order your fall outfit than it is anything else.
+But you can send him a check on account, if you feel like it."
+
+"A check?" repeated the neophyte blankly. "Must I have a bank account?"
+
+"Safer than a sock, my boy. And just as simple. To-morrow will do for
+that, when we call on the shirt-makers and the shoe sharps. I'll put you
+in my bank; they'll take you on for five hundred."
+
+Arrived at Mertoun's, Banneker unobtrusively but positively developed a
+taste of his own in the matter of hue and pattern; one, too, which
+commanded Cressey's respect. The gilded youth's judgment tended toward
+the more pronounced herringbones and homespuns.
+
+"All right for you, who can change seven days in the week; but I've got
+to live with these clothes, day in and day out," argued Banneker.
+
+To which Cressey deferred, though with a sigh. "You could carry off
+those sporty things as if they were woven to order for you," he
+declared. "You've got the figure, the carriage, the--the
+whatever-the-devil it is, for it."
+
+Prospectively poorer by something more than four hundred dollars,
+Banneker emerged from Mertoun's with his mentor.
+
+"Gotta get home and dress for a rotten dinner," announced that gentleman
+cheerfully. "Duck in here with me," he invited, indicating a sumptuous
+bar, near the tailor's, "and get another little kick in the stomach. No?
+Oh, verrawell. Where are you for?"
+
+"The Public Library."
+
+"Gawd!" said his companion, honestly shocked. "That's a gloomy hole,
+ain't it?"
+
+"Not so bad, when you get used to it. I've been putting in three hours a
+day there lately."
+
+"Whatever for?"
+
+"Oh, browsing. Book-hungry, I suppose. Carnegie hasn't discovered
+Manzanita yet, you know; so I haven't had many library opportunities."
+
+"Speaking of Manzanita," remarked Cressey, and spoke of it,
+reminiscently and at length, as they walked along together. "Did the
+lovely and mysterious I.O.W. ever turn up and report herself?"
+
+Banneker's breath caught painfully in his throat.
+
+"D'you know who she was?" pursued the other, without pause for reply to
+his previous question; and still without intermission continued: "Io
+Welland. _That_'s who she was. Oh, but she's a hummer! I've met her
+since. Married, you know. Quick work, that marriage. There was a dam'
+queer story whispered around about her starting to elope with some other
+chap, and his going nearly batty because she didn't turn up, and all the
+time she was wandering around in the desert until somebody picked her up
+and took care of her. You ought to know something of that. It was
+supposed to be right in your back-yard."
+
+"I?" said Banneker, commanding himself with an effort; "Miss Welland
+reported in with a slight injury. That's all."
+
+One glance at him told Cressey that Banneker did indeed "know something"
+of the mysterious disappearance which had so exercised a legion of busy
+tongues in New York; how much that something might be, he preserved for
+future and private speculation, based on the astounding perception that
+Banneker was in real pain of soul. Tact inspired Cressey to say at once:
+"Of course, that's all you had to consider. By the way, you haven't seen
+my revered uncle since you got here, have you?"
+
+"Mr. Vanney? No."
+
+"Better drop in on him."
+
+"He might try to give me another yellow-back," smiled the ex-agent.
+
+"Don't take Uncle Van for a fool. Once is plenty for him to be hit on
+the nose."
+
+"Has he still got a green whisker?"
+
+"Go and see. He's asked about you two or three times in the last coupla
+months."
+
+"But I've no errand with him."
+
+"How can you tell? He might start something for you. It isn't often that
+he keeps a man in mind like he has you. Anyway, he's a wise old bird and
+may hand you a pointer or two about what's what in New York. Shall I
+'phone him you're in town?"
+
+"Yes. I'll get in to see him some time to-morrow."
+
+Having made an appointment, in the vital matter of shirts and shoes, for
+the morning, they parted. Banneker set to his browsing in the library
+until hunger drove him forth. After dinner he returned to his room,
+cumbered with the accumulation of evening papers, for study.
+
+Beyond the thin partition he could hear Miss Westlake moving about and
+humming happily to herself. The sound struck dismay to his soul. The
+prospect of work from him was doubtless the insecure foundation of that
+cheerfulness. "Soon" he had said; the implication was that the matter
+was pressing. Probably she was counting on it for the morrow. Well, he
+must furnish something, anything, to feed the maw of her hungry
+typewriter; to fulfill that wistful hope which had sprung in her eyes
+when he spoke to her.
+
+Sweeping his table bare of the lore and lure of journalism as typified
+in the bulky, black-faced editions, he set out clean paper, cleansed his
+fountain pen, and stared at the ceiling. What should he write about? His
+mental retina teemed with impressions. But they were confused,
+unresolved, distorted for all that he knew, since he lacked experience
+and knowledge of the environment, and therefore perspective. Groping, he
+recalled a saying of Gardner's as that wearied enthusiast descanted upon
+the glories of past great names in metropolitan journalism.
+
+"They used to say of Julian Ralph that he was always discovering City
+Hall Park and getting excited over it; and when he got excited enough,
+he wrote about it so that the public just ate it up."
+
+Well, he, Banneker, hadn't discovered City Hall Park; not consciously.
+But he had gleaned wonder and delight from other and more remote spots,
+and now one of them began to stand forth upon the blank ceiling at which
+he stared, seeking guidance. A crowded corner of Essex Street, stewing
+in the hard sunshine. The teeming, shrill crowd. The stench and gleam of
+a fish-stall offering bargains. The eager games of the children,
+snatched between onsets of imminent peril as cart or truck came whirling
+through and scattering the players. Finally the episode of the trade
+fracas over the remains of a small and dubious weakfish, terminating
+when the dissatisfied customer cast the delicacy at the head of the
+stall-man and missed him, the _corpus delicti_ falling into the gutter
+where it was at once appropriated and rapt away by an incredulous,
+delighted, and mangy cat. A crude, commonplace, malodorous little street
+row, the sort of thing that happens, in varying phases, on a dozen
+East-Side corners seven days in the week.
+
+Banneker approached and treated the matter from the viewpoint of the
+cat, predatory, philosophic, ecstatic. One o'clock in the morning saw
+the final revision, for he had become enthralled with the handling of
+his subject. It was only a scant five pages; less than a thousand words.
+But as he wrote and rewrote, other schemata rose to the surface of his
+consciousness, and he made brief notes of them on random ends of paper;
+half a dozen of them, one crowding upon another. Some day, perhaps, when
+there were enough of them, when he had become known, had achieved the
+distinction of a signature like Gardner, there might be a real
+series.... His vague expectancies were dimmed in weariness.
+
+Such was the genesis of the "Local Vagrancies" which later were to set
+Park Row speculating upon the signature "Eban."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Accessibility was one of Mr. Horace Vanney's fads. He aspired to be a
+publicist, while sharing fallible humanity's ignorance of just what the
+vague and imposing term signifies; and, as a publicist, he conceived it
+in character to be readily available to the public. Almost anybody could
+get to see Mr. Vanney in his tasteful and dignified lower Broadway
+offices, upon almost any reasonable or plausible errand. Especially was
+he hospitable to the newspaper world, the agents of publicity; and, such
+is the ingratitude of the fallen soul of man, every newspaper office in
+the city fully comprehended his attitude, made use of him as convenient,
+and professionally regarded him as a bit of a joke, albeit a useful and
+amiable joke. Of this he had no inkling. Enough for him that he was
+frequently, even habitually quoted, upon a wide range of windy topics,
+often with his picture appended.
+
+With far less difficulty than he had found in winning the notice of Mr.
+Gordon, Banneker attained the sanctum of the capitalist.
+
+"Well, well!" was the important man's greeting as he shook hands. "Our
+young friend from the desert! How do we find New York?"
+
+From Banneker's reply, there grew out a pleasantly purposeless
+conversation, which afforded the newcomer opportunity to decide that he
+did not like this Mr. Vanney, sleek, smiling, gentle, and courteous, as
+well as he had the brusque old tyrant of the wreck. That green-whiskered
+autocrat had been at least natural, direct, and unselfish in his grim
+emergency work. This manifestation seemed wary, cautious, on its guard
+to defend itself against some probable tax upon its good nature. All
+this unconscious, instinctive reckoning of the other man's
+characteristics gave to the young fellow an effect of poise, of
+judicious balance and quiet confidence. It was one of Banneker's
+elements of strength, which subsequently won for him his unique place,
+that he was always too much interested in estimating the man to whom he
+was talking, to consider even what the other might think of him. It was
+at once a form of egoism, and the total negation of egotism. It made him
+the least self-conscious of human beings. And old Horace Vanney,
+pompous, vain, the most self-conscious of his genus, felt, though he
+could not analyze, the charm of it.
+
+A chance word indicated that Banneker was already "placed." At once,
+though almost insensibly, the attitude of Mr. Vanney eased; obviously
+there was no fear of his being "boned" for a job. At the same time he
+experienced a mild misgiving lest he might be forfeiting the services of
+one who could be really useful to him. Banneker's energy and
+decisiveness at the wreck had made a definite impression upon him. But
+there was the matter of the rejected hundred-dollar tip. Unpliant,
+evidently, this young fellow. Probably it was just as well that he
+should be broken in to life and new standards elsewhere than in the
+Vanney interests. Later, if he developed, watchfulness might show it to
+be worth while to....
+
+"What is it that you have in mind, my boy?" inquired the benign Mr.
+Vanney.
+
+"I start in on The Ledger next month."
+
+"The Ledger! Indeed! I did not know that you had any journalistic
+experience."
+
+"I haven't."
+
+"Well. Er--hum! Journalism, eh? A--er--brilliant profession!"
+
+"You think well of it?"
+
+"I have many friends among the journalists. Fine fellows! Very fine
+fellows."
+
+The instinctive tone of patronage was not lost upon Banneker. He felt
+annoyed at Mr. Vanney. Unreasonably annoyed. "What's the matter with
+journalism?" he asked bluntly.
+
+"The matter?" Mr. Vanney was blandly surprised. "Haven't I just said--"
+
+"Yes; you have. Would you let your son go into a newspaper office?"
+
+"My son? My son chose the profession of law."
+
+"But if he had wanted to be a journalist?"
+
+"Journalism does not perhaps offer the same opportunities for personal
+advancement as some other lines," said the financier cautiously.
+
+"Why shouldn't it?"
+
+"It is largely anonymous." Mr. Vanney gave the impression of feeling
+carefully for his words. "One may go far in journalism and yet be
+comparatively unknown to the public. Still, he might be of great
+usefulness," added the sage, brightening, "very great usefulness. A
+sound, conservative, self-respecting newspaper such as The Ledger, is a
+public benefactor."
+
+"And the editor of it?"
+
+"That's right, my boy," approved the other. "Aim high! Aim high! The
+great prizes in journalism are few. They are, in any line of endeavor.
+And the apprenticeship is hard."
+
+Herbert Cressey's clumsy but involuntary protest reasserted itself in
+Banneker's mind. "I wish you would tell me frankly, Mr. Vanney, whether
+reporting is considered undignified and that sort of thing?"
+
+"Reporters can be a nuisance," replied Mr. Vanney fervently. "But they
+can also be very useful."
+
+"But on the whole--"
+
+"On the whole it is a necessary apprenticeship. Very suitable for a
+young man. Not a final career, in my judgment."
+
+"A reporter on The Ledger, then, is nothing but a reporter on The
+Ledger."
+
+"Isn't that enough, for a start?" smiled the other. "The station-agent
+at--what was the name of your station? Yes, Manzanita. The station-agent
+at Manzanita--"
+
+"Was E. Banneker," interposed the owner of that name positively. "A
+small puddle, but the inhabitant was an individual toad, at least. To
+keep one's individuality in New York isn't so easy, of course."
+
+"There are quite a number of people in New York," pointed out the
+philosopher, Vanney. "Mostly crowd."
+
+"Yes," said Banneker. "You've told me something about the newspaper
+business that I wanted to know." He rose.
+
+The other put out an arresting hand. "Wouldn't you like to do a little
+reporting for me, before you take up your regular work?"
+
+"What kind of reporting?"
+
+"Quite simple. A manufacturing concern in which I own a considerable
+interest has a strike on its hands. Suppose you go down to Sippiac, New
+Jersey, where our factories are, spend three or four days, and report
+back to me your impressions and any ideas you may gather as to improving
+our organization for furthering our interests."
+
+"What makes you think that I could be useful in that line?" asked
+Banneker curiously.
+
+"My observations at the Manzanita wreck. You have, I believe, a knack
+for handling a situation."
+
+"I can always try," accepted Banneker.
+
+Supplied with letters to the officials of the International Cloth
+Company, and a liberal sum for expenses, the neophyte went to Sippiac.
+There he visited the strongly guarded mills, still making a feeble
+pretense of operating, talked with the harassed officials, the gang-boss
+of the strike-breakers, the "private guards," who had, in fact,
+practically assumed dominant police authority in the place; all of which
+was faithful to the programme arranged by Mr. Vanney. Having done so
+much, he undertook to obtain a view of the strike from the other side;
+visited the wretched tenements of the laborers, sought out the sullen
+and distrustful strike-leaders, heard much fiery oratory and some veiled
+threats from impassioned agitators, mostly foreign and all tragically
+earnest; chatted with corner grocerymen, saloon-keepers, ward
+politicians, composing his mental picture of a strike in a minor city,
+absolutely controlled, industrially, politically, and socially by the
+industry which had made it. The town, as he came to conceive it, was a
+fevered and struggling gnome, bound to a wheel which ground for others;
+a gnome who, if he broke his bonds, would be perhaps only the worse for
+his freedom. At the beginning of the sixth day, for his stay had
+outgrown its original plan, the pocket-ledger, 3 T 9901, was but little
+the richer, but the mind of its owner teemed with impressions.
+
+It was his purpose to take those impressions in person to Mr. Horace
+Vanney, by the 10 A.M. train. Arriving at the station early, he was
+surprised at being held up momentarily by a line of guards engaged in
+blocking off a mob of wailing, jabbering women, many of whom had
+children in their arms, or at their skirts. He asked the ticket-agent, a
+big, pasty young man about them.
+
+"Mill workers," said the agent, making change.
+
+"What are they after?"
+
+"Wanta get to the 10.10 train."
+
+"And the guards are stopping them?"
+
+"You can use your eyes, cantcha?"
+
+Using his eyes, Banneker considered the position. "Are those fellows on
+railroad property?"
+
+"What is it to you whether they are or ain't?"
+
+Banneker explained his former occupation. "That's different," said the
+agent. "Come inside. That's a hell of a mess, ain't it!" he added
+plaintively as Banneker complied. "Some of those poor Hunkies have got
+their tickets and can't use 'em."
+
+"I'd see that they got their train, if this was my station," asserted
+Banneker.
+
+"Yes, you would! With that gang of strong-arms against you."
+
+"Chase 'em," advised Banneker simply. "They've got no right keeping your
+passengers off your trains."
+
+"Chase 'em, ay? You'd do it, I suppose."
+
+"I would."
+
+"How?"
+
+"You've got a gun, haven't you?"
+
+"Maybe you think those guys haven't got guns, too."
+
+"Well, all I can say is, that if there had been passengers held up from
+their trains at my station and I didn't get them through, _I_'d have
+been through so far as the Atkinson and St. Philip goes."
+
+"This railroad's different. I'd be through if I butted in on this mill
+row."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"Well, for one thing, old Vanney, who's the real boss here, is a
+director of the road."
+
+"So _that_'s it!" Banneker digested this information. "Why are the women
+so anxious to get away?"
+
+"They say"--the local agent lowered his voice--"their children are
+starving here, and they can get better jobs in other places. Naturally
+the mills don't want to lose a lot of their hands, particularly the
+women, because they're the cheapest. I don't know as I blame 'em for
+that. But this business of hiring a bunch of ex-cons and--Hey! Where are
+you goin'?"
+
+Banneker was beyond the door before the query was completed. Looking out
+of the window, the agent saw a fat and fussy young mother, who had
+contrived to get through the line, waddling at her best speed across the
+open toward the station, and dragging a small boy by the hand. A lank
+giant from the guards' ranks was after her. Screaming, she turned the
+corner out of his vision. There were sounds which suggested a row at the
+station-door, but the agent, called at that moment to the wire, could
+not investigate. The train came and went, and he saw nothing more of the
+ex-railroader from the West.
+
+Although Mr. Horace Vanney smiled pleasantly enough when Banneker
+presented himself at the office to make his report, the nature of the
+smile suggested a background more uncertain.
+
+"Well, what have you found, my boy?" the financier began.
+
+"A good many things that ought to be changed," answered Banneker
+bluntly.
+
+"Quite probably. No institution is perfect."
+
+"The mills are pretty rotten. You pay your people too little--"
+
+"Where do you get that idea?"
+
+"From the way they live."
+
+"My dear boy; if we paid them twice as much, they'd live the same way.
+The surplus would go to the saloons."
+
+"Then why not wipe out the saloons?"
+
+"I am not the Common Council of Sippiac," returned Mr. Vanney dryly.
+
+"Aren't you?" retorted Banneker even more dryly.
+
+The other frowned. "What else?"
+
+"Well; the housing. You own a good many of the tenements, don't you?"
+
+"The company owns some."
+
+"They're filthy holes."
+
+"They are what the tenants make them."
+
+"The tenants didn't build them with lightless hallways, did they?"
+
+"They needn't live there if they don't like them. Have you spent all
+your time, for which I am paying, nosing about like a cheap magazine
+muckraker?" It was clear that Mr. Vanney was annoyed.
+
+"I've been trying to find out what is wrong with Sippiac. I thought you
+wanted facts."
+
+"Precisely. Facts. Not sentimental gushings."
+
+"Well, there are your guards. There isn't much sentiment about them. I
+saw one of them smash a woman in the face, and knock her down, while she
+was trying to catch a train and get out of town."
+
+"And what did you do?"
+
+"I don't know exactly how much. But I hope enough to land him in the
+hospital. They pulled me off too soon."
+
+"Do you know that you would have been killed if it hadn't been for some
+of the factory staff who saved you from the other guards--as you
+deserved, for your foolhardiness?"
+
+The young man's eyebrows went up a bit. "Don't bank too much on my
+foolhardiness. I had a wall back of me. And there would have been
+material for several funerals before they got me." He touched his
+hip-pocket. "By the way, you seem to be well informed."
+
+"I've been in 'phone communication with Sippiac since the regrettable
+occurrence. It perhaps didn't occur to you to find out that the woman,
+who is now under arrest, bit the guard very severely."
+
+"Of course! Just like the rabbit bit the bulldog. You've got a lot of
+thugs and strong-arm men doing your dirty work, that ought to be in
+jail. If the newspapers here ever get onto the situation, it would make
+pretty rough reading for you, Mr. Vanney."
+
+The magnate looked at him with contemptuous amusement. "No newspaper of
+decent standing prints that kind of socialistic stuff, my young friend."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Why not! Because of my position. Because the International Cloth
+Company is a powerful institution of the most reputable standing, with
+many lines of influence."
+
+"And that is enough to keep the newspapers from printing an article
+about conditions in Sippiac?" asked Banneker, deeply interested in this
+phase of the question. "Is that the fact?"
+
+It was not the fact; The Sphere, for one, would have handled the strike
+on the basis of news interest, as Mr. Vanney well knew; wherefore he
+hated and pretended to despise The Sphere. But for his own purposes he
+answered:
+
+"Not a paper in New York would touch it. Except," he added negligently,
+"perhaps some lying, Socialist sheet. And let me warn you, Mr.
+Banneker," he pursued in his suavest tone, "that you will find no place
+for your peculiar ideas on The Ledger. In fact, I doubt whether you will
+be doing well either by them or by yourself in going on their staff,
+holding such views as you do."
+
+"Do you? Then I'll tell them beforehand."
+
+Mr. Vanney privately reflected that there was no need of this: _he_
+intended to call up the editor-in-chief and suggest the unsuitability of
+the candidate for a place, however humble, on the staff of a highly
+respectable and suitably respectful daily.
+
+Which he did. The message was passed on to Mr. Gordon, and, in his large
+and tolerant soul, decently interred. One thing of which the managing
+editor of The Ledger was not tolerant was interference from without in
+his department.
+
+Before allowing his man to leave, Mr. Vanney read him a long and
+well-meant homily, full of warning and wisdom, and was both annoyed and
+disheartened when, at the end of it, Banneker remarked:
+
+"I'll dare you to take a car and spend twenty-four hours going about
+Sippiac with me. If you stand for your system after that, I'll pay for
+the car."
+
+To which the other replied sadly that Banneker had in some manner
+acquired a false and distorted view of industrial relations.
+
+Therein, for once in an existence guided almost exclusively by
+prejudice, Horace Vanney was right. At the outset of a new career to
+which he was attuning his mind, Banneker had been injected into a
+situation typical of all that is worst in American industrial life, a
+local manufacturing enterprise grown rich upon the labor of underpaid
+foreigners, through the practice of all the vicious, lawless, and
+insidious methods of an ingrown autocracy, and had believed it to be
+fairly representative. Had not Horace Vanney, doubtless genuine in his
+belief, told him as much?
+
+"We're as fair and careful with our employees as any of our
+competitors."
+
+As a matter of fact there were, even then, scores of manufacturing
+plants within easy distance of New York, representing broad and generous
+policies and conducted on a progressive and humanistic labor system. Had
+Banneker had his first insight into local industrial conditions through
+one of these, he might readily have been prejudiced in favor of capital.
+As it was, swallowing Vanney's statement as true, he mistook an evil
+example as a fair indication of the general status. Then and there he
+became a zealous protagonist of labor.
+
+It had been Mr. Horace Vanney's shrewd design to show a budding
+journalist of promise on which side his self-interest lay. The weak spot
+in the plan was that Banneker did not seem to care!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Banneker's induction into journalism was unimpressive. They gave him a
+desk, an outfit of writing materials, a mail-box with his name on it,
+and eventually an assignment. Mr. Mallory presented him to several of
+the other "cubs" and two or three of the older and more important
+reporters. They were all quite amiable, obviously willing to be helpful,
+and they impressed the observant neophyte with that quiet and solid
+_esprit de corps_ which is based upon respect for work well performed in
+a common cause. He apprehended that The Ledger office was in some sort
+an institution.
+
+None of his new acquaintances volunteered information as to the
+mechanism of his new job. Apparently he was expected to figure that out
+for himself. By nature reticent, and trained in an environment which
+still retained enough of frontier etiquette to make a scrupulous
+incuriosity the touchstone of good manners and perhaps the essence of
+self-preservation, Banneker asked no questions. He sat and waited.
+
+One by one the other reporters were summoned by name to the city desk,
+and dispatched with a few brief words upon the various items of the
+news. Presently Banneker found himself alone, in the long files of
+desks. For an hour he sat there and for a second hour. It seemed a
+curious way in which to be earning fifteen dollars a week. He wondered
+whether he was expected to sit tight at his desk. Or had he the freedom
+of the office? Characteristically choosing the more active assumption,
+he found his way to the current newspaper files. They were like old
+friends.
+
+"Mr. Banneker." An office boy was at his elbow. "Mr. Greenough wants
+you."
+
+Conscious of a quickened pulse, and annoyed at himself because of it,
+the tyro advanced to receive his maiden assignment. The epochal event
+was embodied in the form of a small clipping from an evening paper,
+stating that a six-year-old boy had been fatally burned at a bonfire
+near the North River. Banneker, Mr. Greenough instructed him mildly, was
+to make inquiries of the police, of the boy's family, of the hospital,
+and of such witnesses as he could find.
+
+Quick with interest he caught up his hat and hurried out. Death, in the
+sparsely populated country wherefrom he hailed, was a matter of
+inclusive local importance; he assumed the same of New York. Three
+intense hours he devoted to an item which any police reporter of six
+months' standing would have rounded up in a brace of formal inquiries,
+and hastened back, brimful of details for Mr. Greenough.
+
+"Good! Good!" interpolated that blandly approving gentleman from time to
+time in the course of the narrative. "Write it, Mr. Banneker! write it."
+
+"How much shall I write?"
+
+"Just what is necessary to tell the news."
+
+Behind the amiable smile which broadened without lighting up the
+sub-Mongol physiognomy of the city editor, Banneker suspected something.
+As he sat writing page after page, conscientiously setting forth every
+germane fact, the recollection of that speculative, estimating smile
+began to play over the sentences with a dire and blighting beam. Three
+fourths of the way through, the writer rose, went to the file-board and
+ran through a dozen newspapers. He was seeking a ratio, a perspective.
+He wished to determine how much, in a news sense, the death of the son
+of an obscure East-Side plasterer was worth. On his return he tore up
+all that he had written, and substituted a curt paragraph, without
+character or color, which he turned in. He had gauged the value of the
+tragedy accurately, in the light of his study of news files.
+
+Greenough showed the paragraph (which failed to appear at all in the
+overcrowded paper of next morning) to Mr. Gordon.
+
+"The new man doesn't start well," he remarked. "Too little imaginative
+interest."
+
+"Isn't it knowledge rather than lack of interest?" suggested the
+managing editor.
+
+"It may come to the same thing. If he knows too much to get really
+interested, he'll be a dull reporter."
+
+"I doubt whether you'll find him dull," smiled Mr. Gordon. "But he may
+find his job dull. In that case, of course he'd better find another."
+
+Indeed, that was the danger which, for weeks to follow, Banneker
+skirted. Police news, petty and formal, made up his day's work. Had he
+sought beneath the surface of it the underlying elements, and striven to
+express these, his matter as it came to the desk, however slight the
+technical news value might have been, would have afforded the watchful
+copy-readers, trained to that special selectiveness as only The Ledger
+could train its men, opportunity of judging what potentialities might
+lurk beneath the crudities of the "cub." But Banneker was not crude. He
+was careful. His sense of the relative importance of news, acquired by
+those weeks of intensive analysis before applying for his job, was too
+just to let him give free play to his pen. What was the use? The "story"
+wasn't worth the space.
+
+Nevertheless, 3 T 9901, which Banneker was already too cognoscent to
+employ in his formal newsgathering (the notebook is anathema to the
+metropolitan reporter), was filling up with odd bits, which were being
+transferred, in the weary hours when the new man sat at his desk with
+nothing to do, to paper in the form of sketches for Miss Westlake's
+trustful and waiting typewriter. Nobody could say that Banneker was not
+industrious. Among his fellow reporters he soon acquired the melancholy
+reputation of one who was forever writing "special stuff," none of which
+ever "landed." It was chiefly because of his industry and reliability,
+rather than any fulfillment of the earlier promise of brilliant worth as
+shown in the Sunday Sphere articles, that he got his first raise to
+twenty dollars. It surprised rather than gratified him.
+
+He went to Mr. Gordon about it. The managing editor was the kind of man
+with whom it is easy to talk straight talk.
+
+"What's the matter with me?" asked Banneker.
+
+Mr. Gordon played a thoughtful tattoo upon his fleshy knuckles with the
+letter-opener. "Nothing. Aren't you satisfied?"
+
+"No. Are you?"
+
+"You've had your raise, and fairly early. Unless you had been worth it,
+you wouldn't have had it."
+
+"Am I doing what you expected of me?"
+
+"Not exactly. But you're developing into a sure, reliable reporter."
+
+"A routine man," commented Banneker.
+
+"After all, the routine man is the backbone of the office." Mr. Gordon
+executed a fantasia on his thumb. "Would you care to try a desk job?" he
+asked, peering at Banneker over his glasses.
+
+"I'd rather run a trolley car. There's more life in it."
+
+"Do you _see_ life, in your work, Mr. Banneker?"
+
+"See it? I feel it. Sometimes I think it's going to flatten me out like
+a steam-roller."
+
+"Then why not write it?"
+
+"It isn't news: not what I see."
+
+"Perhaps not. Perhaps it's something else. But if it's there and we can
+get a gleam of it into the paper, we'll crowd news out to make a place
+for it. You haven't been reading The Ledger I'm afraid."
+
+"Like a Bible."
+
+"Not to good purpose, then. What do you think of Tommy Burt's stuff?"
+
+"It's funny; some of it. But I couldn't do it to save my job."
+
+"Nobody can do it but Burt, himself. Possibly you could learn something
+from it, though."
+
+"Burt doesn't like it, himself. He told me it was all formula; that you
+could always get a laugh out of people about something they'd been
+taught to consider funny, like a red nose or a smashed hat. He's got a
+list of Sign Posts on the Road to Humor."
+
+"The cynicism of twenty-eight," smiled the tolerant Mr. Gordon. "Don't
+let yourself be inoculated."
+
+"Mr. Gordon," said Banneker doggedly; "I'm not doing the kind of work I
+expected to do here."
+
+"You can hardly expect the star jobs until you've made yourself a star
+man."
+
+Banneker flushed. "I'm not complaining of the way I've been treated.
+I've had a square enough deal. The trouble is with me. I want to know
+whether I ought to stick or quit."
+
+"If you quit, what would you do?"
+
+"I haven't a notion," replied the other with an indifference which
+testified to a superb, instinctive self-confidence. "Something."
+
+"Do it here. I think you'll come along all right."
+
+"But what's wrong with me?" persisted Banneker.
+
+"Too much restraint. A rare fault. You haven't let yourself out." For a
+space he drummed and mused. Suddenly a knuckle cracked loudly. Mr.
+Gordon flinched and glared at it, startled as if it had offended him by
+interrupting a train of thought. "Here!" said he brusquely. "There's a
+Sewer-Cleaners' Association picnic to-morrow. They're going to put in
+half their day inspecting the Stimson Tunnel under the North River.
+Pretty idea; isn't it? Suppose I ask Mr. Greenough to send you out on
+the story. And I'd like a look at it when you turn it in."
+
+Banneker worked hard on his report of the picnic; hard and
+self-consciously. Tommy Burt would, he knew, have made a "scream" of it,
+for tired business men to chuckle over on their way downtown. Pursuant
+to what he believed Mr. Gordon wanted, Banneker strove conscientiously
+to be funny with these human moles, who, having twelve hours of freedom
+for sunshine and air, elected to spend half of it in a hole bigger,
+deeper, and more oppressive than any to which their noisome job called
+them. The result was five painfully mangled sheets which presently went
+to the floor, torn in strips. After that Banneker reported the picnic as
+he saw, felt, and smelt it. It was a somber bit of writing, not without
+its subtleties and shrewd perceptions; quite unsuitable to the columns
+of The Ledger, in which it failed to appear. But Mr. Gordon read it
+twice. He advised Banneker not to be discouraged.
+
+Banneker was deeply discouraged. He wanted to resign.
+
+Perhaps he would nave resigned, if old Mynderse Verschoyle had not died
+at eight o'clock on the morning of the day when Banneker was the
+earliest man to report at the office. A picturesque character, old
+Mynderse, who had lived for forty-five years with his childless wife in
+the ancient house on West 10th Street, and for the final fifteen years
+had not addressed so much as a word to her. She had died three months
+before; and now he had followed, apparently, from what Banneker learned
+in an interview with the upset and therefore voluble secretary of the
+dead man, because, having no hatred left on which to center his life, he
+had nothing else to live for. Banneker wrote the story of that hatred,
+rigid, ceremonious, cherished like a rare virtue until it filled two
+lives; and he threw about it the atmosphere of the drear and divided old
+house. At the end, the sound of the laughter of children at play in the
+street.
+
+The article appeared word for word as he had written it. That noon Tommy
+Burt, the funny man, drawing down his hundred-plus a week on space, came
+over and sat on Banneker's desk, and swung his legs and looked at him
+mournfully and said:
+
+"You've broken through your shell at last."
+
+"Did you like it?" asked Banneker.
+
+"Like it! My God, if I could write like that! But what's the use! Never
+in the world."
+
+"Oh, that's nonsense," returned Banneker, pleased. "Of course you can.
+But what's the rest of your 'if'?"
+
+"I wouldn't be wasting my time here. The magazines for me."
+
+"Is that better?"
+
+"Depends on what you're after. For a man who wants to write, it's
+better, of course."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Gives him a larger audience. No newspaper story is remembered overnight
+except by newspaper men. And they don't matter."
+
+"Why don't they matter?" Banneker was surprised again, this time rather
+disagreeably.
+
+"It's a little world. There isn't much substance to it. Take that
+Verschoyle stuff of yours; that's literature, that is! But you'll never
+hear of it again after next week. A few people here will remember it,
+and it'll help you to your next raise. But after you've got that, and,
+after that, your lift onto space, where are you?"
+
+The abruptly confidential approach of Tommy Burt flattered Banneker with
+the sense that by that one achievement of the Verschoyle story he had
+attained a new status in the office. Later there came out from the inner
+sanctum where sat the Big Chief, distilling venom and wit in equal parts
+for the editorial page, a special word of approval. But this pleased the
+recipient less than the praise of his peers in the city room.
+
+After that first talk, Burt came back to Banneker's desk from time to
+time, and once took him to dinner at "Katie's," the little German
+restaurant around the corner. Burt was given over to a restless and
+inoffensively egoistic pessimism.
+
+"Look at me. I'm twenty-eight and making a good income. When I was
+twenty-three, I was making nearly as much. When I'm thirty-eight, where
+shall I be?"
+
+"Can't you keep on making it?" asked Banneker.
+
+"Doubtful. A fellow goes stale on the kind of stuff I do. And if I do
+keep on? Five to six thousand is fine now. It won't be so much ten years
+from now. That's the hell of this game; there's no real chance in it."
+
+"What about the editing jobs?"
+
+"Desk-work? Chain yourself by the leg, with a blue pencil in your hand
+to butcher better men's stuff? A managing editor, now, I'll grant you.
+He gets his twenty or twenty-five thousand if he doesn't die of
+overstrain, first. But there's only a few managing editors."
+
+"There are more editorial writers."
+
+"Hired pens. Dishing up other fellows' policies, whether you believe in
+'em or not. No; I'm not of that profession, anyway." He specified the
+profession, a highly ancient and dishonorable one. Mr. Burt, in his gray
+moods, was neither discriminating nor quite just.
+
+Banneker voiced the question which, at some point in his progress, every
+thoughtful follower of journalism must meet and solve as best he can.
+"When a man goes on a newspaper I suppose he more or less accepts that
+paper's standards, doesn't he?"
+
+"More or less? To what extent?" countered the expert.
+
+"I haven't figured that out, yet."
+
+"Don't be in a hurry about it," advised the other with a gleam of
+malice. "The fellows that do figure it out to the end, and are honest
+enough about it, usually quit."
+
+"You haven't quit."
+
+"Perhaps I'm not honest enough or perhaps I'm too cowardly," retorted
+the gloomy Burt.
+
+Banneker smiled. Though the other was nearly two years his senior, he
+felt immeasurably the elder. There is about the true reporter type an
+infinitely youthful quality; attractive and touching; the eternal
+juvenile, which, being once outgrown with its facile and evanescent
+enthusiasms, leaves the expert declining into the hack. Beside this
+prematurely weary example of a swift and precarious success, Banneker
+was mature of character and standard. Nevertheless, the seasoned
+journalist was steeped in knowledge which the tyro craved.
+
+"What would you do," Banneker asked, "if you were sent out to write a
+story absolutely opposed to something you believed right; political, for
+instance?"
+
+"I don't write politics. That's a specialty."
+
+"Who does?"
+
+"'Parson' Gale."
+
+"Does he believe in everything The Ledger stands for?"
+
+"Certainly. In office hours. For and in consideration of one hundred and
+twenty-five dollars weekly, duly and regularly paid."
+
+"Outside of office hours, then."
+
+"Ah; that's different. In Harlem where he lives, the Parson is quite a
+figure among the reform Democrats. The Ledger, as you know, is
+Republican; and anything in the way of reform is its favorite butt. So
+Gale spends his working day poking fun at his political friends and
+associates."
+
+"Out West we'd call that kind of fellow a yellow pup."
+
+"Well, don't call the Parson that; not to me," warned the other
+indignantly. "He's as square a man as you'll find on Park Row. Why, you
+were just saying, yourself, that a reporter is bound to accept his
+paper's standards when he takes the job."
+
+"Then I suppose the answer is that a man ought to work only on a
+newspaper in whose policies he believes."
+
+"Which policies? A newspaper has a hundred different ones about a
+hundred different things. Here in this office we're dead against the
+split infinitive and the Honest Laboring Man. We don't believe he's
+honest and we've got our grave doubts as to his laboring. Yet one of our
+editorial writers is an out-and-out Socialist and makes fiery speeches
+advising the proletariat to rise and grab the reins of government. But
+he'd rather split his own head than an infinitive."
+
+"Does he write anti-labor editorials?" asked the bewildered Banneker.
+
+"Not as bad as that. He confines himself to European politics and
+popular scientific matters. But, of course, wherever there is necessity
+for an expression of opinion, he's anti-socialist in his writing, as
+he's bound to be."
+
+"Just a moment ago you were talking of hired pens. Now you seem to be
+defending that sort of thing. I don't understand your point of view."
+
+"Don't you? Neither do I, I guess," admitted the expositor with great
+candor. "I can argue it either way and convince myself, so far as the
+other fellow's work is concerned. But not for my own."
+
+"How do you figure it out for yourself, then?"
+
+"I don't. I dodge. It's a kind of tacit arrangement between the desk and
+me. In minor matters I go with the paper. That's easy, because I agree
+with it in most questions of taste and the way of doing things. After
+all The Ledger _has_ got certain standards of professional conduct and
+of decent manners; it's a gentleman's paper. The other things, the
+things where my beliefs conflict with the paper's standards, political
+or ethical, don't come my way. You see, I'm a specialist; I do mostly
+the fluffy stuff."
+
+"If that's the way to keep out of embarrassing decisions, I'd like to
+become a specialist myself."
+
+"You can do it, all right," the other assured him earnestly. "That story
+of yours shows it. You've got The Ledger touch--no, it's more individual
+than that. But you've got something that's going to stick out even here.
+Just the same, there'll come a time when you'll have to face the other
+issue of your job or your--well, your conscience."
+
+What Tommy Burt did not say in continuation, and had no need to say,
+since his expressive and ingenuous face said it for him, was, "And I
+wonder what you'll do with _that_!"
+
+A far more influential friend than Tommy Burt had been wondering, too,
+and had, not without difficulty, expressed her doubts in writing.
+Camilla Van Arsdale had written to Banneker:
+
+... I know so little of journalism, but there are things about it that I
+distrust instinctively. Do you remember what that wrangler from the _Jon
+Cal_ told Old Bill Speed when Bill wanted to hire him: "I wouldn't take
+any job that I couldn't look in the eye and tell it to go to hell on
+five minutes' notice." I have a notion that you've got to take that
+attitude toward a reporting job. There must be so much that a man cannot
+do without loss of self-respect. Yet, I can't imagine why I should worry
+about you as to that. Unless it is that, in a strange environment one
+gets one's values confused.... Have you had to do any "Society"
+reporting yet? I hope not. The society reporters of my day were either
+obsequious little flunkeys and parasites, or women of good connections
+but no money who capitalized their acquaintanceship to make a poor
+living, and whom one was sorry for, but would rather not see. Going to
+places where one is not asked, scavenging for bits of news from butlers
+and housekeepers, sniffing after scandals--perhaps that is part of the
+necessary apprenticeship of newspaper work. But it's not a proper work
+for a gentleman. And, in any case, Ban, you are that, by the grace of
+your ancestral gods.
+
+Little enough did Banneker care for his ancestral gods: but he did
+greatly care for the maintenance of those standards which seemed to have
+grown, indigenously within him, since he had never consciously
+formulated them. As for reporting, of whatever kind, he deemed Miss Van
+Arsdale prejudiced. Furthermore, he had met the society reporter of The
+Ledger, an elderly, mild, inoffensive man, neat and industrious, and
+discerned in him no stigma of the lickspittle. Nevertheless, he hoped
+that he would not be assigned to such "society news" as Remington did
+not cover in his routine. It might, he conceived, lead him into false
+situations where he could be painfully snubbed. And he had never yet
+been in a position where any one could snub him without instant
+reprisals. In such circumstances he did not know exactly what he would
+do. However, that bridge could be crossed or refused when he came to it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Such members of the Brashear household as chose to accommodate
+themselves strictly to the hour could have eight o'clock breakfast in
+the basement dining-room for the modest consideration of thirty cents;
+thirty-five with special cream-jug. At these gatherings, usually
+attended by half a dozen of the lodgers, matters of local interest were
+weightily discussed; such as the progress of the subway excavations, the
+establishment of a new Italian restaurant in 11th Street, or the calling
+away of the fourth-floor-rear by the death of an uncle who would perhaps
+leave him money. To this sedate assemblage descended one crisp December
+morning young Wickert, clad in the natty outline of a new Bernholz suit,
+and obviously swollen with tidings.
+
+"Whaddya know about the latest?" he flung forth upon the coffee-scented
+air.
+
+"The latest" in young Wickert's compendium of speech might be the
+garments adorning his trim person, the current song-hit of a vaudeville
+to which he had recently contributed his critical attention, or some
+tidbit of purely local gossip. Hainer, the plump and elderly accountant,
+opined that Wickert had received an augmentation of salary, and got an
+austere frown for his sally. Evidently Wickert deemed his news to be of
+special import; he was quite bloated, conversationally. He now dallied
+with it.
+
+"Since when have you been taking in disguised millionaires, Mrs.
+Brashear?"
+
+The presiding genius of the house, divided between professional
+resentment at even so remotely slurring an implication (for was not the
+Grove Street house good enough for any millionaire, undisguised!) and
+human curiosity, requested an explanation.
+
+"I was in Sherry's restaurant last night," said the offhand Wickert.
+
+"I didn't read about any fire there," said the jocose Hainer, pointing
+his sally with a wink at Lambert, the art-student.
+
+Wickert ignored the gibe. Such was the greatness of his tidings that he
+could afford to.
+
+"Our firm was giving a banquet to some buyers and big folks in the
+trade. Private room upstairs; music, flowers, champagne by the case. We
+do things in style when we do 'em. They sent me up after hours with an
+important message to our Mr. Webler; he was in charge of arrangements."
+
+"Been promoted to be messenger, ay?" put in Mr. Hainer, chuckling.
+
+"When I came downstairs," continued the other with only a venomous
+glance toward the seat of the scorner, "I thought to myself what's the
+matter with taking a look at the swells feeding in the big restaurant.
+You may not know it, people, but Sherry's is the ree-churchiest place in
+Nuh Yawk to eat dinner. It's got 'em all beat. So I stopped at the door
+and took 'em in. Swell? Oh, you dolls! I stood there trying to work up
+the nerve to go in and siddown and order a plate of stew or something
+that wouldn't stick me more'n a dollar, just to _say_ I'd been dining at
+Sherry's, when I looked across the room, and whadda you think?" He
+paused, leaned forward, and shot out the climactic word, "Banneker!"
+
+"Having his dinner there?" asked the incredulous but fascinated Mrs.
+Brashear.
+
+"Like he owned the place. Table to himself, against the wall. Waiter
+fussin' over him like he loved him. And dressed! Oh, Gee!"
+
+"Did you speak to him?" asked Lambert.
+
+"He spoke to me," answered Wickert, dealing in subtle distinctions. "He
+was just finishing his coffee when I sighted him. Gave the waiter haffa
+dollar. I could see it on the plate. There I was at the door, and he
+said, 'Why, hello, Wickert. Come and have a liquor.' He pronounced it a
+queer, Frenchy way. So I said thanks, I'd have a highball."
+
+"Didn't he seem surprised to see you there?" asked Hainer.
+
+Wickert paid an unconscious tribute to good-breeding. "Banneker's the
+kind of feller that wouldn't show it if he was surprised. He couldn't
+have been as surprised as I was, at that. We went to the bar and had a
+drink, and then I ast him what'd _he_, have on _me_, and all the time I
+was sizing him up. I'm telling you, he looked like he'd grown up in
+Sherry's."
+
+The rest of the conversation, it appeared from Mr. Wickert's spirited
+sketch, had consisted mainly in eager queries from himself, and
+good-humored replies by the other.
+
+Did Banneker eat there every night?
+
+Oh, no! He wasn't up to that much of a strain on his finances.
+
+But the waiters seemed to know him, as if he was one of the regulars.
+
+In a sense he was. Every Monday he dined there. Monday was his day off.
+
+Well, Mr. Wickert (awed and groping) _would_ be damned! All alone?
+
+Banneker, smiling, admitted the solitude. He rather liked dining alone.
+
+Oh, Wickert couldn't see that at all! Give him a pal and a coupla lively
+girls, say from the Ladies' Tailor-Made Department, good-lookers and
+real dressers; that was _his_ idea of a dinner, though he'd never tried
+it at Sherry's. Not that he couldn't if he felt like it. How much did
+they stick you for a good feed-out with a cocktail and maybe a bottle of
+Italian Red?
+
+Well, of course, that depended on which way was Wickert going? Could
+Banneker set him on his way? He was taking a taxi to the Avon Theater,
+where there was an opening.
+
+Did Mr. Banneker (Wickert had by this time attained the "Mr." stage)
+always follow up his dinner at Sherry's with a theater?
+
+Usually, if there were an opening. If not he went to the opera or a
+concert.
+
+For his part, Wickert liked a little more spice in life. Still, every
+feller to his tastes. And Mr. Banneker was sure dressed for the part.
+Say--if he didn't mind--who made that full-dress suit?
+
+No; of course he didn't mind. Mertoun made it.
+
+After which Mr. Banneker had been deftly enshrouded in a fur-lined coat,
+worthy of a bank president, had crowned these glories with an impeccable
+silk hat, and had set forth. Wickert had only to add that he wore in his
+coat lapel one of those fancy tuberoses, which he, Wickert, had gone to
+the pains of pricing at the nearest flower shop immediately after
+leaving Banneker. A dollar apiece! No, he had not accepted the offer of
+a lift, being doubtful upon the point of honor as to whether he would be
+expected to pay a _pro rata_ of the taxi charge. They, the assembled
+breakfast company, had his permission to call him, Mr. Wickert, a goat
+if Mr. Banneker wasn't the swellest-looking guy he had anywhere seen on
+that memorable evening.
+
+Nobody called Mr. Wickert a goat. But Mr. Hainer sniffed and said:
+
+"And him a twenty-five-dollar-a-week reporter!"
+
+"Perhaps he has private means," suggested little Miss Westlake, who had
+her own reasons for suspecting this: reasons bolstered by many and
+frequent manuscripts, turned over to her for typing, recast, returned
+for retyping, and again, in many instances, re-recast and re-retyped,
+the result of the sweating process being advantageous to their literary
+quality. Simultaneous advantage had accrued to the typist, also, in a
+practical way. Though the total of her bills was modest, it constituted
+an important extra; and Miss Westlake no longer sought to find solace
+for her woes through the prescription of the ambulant school of
+philosophic thought, and to solve her dental difficulties by walking the
+floor of nights. Philosophy never yet cured a toothache. Happily the
+sufferer was now able to pay a dentist. Hence Banneker could work,
+untroubled of her painful footsteps in the adjoining room, and
+considered the outcome cheap at the price. He deemed himself an exponent
+of enlightened selfishness. Perhaps he was. But the dim and worn
+spinster would have given half a dozen of her best and painless teeth to
+be of service to him. Now she came to his defense with a pretty dignity:
+
+"I am sure that Mr. Banneker would not be out of place in any company."
+
+"Maybe not," answered the cynical Lambert. "But where does he get it? I
+ask you!"
+
+"Wherever he gets it, no gentleman could be more forehanded in his
+obligations," declared Mrs. Brashear.
+
+"But what's he want to blow it for in a shirty place like Sherry's?"
+marveled young Wickert.
+
+"Wyncha ask him?" brutally demanded Hainer.
+
+Wickert examined his mind hastily, and was fain to admit inwardly that
+he had wanted to ask him, but somehow felt "skittish" about it.
+Outwardly he retorted, being displeased at his own weakness, "Ask him
+yourself."
+
+Had any one questioned the subject of the discussion at Mrs. Brashear's
+on this point, even if he were willing to reply to impertinent
+interrogations (a high improbability of which even the hardy Wickert
+seems to have had some timely premonition), he would perhaps have
+explained the glorified routine of his day-off, by saying that he went
+to Sherry's and the opening nights for the same reason that he prowled
+about the water-front and ate in polyglot restaurants on obscure
+street-corners east of Tompkins Square; to observe men and women and the
+manner of their lives. It would not have been a sufficient answer;
+Banneker must have admitted that to himself. Too much a man of the world
+in many strata not to be adjustable to any of them, nevertheless he felt
+more attuned to and at one with his environment amidst the suave
+formalism of Sherry's than in the more uneasy and precarious elegancies
+of an East-Side Tammany Association promenade and ball.
+
+Some of the youngsters of The Ledger said that he was climbing.
+
+He was not climbing. To climb one must be conscious of an ascent to be
+surmounted. Banneker was serenely unaware of anything above him, in that
+sense. Eminent psychiatrists were, about that time, working upon the
+beginning of a theory of the soul, later to be imposed upon an
+impressionable and faddish world, which dealt with a profound psychical
+deficit known as a "complex of inferiority." In Banneker they would have
+found sterile soil. He had no complex of inferiority, nor, for that
+matter, of superiority; mental attitudes which, applied to social
+status, breed respectively the toady and the snob. He had no complex at
+all. He had, or would have had, if the soul-analysts had invented such a
+thing, a simplex. Relative status was a matter to which he gave little
+thought. He maintained personal standards not because of what others
+might think of him, but because he chose to think well of himself.
+
+Sherry's and a fifth-row-center seat at opening nights meant to him
+something more than refreshment and amusement; they were an assertion of
+his right to certain things, a right of which, whether others recognized
+or ignored it, he felt absolutely assured. These were the readily
+attainable places where successful people resorted. Serenely determined
+upon success, he felt himself in place amidst the outward and visible
+symbols of it. Let the price be high for his modest means; this was an
+investment which he could not afford to defer. He was but anticipating
+his position a little, and in such wise that nobody could take exception
+to it, because his self-promotion demanded no aid or favor from any
+other living person. His interest was in the environment, not in the
+people, as such, who were hardly more than, "walking ladies and
+gentlemen" in a _mise-en-scene_. Indeed, where minor opportunities
+offered by chance of making acquaintances, he coolly rejected them.
+Banneker did not desire to know people--yet. When he should arrive at
+the point of knowing them, it must be upon his terms, not theirs.
+
+It was on one of his Monday evenings of splendor that a misadventure of
+the sort which he had long foreboded, befell him. Sherry's was crowded,
+and a few tables away Banneker caught sight of Herbert Cressey, dining
+with a mixed party of a dozen. Presently Cressey came over.
+
+"What have you been doing with yourself?" he asked, shaking hands.
+"Haven't seen you for months."
+
+"Working," replied Banneker. "Sit down and have a cocktail. Two, Jules,"
+he added to the attentive waiter.
+
+"I guess they can spare me for five minutes," agreed Cressey, glancing
+back at his forsaken place. "This isn't what you call work, though, is
+it?"
+
+"Hardly. This is my day off."
+
+"Oh! And how goes the job?"
+
+"Well enough."
+
+"I'd think so," commented the other, taking in the general effect of
+Banneker's easy habituation to the standards of the restaurant. "You
+don't own this place, do you?" he added.
+
+From another member of the world which had inherited or captured
+Sherry's as part of the spoils of life, the question might have been
+offensive. But Banneker genuinely liked Cressey.
+
+"Not exactly," he returned lightly. "Do I give that unfortunate
+impression?"
+
+"You give very much the impression of owning old Jules--or he does--and
+having a proprietary share in the new head waiter. Are you here much?"
+
+"Monday evenings, only."
+
+"This is a good cocktail," observed Cressey, savoring it expertly.
+"Better than they serve to me. And, say, Banneker, did Mertoun make you
+that outfit?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then I quit him," declared the gilded youth.
+
+"Why? Isn't it all right?"
+
+"All right! Dammit, it's a better job than ever I got out of him,"
+returned his companion indignantly. "Some change from the catalogue suit
+you sported when you landed here! You know how to wear 'em; I've got to
+say that for you.... I've got to get back. When'll you dine with me? I
+want to hear all about it."
+
+"Any Monday," answered Banneker.
+
+Cressey returned to his waiting potage, and was immediately bombarded
+with queries, mainly from the girl on his left.
+
+"Who's the wonderful-looking foreigner?"
+
+"He isn't a foreigner. At least not very much."
+
+"He looks like a North Italian princeling I used to know," said one of
+the women. "One of that warm-complexioned out-of-door type, that
+preserves the Roman mould. Isn't he an Italian?"
+
+"He's an American. I ran across him out in the desert country."
+
+"Hence that burned-in brown. What was he doing out there?"
+
+Cressey hesitated. Innocent of any taint of snobbery himself, he yet did
+not know whether Banneker would care to have his humble position tacked
+onto the tails of that work of art, his new coat. "He was in the
+railroad business," he returned cautiously. "His name is Banneker."
+
+"I've been seeing him for months," remarked another of the company.
+"He's always alone and always at that table. Nobody knows him. He's a
+mystery."
+
+"He's a beauty," said Cressey's left-hand neighbor.
+
+Miss Esther Forbes had been quite openly staring, with her large, gray,
+and childlike eyes, at Banneker, eating his oysters in peaceful
+unconsciousness of being made a subject for discussion. Miss Forbes was
+a Greuze portrait come to life and adjusted to the extremes of fashion.
+Behind an expression of the sweetest candor and wistfulness, as behind a
+safe bulwark, she preserved an effrontery which balked at no defiance of
+conventions in public, though essentially she was quite sufficiently
+discreet for self-preservation. Also she had a keen little brain, a
+reckless but good-humored heart and a memory retentive of important
+trifles.
+
+"In the West, Bertie?" she inquired of Cressey. "You were in that big
+wreck there, weren't you?"
+
+"Devil of a wreck," said Cressey uneasily. You never could tell what
+Esther might know or might not say.
+
+"Ask him over here," directed that young lady blandly, "for coffee and
+liqueurs."
+
+"Oh, I say!" protested one of the men. "Nobody knows anything about
+him--"
+
+"He's a friend of mine," put in Cressey, in a tone which ended that
+particular objection. "But I don't think he'd come."
+
+Instantly there was a chorus of demand for him.
+
+"All right, I'll try," yielded Cressey, rising.
+
+"Put him next to me," directed Miss Forbes.
+
+The emissary visited Banneker's table, was observed to be in brief
+colloquy with him, and returned, alone.
+
+"Wouldn't he come?" interrogated the chorus.
+
+"He's awfully sorry, but he says he isn't fit for decent human
+associations."
+
+"More and more interesting!"--"Why?"--"What awful thing has he been
+doing?"
+
+"Eating onions," answered Cressey. "Raw."
+
+"I don't believe it," cried the indignant Miss Forbes. "One doesn't eat
+raw onions at Sherry's. It's a subterfuge."
+
+"Very likely."
+
+"If I went over there myself, who'll bet a dozen silk stockings that I
+can't--"
+
+"Come off it, Ess," protested her brother-in-law across the table.
+"That's too high a jump, even for you."
+
+She let herself be dissuaded, but her dovelike eyes were vagrant during
+the rest of the dinner.
+
+Pleasantly musing over the last glass of a good but moderate-priced
+Rosemont-Geneste, Banneker became aware of Cressey's dinner party filing
+past him: then of Jules, the waiter, discreetly murmuring something,
+from across the table. A faint and provocative scent came to his
+nostrils, and as he followed Jules's eyes he saw a feminine figure
+standing at his elbow. He rose promptly and looked down into a face
+which might have been modeled for a type of appealing innocence.
+
+"You're Mr. Banneker, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'm Esther Forbes, and I think I've heard a great deal about you."
+
+"It doesn't seem probable," he replied gravely.
+
+"From a cousin of mine," pursued the girl. "She was Io Welland. Haven't
+I?"
+
+A shock went through Banneker at the mention of the name. But he
+steadied himself to say: "I don't think so."
+
+Herein he was speaking by the letter. Knowing Io Welland as he had, he
+deemed it very improbable that she had even so much as mentioned him to
+any of her friends. In that measure, at least, he believed, she would
+have respected the memory of the romance which she had so ruthlessly
+blasted. This girl, with the daring and wistful eyes, was simply
+fishing, so he guessed.
+
+His guess was correct. Mendacity was not outside of Miss Forbes's easy
+code when enlisted in a good cause, such as appeasing her own impish
+curiosity. Never had Io so much as mentioned that quaint and lively
+romance with which vague gossip had credited her, after her return from
+the West; Esther Forbes had gathered it in, gossamer thread by gossamer
+thread, and was now hoping to identify Banneker in its uncertain
+pattern. Her little plan of startling him into some betrayal had proven
+abortive. Not by so much as the quiver of a muscle or the minutest
+shifting of an eye had he given sign. Still convinced that he was the
+mysterious knight of the desert, she was moved to admiration for his
+self-command and to a sub-thrill of pleasurable fear as before an
+unknown and formidable species. The man who had transformed
+self-controlled and invincible Io Welland into the creature of moods and
+nerves and revulsions which she had been for the fortnight preceding her
+marriage, must be something out of the ordinary. Instinct of womankind
+told Miss Forbes that this and no other was the type of man to work such
+a miracle.
+
+"But you did know Io?" she persisted, feeling, as she afterward
+confessed, that she was putting her head into the mouth of a lion
+concerning whose habits her knowledge was regrettably insufficient.
+
+The lion did not bite her head off. He did not even roar. He merely
+said, "Yes."
+
+"In a railroad wreck or something of that sort?"
+
+"Something of that sort."
+
+"Are you awfully bored and wishing I'd go away and let you alone?" she
+said, on a note that pleaded for forbearance. "Because if you are, don't
+make such heroic efforts to conceal it."
+
+At this an almost imperceptible twist at the corners of his lips
+manifested itself to the watchful eye and cheered the enterprising soul
+of Miss Forbes. "No," he said equably, "I'm interested to discover how
+far you'll go."
+
+The snub left Miss Forbes unembarrassed.
+
+"Oh, as far as you'll let me," she answered. "Did you ride in from your
+ranch and drag Io out of the tangled wreckage at the end of your lasso?"
+
+"My ranch? I wasn't on a ranch."
+
+"Please, sir," she smiled up at him like a beseeching angel, "what did
+you do that kept us all talking and speculating about you for a whole
+week, though we didn't know your name?"
+
+"I sat right on my job as station-agent at Manzanita and made up lists
+of the killed and injured," answered Banneker dryly.
+
+"Station-agent!" The girl was taken aback, for this was not at all in
+consonance with the Io myth as it had drifted back, from sources never
+determined, to New York. "Were you the station-agent?"
+
+"I was."
+
+She bestowed a glance at once appraising and flattering, less upon
+himself than upon his apparel. "And what are you now? President of the
+road?"
+
+"A reporter on The Ledger."
+
+"Really!" This seemed to astonish her even more than the previous
+information. "What are you reporting here?"
+
+"I'm off duty to-night."
+
+"I see. Could you get off duty some afternoon and come to tea, if I'll
+promise to have Io there to meet you?"
+
+"Your party seems to be making signals of distress, Miss Forbes."
+
+"That's the normal attitude of my friends and family toward me. You'll
+come, won't you, Mr. Banneker?"
+
+"Thank you: but reporting keeps one rather too busy for amusement."
+
+"You won't come," she murmured, aggrieved. "Then it _is_ true about you
+and Io."
+
+This time she achieved a result. Banneker flushed angrily, though he
+said, coolly enough: "I think perhaps you would make an enterprising
+reporter, yourself, Miss Forbes."
+
+"I'm sure I should. Well, I'll apologize. And if you won't come for
+Io--she's still abroad, by the way and won't be back for a
+month--perhaps you'll come for me. Just to show that you forgive my
+impertinences. Everybody does. I'm going to tell Bertie Cressey he must
+bring you.... All right, Bertie! I wish you wouldn't follow me up
+like--like a paper-chase. Good-night, Mr. Banneker."
+
+To her indignant escort she declared that it couldn't have hurt them to
+wait a jiffy; that she had had a most amusing conversation; that Mr.
+Banneker was as charming as he was good to look at; and that (in answer
+to sundry questions) she had found out little or nothing, though she
+hoped for better results in future.
+
+"But he's Io's passion-in-the-desert right enough," said the irreverent
+Miss Forbes.
+
+Banneker sat long over his cooling coffee. Through haunted nights he had
+fought maddening memories of Io's shadowed eyes, of the exhalant,
+irresistible femininity of her, of the pulses of her heart against his
+on that wild and wonderful night in the flood; and he had won to an
+armed peace, in which the outposts of his spirit were ever on guard
+against the recurrent thoughts of her.
+
+Now, at the bitter music of her name on the lips of a gossiping and
+frivolous girl, the barriers had given away. In eagerness and
+self-contempt he surrendered to the vision. Go to an afternoon tea to
+see and speak with her again? He would, in that awakened mood, have
+walked across the continent, only to be in her presence, to feel himself
+once more within the radius of that inexorable charm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+"Katie's" sits, sedate and serviceable, on a narrow side street so near
+to Park Row that the big table in the rear rattles its dishes when the
+presses begin their seismic rumblings, in the daily effort to shake the
+world. Here gather the pick and choice of New York journalism, while
+still on duty, to eat and drink and discuss the inner news of things
+which is so often much more significant than the published version;
+haply to win or lose a few swiftly earned dollars at pass-three hearts.
+It is the unofficial press club of Newspaper Row.
+
+Said McHale of The Sphere, who, having been stuck with the queen of
+spades--that most unlucky thirteener--twice in succession, was retiring
+on his losses, to Mallory of The Ledger who had just come in:
+
+"I hear you've got a sucking genius at your shop."
+
+"If you mean Banneker, he's weaned," replied the assistant city editor
+of The Ledger. "He goes on space next week."
+
+"Does he, though! Quick work, eh?"
+
+"A record for the office. He's been on the staff less than a year."
+
+"Is he really such a wonder?" asked Glidden of The Monitor.
+
+Three or four Ledger men answered at once, citing various stories which
+had stirred the interest of Park Row.
+
+"Oh, you Ledger fellows are always giving the college yell for each
+other," said McHale, impatiently voicing the local jealousy of The
+Ledger's recognized _esprit de corps_. "I've seen bigger rockets than
+him come down in the ash-heap."
+
+"He won't," prophesied Tommy Burt, The Ledger's humorous specialist.
+"He'll go up and stay up. High! He's got the stuff."
+
+"They say," observed Fowler, the star man of The Patriot, "he covers his
+assignment in taxicabs."
+
+"He gets the news," murmured Mallory, summing up in that phrase all the
+encomiums which go to the perfect praise of the natural-born reporter.
+
+"And he writes it," put in Van Cleve of The Courier. "Lord, how that boy
+can write! Why, a Banneker two-sticks stands out as if it were printed
+in black-face."
+
+"I've never seen him around," remarked Glidden. "What does he do with
+himself besides work?"
+
+"Nothing, I imagine," answered Mallory. "One of the cubs reports finding
+him at the Public Library, before ten o'clock in the morning, surrounded
+by books on journalism. He's a serious young owl."
+
+"It doesn't get into his copy, then," asserted "Parson" Gale, political
+expert for The Ledger.
+
+"Nor into his appearance. He certainly dresses like a flower of the
+field. Even the wrinkles in his clothes have the touch of high-priced
+Fifth Avenue."
+
+"Must be rich," surmised Fowler. "Taxis for assignments and Fifth-Avenue
+raiment sound like real money."
+
+"Nobody knows where he got it, then," said Tommy Burt. "Used to be a
+freight brakeman or something out in the wild-and-woolly. When he
+arrived, he was dressed very proud and stiff like a Baptist elder going
+to make a social call, all but the made-up bow tie and the oil on the
+hair. Some change and sudden!"
+
+"Got a touch of the swelled head, though, hasn't he?" asked Van Cleve.
+"I hear he's beginning to pick his assignments already. Refuses to take
+society stuff and that sort of thing."
+
+"Oh," said Mallory, "I suppose that comes from his being assigned to a
+tea given by the Thatcher Forbes for some foreign celebrity, and asking
+to be let off because he'd already been invited there and declined."
+
+"Hello!" exclaimed McHale. "Where does our young bird come in to fly as
+high as the Thatcher Forbes? He may look like a million dollars, but is
+he?"
+
+"All I know," said Tommy Burt, "is that every Monday, which is his day
+off, he dines at Sherry's, and goes in lonely glory to a first-night, if
+there is one, afterward. It must have been costing him half of his
+week's salary."
+
+"Swelled head, sure," diagnosed Decker, the financial reporter of The
+Ledger. "Well, watch the great Chinese joss, Greenough, pull the props
+from under him when the time comes."
+
+"As how?" inquired Glidden.
+
+"By handing him a nawsty one out of the assignment book, just to show
+him where his hat fits too tight."
+
+"A run of four-line obits," suggested Van Cleve, who had passed a
+painful apprenticeship of death-notices in which is neither profitable
+space nor hopeful opportunity, "for a few days, will do it."
+
+"Or the job of asking an indignant millionaire papa why his pet daughter
+ran away with the second footman and where."
+
+"Or interviewing old frozen-faced Willis Enderby on his political
+intentions, honorable or dishonorable."
+
+"If I know Banneker," said Mallory, "he's game. He'll take what's handed
+him and put it over."
+
+"Once, maybe," contributed Tommy Burt. "Twice, perhaps. But I wouldn't
+want to crowd too much on him."
+
+"Greenough won't. He's wise in the ways of marvelous and unlicked cubs,"
+said Decker.
+
+"Why? What do you think Banneker would do?" asked Mallory curiously,
+addressing Burt.
+
+"If he got an assignment too rich for his stomach? Well, speaking
+unofficially and without special knowledge, I'd guess that he'd handle
+it to a finish, and then take his very smart and up-to-date hat and
+perform a polite adieu to Mr. Greenough and all the works of The Ledger
+city room."
+
+A thin, gray, somnolent elder at the end of the table, whose nobly cut
+face was seared with lines of physical pain endured and outlived,
+withdrew a very small pipe from his mouth and grunted.
+
+"The Venerable Russell Edmonds has the floor," said Tommy Burt in a
+voice whose open raillery subtly suggested an underlying affection and
+respect. "He snorts, and in that snort is sublimated the wisdom and
+experience of a ripe ninety years on Park Row. Speak, O Compendium of
+all the--"
+
+"Shut up, Tommy," interrupted Edmonds. He resumed his pipe, gave it two
+anxious puffs, and, satisfied of its continued vitality, said:
+
+"Banneker, uh? Resign, uh? You think he would?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Does _he_ think so?"
+
+"That's my belief."
+
+"He won't," pronounced the veteran with finality. "They never do. They
+chafe. They strain. They curse out the job and themselves. They say it
+isn't fit for any white man. So it isn't, the worst of it. But they
+stick. If they're marked for it, they stick."
+
+"Marked for it?" murmured Glidden.
+
+"The ink-spot. The mark of the beast. I've got it. You've got it,
+Glidden, and you, McHale. Mallory's smudged with it. Tommy thinks it's
+all over him, but it isn't. He'll end between covers. Fiction, like as
+not," he added with a mildly contemptuous smile. "But this young
+Banneker; it's eaten into him like acid."
+
+"Do you know him, Pop?" inquired McHale.
+
+"Never saw him. Don't have to. I've read his stuff."
+
+"And you see it there?"
+
+"Plain as Brooklyn Bridge. He'll eat mud like the rest of us."
+
+"Come off, Pop! Where do you come in to eat mud? You've got the
+creamiest job on Park Row. You never have to do anything that a railroad
+president need shy at."
+
+This was nearly true. Edmonds, who in his thirty years of service had
+filled almost every conceivable position from police headquarters
+reporter to managing editor, had now reverted to the phase for which the
+ink-spot had marked him, and was again a reporter; a sort of
+super-reporter, spending much of his time out around the country on
+important projects either of news, or of that special information
+necessary to a great daily, which does not always appear as news, but
+which may define, determine, or alter news and editorial policies.
+
+Of him it was said on Park Row, and not without reason, that he was
+bigger than his paper, which screened him behind a traditional principle
+of anonymity, for The Courier was of the second rank in metropolitan
+journalism and wavered between an indigenous Bourbonism and a desire to
+be thought progressive. The veteran's own creed was frankly socialistic;
+but in the Fabian phase. His was a patient philosophy, content with slow
+progress; but upon one point he was a passionate enthusiast. He believed
+in the widest possible scope of education, and in the fundamental duty
+of the press to stimulate it.
+
+"We'll get the Social Revolution just as soon as we're educated up to
+it," he was wont to declare. "If we get it before then, it'll be a worse
+hash than capitalism. So let's go slow and learn."
+
+For such a mind to be contributing to an organ of The Courier type might
+seem anomalous. Often Edmonds accused himself of shameful compromise;
+the kind of compromise constantly necessary to hold his place. Yet it
+was not any consideration of self-interest that bound him. He could have
+commanded higher pay in half a dozen open positions. Or, he could have
+afforded to retire, and write as he chose, for he had been a shrewd
+investor with wide opportunities. What really held him was his ability
+to forward almost imperceptibly through the kind of news political and
+industrial, which he, above all other journalists of his day, was able
+to determine and analyze, the radical projects dear to his heart.
+Nothing could have had a more titillating appeal to his sardonic humor
+than the furious editorial refutations in The Courier, of facts and
+tendencies plainly enunciated by him in the news columns.
+
+Nevertheless, his impotency to speak out openly and individually the
+faith that was in him, left always a bitter residue in his mind. It now
+informed his answer to Van Cleve's characterization of his job.
+
+"If I can sneak a tenth of the truth past the copy-desk," he said, "I'm
+doing well. And what sort of man am I when I go up against these
+big-bugs of industry at their conventions, and conferences, appearing as
+representative of The Courier which represents their interests? A damned
+hypocrite, I'd say! If they had brains enough to read between the lines
+of my stuff, they'd see it."
+
+"Why don't you tell 'em?" asked Mallory lazily.
+
+"I did, once. I told the President of the United Manufacturers'
+Association what I really thought of their attitude toward labor."
+
+"With what result?"
+
+"He ordered The Courier to fire me."
+
+"You're still there."
+
+"Yes. But he isn't. I went after him on his record."
+
+"All of which doesn't sound much like mud-eating, Pop."
+
+"I've done my bit of that in my time, too. I've had jobs to do that a
+self-respecting swill-hustler wouldn't touch. I've sworn I wouldn't do
+'em. And I've done 'em, rather than lose my job. Just as young Banneker
+will, when the test comes."
+
+"I'll bet he won't," said Tommy Burt.
+
+Mallory, who had been called away, returned in time to hear this. "You
+might ask him to settle the bet," he suggested. "I've just had him on
+the 'phone. He's coming around."
+
+"I will," said Edmonds.
+
+On his arrival Banneker was introduced to those of the men whom he did
+not know, and seated next to Edmonds.
+
+"We've been talking about you, young fellow," said the veteran.
+
+From most men Banneker would have found the form of address patronizing.
+But the thin, knotty face of Edmonds was turned upon him with so kindly
+a regard in the hollow eyes that he felt an innate stir of knowledge
+that here was a man who might be a friend. He made no answer, however,
+merely glancing at the speaker. To learn that the denizens of Park Row
+were discussing him, caused him neither surprise nor elation. While he
+knew that he had made hit after hit with his work, he was not inclined
+to over-value the easily won reputation. Edmonds's next remark did not
+please him.
+
+"We were discussing how much dirt you'd eat to hold your job on The
+Ledger."
+
+"The Ledger doesn't ask its men to eat dirt, Edmonds," put in Mallory
+sharply.
+
+"Chop, fried potatoes, coffee, and a stein of Nicklas-brau," Banneker
+specified across the table to the waiter. He studied the mimeographed
+bill-of-fare with selective attention. "And a slice of apple pie," he
+decided. Without change of tone, he looked up over the top of the menu
+at Edmonds slowly puffing his insignificant pipe and said: "I don't like
+your assumption, Mr. Edmonds."
+
+"It's ugly," admitted the other, "but you have to answer it. Oh, not to
+me!" he added, smiling. "To yourself."
+
+"It hasn't come my way yet."
+
+"It will. Ask any of these fellows. We've all had to meet it. Yes; you,
+too, Mallory. We've all had to eat our peck of dirt in the sacred name
+of news. Some are too squeamish. They quit."
+
+"If they're too squeamish, they'd never make real newspaper men,"
+pronounced McHale. "You can't be too good for your business."
+
+"Just so," said Tommy Burt acidly, "but your business can be too bad for
+you."
+
+"There's got to be news. And if there's got to be news there have got to
+be men willing to do hard, unpleasant work, to get it," argued Mallory.
+
+"Hard? All right," retorted Edmonds. "Unpleasant? Who cares! I'm talking
+about the dirty work. Wait a minute, Mallory. Didn't you ever have an
+assignment that was an outrage on some decent man's privacy? Or, maybe
+woman's? Something that made you sick at your stomach to have to do? Did
+you ever have to take a couple of drinks to give you nerve to ask some
+question that ought to have got you kicked downstairs for asking?"
+
+Mallory, flushing angrily, was silent. But McHale spoke up. "Hell! Every
+business has its stinks, I guess. What about being a lawyer and serving
+papers? Or a manufacturer and having to bootlick the buyers? I tell you,
+if the public wants a certain kind of news, it's the newspaper's
+business to serve it to 'em; and it's the newspaper man's business to
+get it for his paper. I say it's up to the public."
+
+"The public," murmured Edmonds. "Swill-eaters."
+
+"All right! Then give 'em the kind of swill they want," cried McHale.
+
+Edmonds so manipulated his little pipe that it pointed directly at
+Banneker. "Would you?" he asked.
+
+"Would I what?"
+
+"Give 'em the kind of swill they want? You seem to like to keep your
+hands clean."
+
+"Aren't you asking me your original question in another form?" smiled
+the young man.
+
+"You objected to it before."
+
+"I'll answer it now. A friend of mine wrote to me when I went on The
+Ledger, advising me always to be ready on a moment's notice to look my
+job between the eyes and tell it to go to hell."
+
+"Yes; I've known that done, too," interpolated Mallory. "But in those
+cases it isn't the job that goes." He pushed back his chair. "Don't let
+Pop Edmonds corrupt you with his pessimism, Banneker," he warned. "He
+doesn't mean half of it."
+
+"Under the seal of the profession," said the veteran. "If there were
+outsiders present, it would be different. I'd have to admit that ours is
+the greatest, noblest, most high-minded and inspired business in the
+world. Free and enlightened press. Fearless defender of the right.
+Incorruptible agent of the people's will. Did I say 'people's will' or
+'people's swill'? Don't ask me!"
+
+The others paid their accounts and followed Mallory out, leaving
+Banneker alone at the table with the saturnine elder. Edmonds put a
+thumbful of tobacco in his pipe, and puffed silently.
+
+"What will it get a man?" asked Banneker, setting down his coffee-cup.
+
+"This game?" queried the other.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"'What shall it profit a man,'" quoted the veteran ruminatively. "You
+know the rest."
+
+"No," returned Banneker decidedly. "That won't do. These fellows here
+haven't sold their souls."
+
+"Or lost 'em. Maybe not," admitted the elder. "Though I wouldn't gamble
+strong on some of 'em. But they've lost something."
+
+"Well, what is it? That's what I'm trying to get at."
+
+"Independence. They're merged in the paper they write for."
+
+"Every man's got to subordinate himself to his business, if he's to do
+justice to it and himself, hasn't he?"
+
+"Yes. If you're buying or selling stocks or socks, it doesn't matter.
+The principles you live by aren't involved. In the newspaper game they
+are."
+
+"Not in reporting, though."
+
+"If reporting were just gathering facts and presenting them, it wouldn't
+be so. But you're deep enough in by now to see that reporting of a lot
+of things is a matter of coloring your version to the general policy of
+your paper. Politics, for instance, or the liquor question, or labor
+troubles. The best reporters get to doing it unconsciously. Chameleons."
+
+"And you think it affects them?"
+
+"How can it help? There's a slow poison in writing one way when you
+believe another."
+
+"And that's part of the dirt-eating?"
+
+"Well, yes. Not so obvious as some of the other kinds. Those hurt your
+pride, mostly. This kind hurts your self-respect."
+
+"But where does it get you, all this business?" asked Banneker reverting
+to his first query.
+
+"I'm fifty-two years old," replied Edmonds quietly.
+
+Banneker stared. "Oh, I see!" he said presently. "And you're considered
+a success. Of course you _are_ a success."
+
+"On Park Row. Would you like to be me? At fifty-two?"
+
+"No, I wouldn't," said Banneker with a frankness which brought a faint
+smile to the other man's tired face. "Yet you've got where you started
+for, haven't you?"
+
+"Perhaps I could answer that if I knew where I started for or where I've
+got to."
+
+"Put it that you've got what you were after, then."
+
+"No's the answer. Upper-case No. I want to get certain things over to
+the public intelligence. Maybe I've got one per cent of them over. Not
+more."
+
+"That's something. To have a public that will follow you even part
+way--"
+
+"Follow me? Bless you; they don't know me except as a lot of print that
+they occasionally read. I'm as anonymous as an editorial writer. And
+that's the most anonymous thing there is."
+
+"That doesn't suit me at all," declared Banneker. "If I have got
+anything in me--and I think I have--I don't want it to make a noise like
+a part of a big machine. I'd rather make a small noise of my own."
+
+"Buy a paper, then. Or write fluffy criticisms about art or theaters. Or
+get into the magazine field. You can write; O Lord! yes, you can write.
+But unless you've got the devotion of a fanatic like McHale, or a born
+servant of the machine like 'Parson' Gale, or an old fool like me,
+willing to sink your identity in your work, you'll never be content as a
+reporter."
+
+"Tell me something. Why do none of the men, talking among themselves,
+ever refer to themselves as reporters. It's always 'newspaper men.'"
+
+Edmonds shot a swift glance at him. "What do you think?"
+
+"I think," he decided slowly, "it's because there is a sort of stigma
+attached to reporting."
+
+"Damn you, you're right!" snapped the veteran. "Though it's the rankest
+heresy to admit it. There's a taint about it. There's a touch of the
+pariah. We try to fool ourselves into thinking there isn't. But it's
+there, and we admit it when we use a clumsy, misfit term like 'newspaper
+man.'"
+
+"Whose fault is it?"
+
+"The public's. The public is a snob. It likes to look down on brains.
+Particularly the business man. That's why I'm a Socialist. I'm ag'in the
+bourgeoisie."
+
+"Aren't the newspapers to blame, in the kind of stuff they print?"
+
+"And why do they print it?" demanded the other fiercely. "Because the
+public wants all the filth and scandal and invasion of privacy that it
+can get and still feel respectable."
+
+"The Ledger doesn't go in for that sort of thing."
+
+"Not as much as some of the others. But a little more each year. It
+follows the trend." He got up, quenched his pipe, and reached for his
+hat. "Drop in here about seven-thirty when you feel like hearing the old
+man maunder," he said with his slight, friendly smile.
+
+Rising, Banneker leaned over to him. "Who's the man at the next table?"
+he asked in a low voice, indicating a tall, broad, glossily dressed
+diner who was sipping his third _demi-tasse_, in apparent detachment
+from the outside world.
+
+"His name is Marrineal," replied the veteran. "He dines here
+occasionally alone. Don't know what he does."
+
+"He's been listening in."
+
+"Curious thing; he often does."
+
+As they parted at the door, Edmonds said paternally:
+
+"Remember, young fellow, a Park Row reputation is written on glass with
+a wet finger. It doesn't last during the writing."
+
+"And only dims the glass," said Banneker reflectively.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Heat, sudden, savage, and oppressive, bore down upon the city early that
+spring, smiting men in their offices, women in their homes, the horses
+between the shafts of their toil, so that the city was in danger of
+becoming disorganized. The visitation developed into the big story of
+successive days. It was the sort of generalized, picturesque
+"fluff-stuff" matter which Banneker could handle better than his
+compeers by sheer imaginative grasp and deftness of presentation. Being
+now a writer on space, paid at the rate of eight dollars a column of
+from thirteen to nineteen hundred words, he found the assignment
+profitable and the test of skill quite to his taste. Soft job though it
+was in a way, however, the unrelenting pressure of the heat and the task
+of finding, day after day, new phases and fresh phrases in which to deal
+with it, made inroads upon his nerves.
+
+He took to sleeping ill again. Io Welland had come back in all the
+glamorous panoply of waking dreams to command and torment his loneliness
+of spirit. At night he dreaded the return to the draughtless room on
+Grove Street. In the morning, rising sticky-eyed and unrested, he shrank
+from the thought of the humid, dusty, unkempt hurly-burly of the office.
+Yet his work was never more brilliant and individual.
+
+Having finished his writing, one reeking midnight, he sat, spent, at his
+desk, hating the thought of the shut-in place that he called home.
+Better to spend the night on a bench in some square, as he had done
+often enough in the earlier days. He rose, took his hat, and had reached
+the first landing when the steps wavered and faded in front of him and
+he found himself clutching for the rail. A pair of hands gripped his
+shoulders and held him up.
+
+"What's the matter, Mr. Banneker?" asked a voice.
+
+"God!" muttered Banneker. "I wish I were back on the desert."
+
+"You want a drink," prescribed his volunteer prop.
+
+As his vision and control reestablished themselves, Banneker found
+himself being led downstairs and to the nearest bar by young Fentriss
+Smith, who ordered two soda cocktails.
+
+Of Smith he knew little except that the office called him "the permanent
+twenty-five-dollar man." He was one of those earnest, faithful, totally
+uninspired reporters, who can be relied upon implicitly for routine
+news, but are constitutionally impotent to impart color and life to any
+subject whatsoever. Patiently he had seen younger and newer men overtake
+and pass him; but he worked on inexorably, asking for nothing, wearing
+the air of a scholar with some distant and abstruse determination in
+view. Like Banneker he had no intimates in the office.
+
+"The desert," echoed Smith in his quiet, well-bred voice. "Isn't it
+pretty hot, there, too?"
+
+"It's open," said Banneker. "I'm smothering here."
+
+"You look frazzled out, if you don't mind my saying so."
+
+"I feel frazzled out; that's what I mind."
+
+"Suppose you come out with me to-night as soon as I report to the desk,"
+suggested the other.
+
+Banneker, refreshed by the tingling drink, looked down at him in
+surprise. "Where?" he asked.
+
+"I've got a little boat out here in the East River."
+
+"A boat? Lord, that sounds good!" sighed Banneker.
+
+"Does it? Then see here! Why couldn't you put in a few days with me, and
+cool off? I've often wanted to talk to you about the newspaper business,
+and get your ideas."
+
+"But I'm newer at it than you are."
+
+"For a fact! Just the same you've got the trick of it and I haven't.
+I'll go around to your place while you pack a suitcase, and we're off."
+
+"That's very good of you." Accustomed though he was to the swift and
+ready comradeship of a newspaper office, Banneker was puzzled by this
+advance from the shy and remote Smith. "All right: if you'll let me
+share expenses," he said presently.
+
+Smith seemed taken aback at this. "Just as you like," he assented.
+"Though I don't quite know--We'll talk of that later."
+
+While Banneker was packing in his room, Smith, seated on the
+window-sill, remarked:
+
+"I ought to tell you that we have to go through a bad district to get
+there."
+
+"The Tunnel Gang?" asked Banneker, wise in the plague spots of the city.
+
+"Just this side of their stamping ground. It's a gang of wharf rats.
+There have been a number of hold-ups, and last week a dead woman was
+found under the pier."
+
+Banneker made an unobtrusive addition to his packing. "They'll have to
+move fast to catch me," he observed.
+
+"Two of us together won't be molested. But if you're alone, be careful.
+The police in that precinct are no good. They're either afraid or they
+stand in with the gang."
+
+On Fifth Avenue the pair got a late-cruising taxicab whose driver,
+however, declined to take them nearer than one block short of the pier.
+"The night air in that place ain't good fer weak constitutions," he
+explained. "One o' my pals got a headache last week down on the pier
+from bein' beaned with a sandbag."
+
+No one interfered with the two reporters, however. A whistle from the
+end of the pier evolved from the watery dimness a dinghy, which, in a
+hundred yards of rowing, delivered them into a small but perfectly
+appointed yacht. Banneker, looking about the luxurious cabin, laughed a
+little.
+
+"That was a bad guess of mine about half expenses," he said
+good-humoredly. "I'd have to mortgage my future for a year. Do you own
+this craft?"
+
+"My father does. He's been called back West."
+
+Bells rang, the wheel began to churn, and Banneker, falling asleep in
+his berth with a vivifying breeze blowing across him, awoke in broad
+daylight to a view of sparkling little waves which danced across his
+vision to smack impudently the flanks of the speeding craft.
+
+"We'll be in by noon," was Smith's greeting as they met on the
+companionway for a swim.
+
+"What do you do it for?" asked Banneker, seated at the breakfast table,
+with an appetite such as he had not known for weeks.
+
+"Do what?"
+
+"Two men's work at twenty-five per for The Ledger?"
+
+"Training."
+
+"Are you going to stick to the business?"
+
+"The family," explained Smith, "own a newspaper in Toledo. It fell to
+them by accident. Our real business is manufacturing farm machinery, and
+none of us has ever tried or thought of manufacturing newspapers. So
+they wished on me the job of learning how."
+
+"Do you like it?"
+
+"Not particularly. But I'm going through with it."
+
+Banneker felt a new and surprised respect for his host. He could
+forecast the kind of small city newspaper that Smith would make;
+careful, conscientious, regular in politics, loyal to what it deemed the
+best interests of the community, single-minded in its devotion to the
+Smith family and its properties; colorless, characterless, and without
+vision or leadership in all that a newspaper should, according to
+Banneker's opinion, stand for. So he talked with the fervor of an
+enthusiast, a missionary, a devotee, who saw in that daily chronicle of
+the news an agency to stir men's minds and spur their thoughts, if need
+be, to action; at the same time the mechanism and instrument of power,
+of achievement, of success. Fentriss Smith listened and was troubled in
+spirit by these unknown fires. He had supposed respectability to be the
+final aim and end of a sound newspaper tradition.
+
+The apparent intimacy which had sprung up between twenty-five-dollar
+Smith and the reserved, almost hermit-like Banneker was the subject of
+curious and amused commentary in The Ledger office. Mallory hazarded a
+humorous guess that Banneker was tutoring Smith in the finer arts of
+journalism, which was not so far amiss as its proponent might have
+supposed.
+
+The Great Heat broke several evenings later in a drench of rain and
+wind. This, being in itself important news, kept Banneker late at his
+writing, and he had told his host not to wait, that he would join him on
+the yacht sometime about midnight. So Smith had gone on alone.
+
+The next morning Tommy Burt, lounging into the office from an early
+assignment, approached the City Desk with a twinkle far back in his
+lively eyes.
+
+"Hear anything of a shoot-fest up in the Bad Lands last night?" he
+asked.
+
+"Not yet," replied Mr. Greenough. "They're getting to be everyday
+occurrences up there. Is it on the police slips, Mr. Mallory?"
+
+"No. Nothing in that line," answered the assistant, looking over his
+assortment.
+
+"Police are probably suppressing it," opined Burt.
+
+"Have you got the story?" queried Mr. Greenough.
+
+"In outline. It isn't really my story."
+
+"Whose is it, then?"
+
+"That's part of it." Tommy Burt leaned against Mallory's desk and
+appeared to be revolving some delectable thought in his mind.
+
+"Tommy," said Mallory, "they didn't open that committee meeting you've
+been attending with a corkscrew, did they?"
+
+"I'm intoxicated with the chaste beauties of my story, which isn't
+mine," returned the dreamily smiling Mr. Burt. "Here it is, boiled down.
+Guest on an anchored yacht returning late, sober, through the mist.
+Wharf-gang shooting craps in a pier-shed. They size him up and go to it;
+six of 'em. Knives and one gun: maybe more. The old game: one asks for
+the time. Another sneaks up behind and gives the victim the
+elbow-garrote. The rest rush him. Well, they got as far as the garrote.
+Everything lovely and easy. Then Mr. Victim introduces a few
+specialties. Picks a gun from somewhere around his shirt-front, shoots
+the garroter over his shoulder; kills the man in front, who is at him
+with a stiletto, ducks a couple of shots from the gang, and lays out two
+more of 'em. The rest take to the briny. Tally: two dead, one dying, one
+wounded, Mr. Guest walks to the shore end, meets two patrolmen, and
+turns in his gun. 'I've done a job for you,' says he. So they pinch him.
+He's in the police station, _incomunicado_."
+
+Throughout the narrative, Mr. Greenough had thrown in little, purring
+interjections of "Good! Good!"--"Yes."--"Ah! good!" At the conclusion
+Mallory exclaimed!
+
+"Moses! That is a story! You say it isn't yours? Why not?"
+
+"Because it's Banneker's."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"He's the guest with the gun."
+
+Mallory jumped in his chair. "Banneker!" he exclaimed. "Oh, hell!" he
+added disconsolately.
+
+"Takes the shine out of the story, doesn't it?" observed Burt with a
+malicious smile.
+
+One of the anomalous superstitions of newspaperdom is that nothing which
+happens to a reporter in the line of his work is or can be "big news."
+The mere fact that he is a reporter is enough to blight the story.
+
+"What was Banneker doing down there?" queried Mr. Greenough.
+
+"Visiting on a yacht."
+
+"Is that so?" There was a ray of hope in the other's face. The glamour
+of yachting association might be made to cast a radiance about the
+event, in which the damnatory fact that the principal figure was a mere
+reporter could be thrown into low relief. Such is the view which
+journalistic snobbery takes of the general public's snobbery. "Whose
+yacht?"
+
+Again the spiteful little smile appealed on Burt's lips as he dashed the
+rising hope. "Fentriss Smith's."
+
+And again the expletive of disillusion burst from between Mallory's
+teeth as he saw the front-page double-column spread, a type-specialty of
+the usually conservative Ledger upon which it prided itself, dwindle to
+a carefully handled inside-page three-quarter of a column.
+
+"You say that Mr. Banneker is in the police station?" asked the city
+editor.
+
+"Or at headquarters. They're probably working the third degree on him."
+
+"That won't do," declared the city desk incumbent, with conviction. He
+caught up the telephone, got the paper's City Hall reporter, and was
+presently engaged in some polite but pointed suggestions to His Honor
+the Mayor. Shortly after, Police Headquarters called; the Chief himself
+was on the wire.
+
+"The Ledger is behind Mr. Banneker, Chief," said Mr. Greenough crisply.
+"Carrying concealed weapons? If your men in that precinct were fit to be
+on the force, there would be no need for private citizens to go armed.
+You get the point, I see. Good-bye."
+
+"Unless I am a bad guesser we'll have Banneker back here by evening. And
+there'll be no manhandling in his case," Mallory said to Burt.
+
+Counsel was taken of Mr. Gordon, as soon as that astute managing editor
+arrived, as to the handling of the difficult situation. The Ledger,
+always cynically intolerant of any effort to better the city government,
+as savoring of "goo-gooism," which was its special _bete noire_, could
+not well make the shooting a basis for a general attack upon police
+laxity, though it was in this that lay the special news possibility of
+the event. On the other hand, the thing was far too sensational to be
+ignored or too much slurred.
+
+Andreas, the assistant managing editor, in charge of the paper's
+make-up, a true news-hound with an untainted delight in the unusual and
+striking, no matter what its setting might be, who had been called into
+the conference, advocated "smearing it all over the front page, with
+Banneker's first-hand statement for the lead--pictures too."
+
+Him, Mr. Greenough, impassive joss of the city desk, regarded with a
+chill eye. "One reporter visiting another gets into a muss and shoots up
+some riverside toughs," he remarked contemptuously. "You can hardly
+expect our public to get greatly excited over that. Are we going into
+the business of exploiting our own cubs?"
+
+Thereupon there was sharp discussion to which Mr. Gordon put an end by
+remarking that the evening papers would doubtless give them a lead;
+meantime they could get Banneker's version.
+
+First to come in was The Evening New Yorker, the most vapid of all the
+local prints, catering chiefly to the uptown and shopping element. Its
+heading half-crossed the page proclaiming "Guest of Yachtsman Shoots
+Down Thugs." Nowhere in the article did it appear that Banneker had any
+connection with the newspaper world. He was made to appear as a young
+Westerner on a visit to the yacht of a millionaire business man, having
+come on from his ranch in the desert, and presumptively--to add the
+touch of godhead--a millionaire himself.
+
+"The stinking liars!" said Andreas.
+
+"That settles it," declared Mr. Gordon. "We'll give the facts plainly
+and without sensationalism; but all the facts."
+
+"Including Mr. Banneker's connection here?" inquired Mr. Greenough.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+The other evening papers, more honest than The Evening New Yorker,
+admitted, though, as it were, regretfully and in an inconspicuous finale
+to their accounts that the central figure of the sensation was only a
+reporter. But the fact of his being guest on a yacht was magnified and
+glorified.
+
+At five o'clock Banneker arrived, having been bailed out after some
+difficulty, for the police were frightened and ugly, foreseeing that
+this swift vengeance upon the notorious gang, meted out by a private
+hand, would throw a vivid light upon their own inefficiency and
+complaisance. Happily the District Attorney's office was engaged in one
+of its periodical feuds with the Police Department over some matter of
+graft gone astray, and was more inclined to make a cat's-paw than a
+victim out of Banneker.
+
+Though inwardly strung to a high pitch, for the police officials had
+kept him sleepless through the night by their habitual inquisition,
+Banneker held himself well in hand as he went to the City Desk to report
+gravely that he had been unable to come earlier.
+
+"So we understand, Mr. Banneker," said Mr. Greenough, his placid
+features for once enlivened. "That was a good job you did. I
+congratulate you."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Greenough," returned Banneker. "I had to do it or get
+done. And, at that, it wasn't much of a trick. They were a yellow lot."
+
+"Very likely: very likely. You've handled a gun before."
+
+"Only in practice."
+
+"Ever shot anybody before?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"How does it feel?" inquired the city editor, turning his pale eyes on
+the other and fussing nervously with his fingers.
+
+"At first you want to go on killing," answered Banneker. "Then, when
+it's over, there's a big let-down. It doesn't seem as if it were you."
+He paused and added boyishly: "The evening papers are making an awful
+fuss over it."
+
+"What do you expect? It isn't every day that a Wild West Show with real
+bullets and blood is staged in this effete town."
+
+"Of course I knew there'd be a kick-up about it," admitted Banneker.
+"But, some way--well, in the West, if a gang gets shot up, there's quite
+a bit of talk for a while, and the boys want to buy the drinks for the
+fellow that does it, but it doesn't spread all over the front pages. I
+suppose I still have something of the Western view.... How much did you
+want of this, Mr. Greenough?" he concluded in a business-like tone.
+
+"You are not doing the story, Mr. Banneker. Tommy Burt is."
+
+"I'm not writing it? Not any of it?"
+
+"Certainly not. You're the hero"--there was a hint of elongation of the
+first syllable which might have a sardonic connotation from those pale
+and placid lips--"not the historian. Burt will interview you."
+
+"A Patriot reporter has already. I gave him a statement."
+
+Mr. Greenough frowned. "It would have been as well to have waited.
+However."
+
+"Oh, Banneker," put in Mallory, "Judge Enderby wants you to call at his
+office."
+
+"Who's Judge Enderby?"
+
+"Chief Googler of the Goo-Goos; the Law Enforcement Society lot. They
+call him the ablest honest lawyer in New York. He's an old crab. Hates
+the newspapers, particularly us."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"He cherishes some theory," said Mr. Greenough in his most toneless
+voice, "that a newspaper ought to be conducted solely in the interests
+of people like himself."
+
+"Is there any reason why I should go chasing around to see him?"
+
+"That's as you choose. He doesn't see reporters often. Perhaps it would
+be as well."
+
+"His outfit are after the police," explained Mallory. "That's what he
+wants you for. It's part of their political game. Always politics."
+
+"Well, he can wait until to-morrow, I suppose," remarked Banneker
+indifferently.
+
+Greenough examined him with impenetrable gaze. This was a very cavalier
+attitude toward Judge Willis Enderby. For Enderby was a man of real
+power. He might easily have been the most munificently paid corporation
+attorney in the country but for the various kinds of business which he
+would not, in his own homely phrase, "poke at with a burnt stick."
+Notwithstanding his prejudices, he was confidential legal adviser, in
+personal and family affairs, to a considerable percentage of the
+important men and women of New York. He was supposed to be the only man
+who could handle that bull-elephant of finance, ruler of Wall Street,
+and, when he chose to give it his contemptuous attention, dictator,
+through his son and daughters, of the club and social world of New York,
+old Poultney Masters, in the apoplectic rages into which the slightest
+thwart to his will plunged him. To Enderby's adroitness the financier
+(one of whose pet vanities was a profound and wholly baseless faith in
+himself as a connoisseur of art) owed it that he had not become a
+laughing-stock through his purchase of a pair of particularly flagrant
+Murillos, planted for his special behoof by a gang of clever Italian
+swindlers. Rumor had it that when Enderby had privately summed up his
+client's case for his client's benefit before his client as referee, in
+these words: "And, Mr. Masters, if you act again in these matters
+without consulting me, you must find another lawyer; I cannot afford
+fools for clients"--they had to call in a physician and resort to the
+ancient expedient of bleeding, to save the great man's cerebral arteries
+from bursting.
+
+Toward the public press, Enderby's attitude was the exact reverse of
+Horace Vanney's. For himself, he unaffectedly disliked and despised
+publicity; for the interests which he represented, he delegated it to
+others. He would rarely be interviewed; his attitude toward the
+newspapers was consistently repellent. Consequently his infrequent
+utterances were treasured as pearls, and given a prominence far above
+those of the too eager and over-friendly Mr. Vanney, who, incidentally,
+was his associate on the directorate of the Law Enforcement Society. The
+newspapers did not like Willis Enderby any more than he liked them. But
+they cherished for him an unrequited respect.
+
+That a reporter, a nobody of yesterday whose association with The Ledger
+constituted his only claim to any status whatever, should profess
+indifference to a summons from a man of Enderby's position, suggested
+affectation to Mr. Greenough's suspicions. Young Mr. Banneker's head was
+already swelling, was it? Very well; in the course of time and his
+duties, Mr. Greenough would apply suitable remedies.
+
+If Banneker were, indeed, taking a good conceit of himself from the
+conspicuous position achieved so unexpectedly, the morning papers did
+nothing to allay it. Most of them slurred over, as lightly as possible,
+the fact of his journalistic connection; as in the evening editions, the
+yacht feature was kept to the fore. There were two exceptions. The
+Ledger itself, in a colorless and straightforward article, frankly
+identified the hero of the episode, in the introductory sentence, as a
+member of its city staff, and his host of the yacht as another
+journalist. But there was one notable omission about which Banneker
+determined to ask Tommy Burt as soon as he could see him. The Patriot,
+most sensational of the morning issues, splurged wildly under the
+caption, "Yacht Guest Cleans Out Gang Which Cowed Police." The Sphere,
+in an editorial, demanded a sweeping and honest investigation of the
+conditions which made life unsafe in the greatest of cities. The Sphere
+was always demanding sweeping and honest investigations, and not
+infrequently getting them. In Greenough's opinion this undesirable
+result was likely to be achieved now. To Mr. Gordon he said:
+
+"We ought to shut down all we can on the Banneker follow-up. An
+investigation with our man as prosecuting witness would put us in the
+position of trying to reform the police, and would play into the hands
+of the Enderby crowd."
+
+The managing editor shook a wise and grizzled head. "If The Patriot
+keeps up its whooping and The Sphere its demanding, the administration
+will have to do something. After all, Mr. Greenough, things have become
+pretty unendurable in the Murder Precinct."
+
+"That's true. But the signed statement of Banneker's in The
+Patriot--it's really an interview faked up as a statement--is a savage
+attack on the whole administration."
+
+"I understand," remarked Mr. Gordon, "that they were going to beat him
+up scientifically in the station house when Smith came in and scared
+them out of it."
+
+"Yes. Banneker is pretty angry over it. You can't blame him. But that's
+no reason why we should alienate the city administration.... Then you
+think, Mr. Gordon, that we'll have to keep the story running?"
+
+"I think, Mr. Greenough, that we'll have to give the news," answered the
+managing editor austerely. "Where is Banneker now?"
+
+"With Judge Enderby, I believe. In case of an investigation he won't be
+much use to us until it's over."
+
+"Can't be helped," returned Mr. Gordon serenely. "We'll stand by our
+man."
+
+Banneker had gone to the old-fashioned offices of Enderby and Enderby,
+in a somewhat inimical frame of mind. Expectant of an invitation to aid
+the Law Enforcement Society in cleaning up a pest-hole of crime, he was
+half determined to have as little to do with it as possible. Overnight
+consideration had developed in him the theory that the function of a
+newspaper is informative, not reformative; that when a newspaper man has
+correctly adduced and frankly presented the facts, his social as well as
+his professional duty is done. Others might hew out the trail thus
+blazed; the reporter, bearing his searchlight, should pass on to other
+dark spots. All his theories evaporated as soon as he confronted Judge
+Enderby, forgotten in the interest inspired by the man.
+
+A portrait painter once said of Willis Enderby that his face was that of
+a saint, illumined, not by inspiration, but by shrewdness. With his
+sensitiveness to beauty of whatever kind, Banneker felt the
+extraordinary quality of the face, beneath its grim outline,
+interpreting it from the still depth of the quiet eyes rather than from
+the stern mouth and rather tyrannous nose. He was prepared for an abrupt
+and cold manner, and was surprised when the lawyer rose to shake hands,
+giving him a greeting of courtly congratulation upon his courage and
+readiness. If the purpose of this was to get Banneker to expand, as he
+suspected, it failed. The visitor sensed the cold reserve behind the
+smile.
+
+"Would you be good enough to run through this document?" requested the
+lawyer, motioning Banneker to a seat opposite himself, and handing him a
+brief synopsis of what the Law Enforcement Society hoped to prove
+regarding police laxity.
+
+Exercising that double faculty of mind which later became a part of the
+Banneker legend in New York journalism, the reader, whilst absorbing the
+main and quite simple points of the report, recalled an instance in
+which an Atkinson and St. Philip ticket agent had been maneuvered into a
+posture facing a dazzling sunset, and had adjusted his vision to find it
+focused upon the barrel of a 45. Without suspecting the Judge of hold-up
+designs, he nevertheless developed a parallel. Leaving his chair he
+walked over and sat by the window. Halfway through the document, he
+quietly laid it aside and returned the lawyer's studious regard.
+
+"Have you finished?" asked Judge Enderby.
+
+"No."
+
+"You do not find it interesting?"
+
+"Less interesting than your idea in giving it to me."
+
+"What do you conceive that to have been?"
+
+By way of reply, Banneker cited the case of Tim Lake, the robbed agent.
+"I think," he added with a half smile, "that you and I will do better in
+the open."
+
+"I think so, too. Mr. Banneker, are you honest?"
+
+"Where I came from, that would be regarded as a trouble-hunter's
+question."
+
+"I ask you to regard it as important and take it without offense."
+
+"I don't know about that," returned Banneker gravely. "We'll see.
+Honest, you say. Are you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then why do you begin by doubting the honesty of a stranger against
+whom you know nothing?"
+
+"Legal habit, I dare say. Fortified, in this case, by your association
+with The Ledger."
+
+"You haven't a high opinion of my paper?"
+
+"The very highest, of its adroitness and expertness. It can make the
+better cause appear the worse with more skill than any other journal in
+America."
+
+"I thought that was the specialty of lawyers."
+
+Judge Enderby accepted the touch with a smile.
+
+"A lawyer is an avowed special pleader. He represents one side. A
+newspaper is supposed to be without bias and to present the facts for
+the information of its one client, the public. You will readily
+appreciate the difference."
+
+"I do. Then you don't consider The Ledger honest."
+
+Judge Enderby's composed glance settled upon the morning's issue, spread
+upon his desk. "I have, I assume, the same opinion of The Ledger's
+honesty that you have."
+
+"Do you mind explaining that to me quite simply, so that I shall be sure
+to understand it?" invited Banneker.
+
+"You have read the article about your exploit?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is that honest?"
+
+"It is as accurate a job as I've ever known done."
+
+"Granted. Is it honest?"
+
+"I don't know," answered the other after a pause. "I intend to find
+out."
+
+"You intend to find out why it is so reticent on every point that might
+impugn the police, I take it. I could tell you; but yours is the better
+way. You gave the same interview to your own paper that you gave to The
+Patriot, I assume. By the way, what a commentary on journalism that the
+most scurrilous sheet in New York should have given the fullest and
+frankest treatment to the subject; a paper written by the dregs of Park
+Row for the reading of race-track touts and ignorant servant girls!"
+
+"Yes; I gave them the same interview. It may have been crowded out--"
+
+"For lack of space," supplied Enderby in a tone which the other heartily
+disliked. "Mr. Banneker, I thought that this was to be in the open."
+
+"I'm wrong," confessed the other. "I'll know by this evening why the
+police part was handled that way, and if it was policy--" He stopped,
+considering.
+
+"Well?" prompted the other.
+
+"I'll go through to the finish with your committee."
+
+"You're as good as pledged," retorted the lawyer. "I shall expect to
+hear from you."
+
+As soon as he could find Tommy Burt, Banneker put to him the direct
+question. "What is the matter with the story as I gave it to you?"
+
+Burt assumed an air of touching innocence. "The story had to be handled
+with great care," he explained blandly.
+
+"Come off, Tommy. Didn't you write the police part?"
+
+Tommy Burl's eyes denoted the extreme of candor. "It was suggested to me
+that your views upon the police, while interesting and even important,
+might be misunderstood."
+
+"Is _that_ so? And who made the suggestion?"
+
+"An all-wise city desk."
+
+"Thank you. Tommy."
+
+"The Morning Ledger," volunteered Tommy Burt, "has a high and
+well-merited reputation for its fidelity to the principles of truth and
+fairness and to the best interests of the reading public. It never gives
+the public any news to play with that it thinks the dear little thing
+ought not to have. Did you say anything? No? Well; you meant it. You're
+wrong. The Ledger is the highest-class newspaper in New York. We are the
+Elect!"
+
+In his first revulsion of anger, Banneker was for going to Mr. Greenough
+and having it out with him. If it meant his resignation, very good. He
+was ready to look his job in the eye and tell it to go to hell. Turning
+the matter over in his mind, however, he decided upon another course. So
+far as the sensational episode of which he was the central figure went,
+he would regard himself consistently as a private citizen with no
+responsibility whatsoever to The Ledger. Let the paper print or suppress
+what it chose; his attitude toward it would be identical with his
+attitude toward the other papers. Probably the office powers would
+heartily disapprove of his having any dealings with Enderby and his Law
+Enforcement Society. Let them! He telephoned a brief but final message
+to Enderby and Enderby. When, late that night, Mr. Gordon called him over
+and suggested that it was highly desirable to let the whole affair drop
+out of public notice as soon as the startling facts would permit, he
+replied that Judge Enderby had already arranged to push an
+investigation.
+
+"Doubtless," observed the managing editor. "It is his specialty. But
+without your evidence they can't go far."
+
+"They can have my evidence."
+
+Mr. Gordon, who had been delicately balancing his letter-opener, now
+delivered a whack of such unthinking ferocity upon his fat knuckle as to
+produce a sharp pang. He gazed in surprise and reproach upon the aching
+thumb and something of those emotions informed the regard which he
+turned slowly upon Banneker.
+
+Mr. Gordon's frame of mind was unenviable. The Inside Room, moved by
+esoteric considerations, political and, more remotely, financial, had
+issued to him a managerial ukase; no police investigation if it could be
+avoided. Now, news was the guise in which Mr. Gordon sincerely worshiped
+Truth, the God. But Mammon, in the Inside Room, held the purse-strings
+Mr. Gordon had arrived at his honorable and well-paid position, not by
+wisdom alone, but also by compromise. Here was a situation where news
+must give way to the more essential interests of the paper.
+
+"Mr. Banneker," he said, "that investigation will take a great deal of
+your time; more, I fear, than the paper can afford to give you."
+
+"They will arrange to put me on the stand in the mornings."
+
+"Further, any connection between a Ledger man and the Enderby Committee
+is undesirable and injudicious."
+
+"I'm sorry," answered Banneker simply. "I've said I'd go through with
+it."
+
+Mr. Gordon selected a fresh knuckle for his modified drumming. "Have you
+considered your duty to the paper, Mr. Banneker? If not, I advise you to
+do so." The careful manner, more than the words, implied threat.
+
+Banneker leaned forward as if for a confidential communication, as he
+lapsed into a gross Westernism:
+
+"Mr. Gordon, _I_ am paying for this round of drinks."
+
+Somehow the managing editor received the impression that this remark,
+delivered in just that tone of voice and in its own proper environment,
+was usually accompanied by a smooth motion of the hand toward the pistol
+holster.
+
+Banneker, after asking whether there was anything more, and receiving a
+displeased shake of the head, went away.
+
+"Now," said he to the waiting Tommy Burt, "they'll probably fire me."
+
+"Let 'em! You can get plenty of other jobs. But I don't think they will.
+Old Gordon is really with you. It makes him sick to have to doctor
+news."
+
+Sleepless until almost morning, Banneker reviewed in smallest detail his
+decision and the situation to which it had led. He thought that he had
+taken the right course. He felt that Miss Camilla would approve. Judge
+Enderby's personality, he recognized, had exerted some influence upon
+his decision. He had conceived for the lawyer an instinctive respect and
+liking. There was about him a power of attraction, not readily
+definable, but seeming mysteriously to assert some hidden claim from the
+past.
+
+Where had he seen that fine and still face before?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Sequels of a surprising and diverse character followed Banneker's sudden
+fame. The first to manifest itself was disconcerting. On the Wednesday
+following the fight on the pier, Mrs. Brashear intercepted him in the
+hallway.
+
+"I'm sure we all admire what you did, Mr. Banneker," she began, in
+evident trepidation.
+
+The subject of this eulogy murmured something deprecatory.
+
+"It was very brave of you. Most praiseworthy. We appreciate it, all of
+us. Yes, indeed. It's very painful, Mr. Banneker. I never expected
+to--to--indeed, I couldn't have believed--" Mrs. Brashear's plump little
+hands made gestures so fluttery and helpless that her lodger was moved
+to come to her aid.
+
+"What's the matter, Mrs. Brashear? What's troubling you?"
+
+"If you could make it convenient," said she tremulously, "when your
+month is up. I shouldn't think of asking you before."
+
+"Are you giving me notice?" he inquired in amazement.
+
+"If you don't mind, please. The notoriety, the--the--your being
+arrested. You were arrested, weren't you?"
+
+"Oh, yes. But the coroner's jury cleared--"
+
+"Such a thing never happened to any of my guests before. To have my
+house in the police records," wept Mrs. Brashear. "Really, Mr. Banneker,
+really! You can't know how it hurts one's pride."
+
+"I'll go next week," said the evicted one, divided between amusement and
+annoyance, and retired to escape another outburst of grief.
+
+Now that the matter was presented to him, he was rather glad to be
+leaving. Quarters somewhere in mid-town, more in consonance with his
+augmented income, suggested themselves as highly desirable. Since the
+affray he had been the object of irksome attentions from his fellow
+lodgers. It is difficult to say whether he found the more unendurable
+young Wickert's curiosity regarding details, Hainer's pompous adulation,
+or Lambert's admiring but jocular attitude. The others deemed it their
+duty never to refrain from some reference to the subject wherever and
+whenever they encountered him. The one exception was Miss Westlake. She
+congratulated him once, quietly but with warm sincerity; and when next
+she came to his door, dealt with another topic.
+
+"Mrs. Brashear tells me that you are leaving, Mr. Banneker."
+
+"Did she tell you why? That she has fired me out?"
+
+"No. She didn't."
+
+Banneker, a little surprised and touched at the landlady's reticence,
+explained.
+
+"Ah, well," commented Miss Westlake, "you would soon have outgrown us in
+any case."
+
+"I'm not so sure. Where one lives doesn't so much matter. And I'm a
+creature of habit."
+
+"I think that you are going to be a very big man, Mr. Banneker."
+
+"Do you?" He smiled down at her. "Now, why?"
+
+She did not answer his smile. "You've got power," she replied. "And you
+have mastered your medium--or gone far toward it."
+
+"I'm grateful for your good opinion," he began courteously; but she
+broke in on him, shaking her head.
+
+"If it were mine alone, it wouldn't matter. It's the opinion of those
+who know. Mr. Banneker, I've been taking a liberty."
+
+"You're the last person in the world to do that, I should think," he
+replied smilingly.
+
+"But I have. You may remember my asking you once when those little
+sketches that I retyped so often were to be published."
+
+"Yes. I never did anything with them."
+
+"I did. I showed them to Violet Thornborough. She is an old friend."
+
+Ignorant of the publication world outside of Park Row, Banneker did not
+recognize a name, unknown to the public, which in the inner literary
+world connoted all that was finest, most perceptive, most discriminating
+and helpful in selective criticism. Miss Thornborough had been the first
+to see and foster half of the glimmering and feeble radiances which had
+later grown to be the manifest lights of the magazine and book world,
+thanks largely to her aid and encouragement. The next name mentioned by
+Miss Westlake was well enough known to Banneker, however. The critic, it
+appears, had, with her own hands, borne the anonymous, typed copies to
+the editorial sanctum of the foremost of monthlies, and, claiming a
+prerogative, refused to move aside from the pathway of orderly business
+until the Great Gaines himself, editor and autocrat of the publication,
+had read at least one of them. So the Great Gaines indulged Miss
+Thornborough by reading one. He then indulged himself by reading three
+more.
+
+"Your goose," he pronounced, "is not fledged; but there may be a fringe
+of swan feathers. Bring him to see me."
+
+"I haven't the faintest idea of who, what, or where he is," answered the
+insistent critic.
+
+"Then hire a detective at our expense," smiled the editor. "And, please,
+as you go, can't you lure away with you Mr. Harvey Wheelwright, our most
+popular novelist, now in the reception-room wishing us to publish his
+latest enormity? Us!" concluded the Great Gaines sufficiently.
+
+Having related the episode to its subject, Miss Westlake said
+diffidently: "Do you think it was inexcusably impertinent of me?"
+
+"No. I think it was very kind."
+
+"Then you'll go to see Mr. Gaines?"
+
+"One of these days. When I get out of this present scrape. And I hope
+you'll keep on copying my Sunday stuff after I leave. Nobody else would
+be so patient with my dreadful handwriting."
+
+She gave him a glance and a little flush of thankfulness. Matters had
+begun to improve with Miss Westlake. But it was due to Banneker that she
+had won through her time of desperation. Now, through his suggestion,
+she was writing successfully, quarter and half column "general interest"
+articles for the Woman's Page of the Sunday Ledger. If she could in turn
+help Banneker to recognition, part of her debt would be paid. As for
+him, he was interested in, but not greatly expectant of, the Gaines
+invitation. Still, if he were cast adrift from The Ledger because of
+activity in the coming police inquiry, there was a possible port in the
+magazine world.
+
+Meantime there pressed the question of a home. Cressey ought to afford
+help on that. He called the gilded youth on the telephone.
+
+"Hello, old fire-eater!" cried Cressey. "Some little hero, aren't you!
+Bully work, my boy. I'm proud to know you.... What; quarters? Easiest
+thing you know. I've got the very thing--just like a real-estate agent.
+Let's see; this is your Monday at Sherry's, isn't it? All right. I'll
+meet you there."
+
+Providentially, as it might appear, a friend of Cressey's, having
+secured a diplomatic appointment, was giving up his bachelor apartment
+in the select and central Regalton.
+
+"Cheap as dirt," said the enthusiastic Cressey, beaming at Banneker over
+his cocktail that evening. "Two rooms and bath; fully furnished, and you
+can get it for eighteen hundred a year."
+
+"Quite a raise from the five dollars a week I've been paying," smiled
+Banneker.
+
+"Pshaw! You've got to live up to your new reputation. You're somebody,
+now, Banneker. All New York is talking about you. Why, I'm afraid to say
+I know you for fear they'll think I'm bragging."
+
+"All of which doesn't increase my income," pointed out the other.
+
+"It will. Just wait. One way or another you'll capitalize that
+reputation. That's the way New York is."
+
+"That isn't the way _I_ am, however. I'll capitalize my brains and
+ability, if I've got 'em; not my gun-play."
+
+"Your gun-play will advertise your brains and ability, then," retorted
+Cressey. "Nobody expects you to make a princely income shooting up
+toughs on the water-front. But your having done it will put you in the
+lime-light where people will notice you. And being noticed is the
+beginning of success in this-man's-town. I'm not sure it isn't the end,
+too. Just see how the head waiter fell all over himself when you came
+in. I expect he's telling that bunch at the long table yonder who you
+are now."
+
+"Let him," returned Banneker comfortably, his long-bred habit of
+un-self-consciousness standing him in good stead. "They'll all forget it
+soon enough."
+
+As he glanced over at the group around the table, the man who was
+apparently acting as host caught his eye and nodded in friendly fashion.
+
+"Oh, you know Marrineal, do you?" asked Cressey in surprise.
+
+"I've seen him, but I've never spoken to him. He dines sometimes in a
+queer little restaurant way downtown, just off the Swamp. Who is he,
+anyway?"
+
+"Puzzle. Nobody in the clubs knows him. He's a spender. Bit of a
+rounder, too, I expect. Plays the Street, and beats it, too."
+
+"Who's the little beauty next him?"
+
+"You a rising light of Park Row, and not know Betty Raleigh? She killed
+'em dead in London in romantic comedy and now she's come back here to
+repeat."
+
+"Oh, yes. Opening to-night, isn't she? I've got a seat." He looked over
+at Marrineal, who was apparently protesting against his neighbor's
+reversed wine-glass. "So that's Mr. Marrineal's little style of game, is
+it?" He spoke crudely, for the apparition of the girl was quite touching
+in its youth, and delight, and candor of expression, whereas he had read
+into Marrineal's long, handsome, and blandly mature face a touch of the
+satyr. He resented the association.
+
+"No; it isn't," replied Cressey promptly. "If it is, he's in the wrong
+pew. Miss Raleigh is straight as they make 'em, from all I hear."
+
+"She looks it," admitted Banneker.
+
+"At that, she's in a rather sporty lot. Do you know that chap three
+seats to her left?"
+
+Banneker considered the diner, a round-faced, high-colored, youthful man
+of perhaps thirty-five, with a roving and merry eye. "No," he answered.
+"I never saw him before."
+
+"That's Del Eyre," remarked Cressey casually, and appearing not to look
+at Banneker.
+
+"A friend of yours?" The indifference of the tone indicated to his
+companion either that Banneker did not identify Delavan Eyre by his
+marriage, or that he maintained extraordinary control over himself, or
+that the queer, romantic stories of Io Welland's "passion in the desert"
+were gross exaggerations. Cressey inclined to the latter belief.
+
+"Not specially," he answered the question. "He belongs to a couple of my
+clubs. Everybody likes Del; even Mrs. Del. But his pace is too swift for
+me. Just at present he is furnishing transportation, sixty horse-power,
+for Tarantina, the dancer who is featured in Betty Raleigh's show."
+
+"Is she over there with them?"
+
+"Oh, no. She wouldn't be. It isn't as sporty as all that." He rose to
+shake hands with a short, angular young man, dressed to a perfection as
+accurate as Banneker's own, and excelling him in one distinctive touch,
+a coat-flower of gold-and-white such as no other in New York could wear,
+since only in one conservatory was that special orchid successfully
+grown. By it Banneker recognized Poultney Masters, Jr., the son and heir
+of the tyrannous old financier who had for years bullied and browbeaten
+New York to his wayward old heart's content. In his son there was
+nothing of the bully, but through the amiability of manner Banneker
+could feel a quiet force. Cressey introduced them.
+
+"We're just having coffee," said Banneker. "Will you join us?"
+
+"Thank you; I must go back to my party. I came over to express my
+personal obligation to you for cleaning out that gang of wharf-rats. My
+boat anchors off there. I hope to see you aboard her sometime."
+
+"You owe me no thanks," returned Banneker good-humoredly. "What I did was
+to save my own precious skin."
+
+"The effect was the same. After this the rats will suspect every man of
+being a Banneker in disguise, and we shall have no more trouble."
+
+"You see!" remarked Cressey triumphantly as Masters went away. "I told
+you you'd arrived."
+
+"Do you count a word of ordinary courtesy as so much?" inquired
+Banneker, surprised and amused.
+
+"From Junior? I certainly do. No Masters ever does anything without
+having figured out its exact meaning in advance."
+
+"And what does this mean?" asked the other, still unimpressed.
+
+"For one thing, that the Masters influence will be back of you, if the
+police try to put anything over. For another, that you've got the
+broadest door to society open to you, if Junior follows up his hint
+about the yacht."
+
+"I haven't the time," returned Banneker with honest indifference. He
+sipped his coffee thoughtfully. "Cressey," he said, "if I had a
+newspaper of my own in New York, do you know what I'd do with it?"
+
+"Make money."
+
+"I hope so. But whether I did or not, I'd set out to puncture that
+bubble of the Masters power and supremacy. It isn't right for any man to
+have that power just through money. It isn't American."
+
+"The old man would smash your paper in six months."
+
+"Maybe. Maybe not. Nobody has ever taken a shot at him yet. He may be
+more vulnerable than he looks.... Speaking of money, I suppose I'd
+better take that apartment. God knows how I'll pay for it, especially if
+I lose my job."
+
+"If you lose your job I'll get you a better one on Wall Street
+to-morrow."
+
+"On the strength of Poultney Masters, Jr., shaking hands with me, I
+suppose."
+
+"Practically. It may not get into your newspapers, but the Street will
+know all about it to-morrow."
+
+"It's a queer city. And it's a queer way to get on in it, by being quick
+on the trigger. Well, I'm off for the theater."
+
+Between acts, Banneker, walking out to get air, was conscious of being
+the object of comment and demonstration. He heard his name spoken in
+half whispers; saw nods and jerks of the head; was an involuntary
+eavesdropper upon a heated discussion; "That's the man."--"No; it ain't.
+The paper says he's a big feller."--"This guy ain't a reporter. Pipe his
+clothes."--"Well, he's big if you size him right. Look at his
+shoulders."--"I'll betcha ten he ain't the man." And an apologetic young
+fellow ran after him to ask if he was not, in truth, Mr. Banneker of The
+Ledger. Being no more than human, he experienced a feeling of mild
+excitation over all this. But no sooner had the curtain risen on the
+second act than he quite forgot himself and his notoriety in the fresh
+charm of the comedy, and the delicious simplicity of Betty Raleigh as
+the heroine. That the piece was destined to success was plain, even so
+early. As the curtain fell again, and the star appeared, dragging after
+her a long, gaunt, exhausted, alarmed man in horn-rimmed spectacles, who
+had been lurking in a corner suffering from incipient nervous breakdown
+and illusions of catastrophe, he being the author, the body of the house
+rose and shouted. A hand fell on Banneker's shoulder.
+
+"Come behind at the finish?" said a voice.
+
+Turning, Banneker met the cynical and near-sighted eyes of Gurney, The
+Ledger's dramatic critic, with whom he had merely a nodding
+acquaintance, as Gurney seldom visited the office except at off-hours.
+
+"Yes; I'd like to," he answered.
+
+"Little Betty spotted you and has been demanding that the management
+bring you back for inspection."
+
+"The play is a big success, isn't it?"
+
+"I give it a year's run," returned the critic authoritatively. "Laurence
+has written it to fit Raleigh like a glove. She's all they said of her
+in London. And when she left here a year ago, she was just a fairly good
+_ingenue_. However, she's got brains, which is the next best thing in
+the theatrical game to marriage with the manager--or near-marriage."
+
+Banneker, considering Gurney's crow-footed and tired leer, decided that
+he did not like the critic much.
+
+Back-of-curtain after a successful opening provides a hectic and
+scrambled scene to the unaccustomed eye. Hastily presented to a few
+people, Banneker drifted to one side and, seating himself on a wire
+chair, contentedly assumed the role of onlooker. The air was full of
+laughter and greetings and kisses; light-hearted, offhand, gratulatory
+kisses which appeared to be the natural currency of felicitation. Betty
+Raleigh, lovely, flushed, and athrill with nervous exaltation, flung him
+a smile as she passed, one hand hooked in the arm of her leading man.
+
+"You're coming to supper with us later," she called.
+
+"Am I?" said Banneker.
+
+"Of course. I've got something to ask you." She spoke as one expectant
+of unquestioning obedience: this was her night of glory and power.
+
+Whether he had been previously bidden in through Gurney, or whether this
+chance word constituted his invitation, he did not know. Seeking
+enlightenment upon the point, he discovered that the critic had
+disappeared, to furnish his half-column for the morning issue. La
+Tarantina, hearing his inquiry, gave him the news in her broken English.
+The dancer, lithe, powerful, with the hideous feet and knotty legs
+typical of her profession, turned her somber, questioning eyes on the
+stranger:
+
+"You air Monsieur Ban-kerr, who shoot, n'est-ce-pas?" she inquired.
+
+"My name is Banneker," he replied.
+
+"Weel you be ver' good an' shoot sahmbody for me?"
+
+"With pleasure," he said, laughing; "if you'll plead for me with the
+jury."
+
+"Zen here he iss." She stretched a long and, as it seemed, blatantly
+naked arm into a group near by and drew forth the roundish man whom
+Cressey had pointed out at Marrineal's dinner party. "He would be
+unfaithful to me, ziss one."
+
+"I? Never!" denied the accused. He set a kiss in the hollow of the
+dancer's wrist. "How d'ye do, Mr. Banneker," he added, holding out his
+hand. "My name is Eyre."
+
+"But yess!" cried the dancer. "He--what you say it?--he r-r-r-rave over
+Miss R-r-raleigh. He make me jealous. He shall be shoot at sunrice an' I
+weel console me wiz his shooter."
+
+"Charming programme!" commented the doomed man. It struck Banneker that
+he had probably been drinking a good deal, also that he was a very
+likeable person, indeed. "If you don't mind my asking, where the devil
+did you learn to shoot like that?"
+
+"Oh, out West where I came from. I used to practice on the pine trees at
+a little water-tank station called Manzanita".
+
+"Manzanita!" repeated the other. "By God!" He swore softly, and stared
+at the other.
+
+Banneker was annoyed. Evidently the gossip of which Io's girl friend had
+hinted that other night at Sherry's had obtained wide currency. Before
+the conversation could go any further, even had it been likely to after
+that surprising check, one of the actors came over. He played the part
+of an ex-cowboy, who, in the bar-room scene, shot his way out of danger
+through a circle of gang-men, and he was now seeking from Banneker
+ostensibly pointers, actually praise.
+
+"Say, old man," he began without introduction. "Gimme a tip or two. How
+do you get your hand over for your gun without giving yourself away?"
+
+"Just dive for it, as you do in the play. You do it plenty quick enough.
+You'd get the drop on me ten times out of ten," returned Banneker
+pleasantly, leaving the gratified actor with the conviction that he had
+been talking with the coming dramatic critic of the age.
+
+For upwards of an hour there was carnival on the dismantling stage,
+mingled with the hurried toil of scene-shifters and the clean-up gang.
+Then the impromptu party began to disperse, Eyre going away with the
+dancer, after coming to bid Banneker good-night, with a look of veiled
+curiosity and interest which its object could not interpret. Banneker
+was gathered into the _corps intime_ of Miss Raleigh's supper party,
+including the author of the play, an elderly first-nighter, two or three
+dramatic critics, Marrineal, who had drifted in, late, and half a dozen
+of the company. The men outnumbered the women, as is usual in such
+affairs, and Banneker found himself seated between the playwright and a
+handsome, silent girl who played with distinction the part of an elderly
+woman. There was wine in profusion, but he noticed that the player-folk
+drank sparingly. Condition, he correctly surmised, was part of their
+stock in trade. As it should be part of his also.
+
+Late in the supper's course, there was a shifting of seats, and he was
+landed next to the star.
+
+"I suppose you're bored stiff with talking about the shooting," she
+said, at once.
+
+"I am, rather. Wouldn't you be?"
+
+"I? Publicity is the breath of life to us," she laughed. "You deal in
+it, so you don't care for it."
+
+"That's rather shrewd in you. I'm not sure that the logic is sound."
+
+"Anyway, I'm not going to bore you with your fame. But I want you to do
+something for me."
+
+"It is done," he said solemnly.
+
+"How prettily you pay compliments! There is to be a police
+investigation, isn't there?"
+
+"Probably."
+
+"Could you get me in?"
+
+"Yes, indeed!"
+
+"Then I want to come when you're on the stand."
+
+"Great goodness! Why?"
+
+"Why, if you want a reason," she answered mischievously, "say that I
+want to bring good luck to your _premiere_, as you brought it to mine."
+
+"I'll probably make a sorry showing. Perhaps you would give me some
+training."
+
+She answered in kind, and the acquaintanceship was progressing most
+favorably when a messenger of the theater manager's office staff
+appeared with early editions of the morning papers. Instantly every
+other interest was submerged.
+
+"Give me The Ledger," demanded Betty. "I want to see what Gurney says."
+
+"Something pleasant surely," said Banneker. "He told me that the play
+was an assured success."
+
+As she read, Betty's vivacious face sparkled. Presently her expression
+changed. She uttered a little cry of disgust and rage.
+
+"What's the matter?" inquired the author.
+
+"Gurney is up to his smartnesses again," she replied. "Listen. Isn't
+this enraging!" She read:
+
+"As for the play itself, it is formed, fashioned, and finished in the
+cleverest style of tailor-made, to Miss Raleigh's charming personality.
+One must hail Mr. Laurence as chief of our sartorial playwrights. No
+actress ever boasted a neater fit. Can you not picture him, all nice
+little enthusiasms and dainty devices, bustling about his fair
+patroness, tape in hand, mouth bristling with pins, smoothing out a
+wrinkle here, adjusting a line there, achieving his little _chef
+d'oeuvre_ of perfect tailoring? We have had playwrights who were
+blacksmiths, playwrights who were costumers, playwrights who were
+musical-boxes, playwrights who were, if I may be pardoned, garbage
+incinerators. It remained, for Mr. Laurence to show us what can be done
+with scissors, needle, and a nice taste in frills.
+
+"I think it's mean and shameful!" proclaimed the reader in generous
+rage.
+
+"But he gives you a splendid send-off, Miss Raleigh," said her leading
+man, who, reading over her shoulder, had discovered that he, too, was
+handsomely treated.
+
+"I don't care if he does!" cried Betty. "He's a pig!"
+
+Her manager, possessed of a second copy of The Ledger, now made a
+weighty contribution to the discussion. "Just the same, this'll help
+sell out the house. It's full of stuff we can lift to paper the town
+with."
+
+He indicated several lines heartily praising Miss Raleigh and the cast,
+and one which, wrenched from its satirical context, was made to give an
+equally favorable opinion of the play. Something of Banneker's
+astonishment at this cavalier procedure must have been reflected in his
+face, for Marrineal, opposite, turned to him with a look of amusement.
+
+"What's your view of that, Mr. Banneker?"
+
+"Mine?" said Banneker promptly. "I think it's crooked. What's yours?"
+
+"Still quick on the trigger," murmured the other, but did not answer the
+return query.
+
+Replies in profusion came from the rest, however. "It isn't any
+crookeder than the review."--"D'you call that fair criticism!"--"Gurney!
+He hasn't an honest hair in his head."--"Every other critic is strong
+for it; this is the only knock."--"What did Laurence ever do to Gurney?"
+
+Out of the welter of angry voices came Betty Raleigh's clear speech,
+addressed to Banneker.
+
+"I'm sorry, Mr. Banneker; I'd forgotten that The Ledger is your paper."
+
+"Oh, The Ledger ain't any worse than the rest of 'em, take it day in and
+day out," the manager remarked, busily penciling apposite texts for
+advertising, on the margin of Gurney's critique.
+
+"It isn't fair," continued the star. "A man spends a year working over a
+play--it was more than a year on this, wasn't it, Denny?" she broke off
+to ask the author.
+
+Laurence nodded. He looked tired and a little bored, Banneker thought.
+
+"And a critic has a happy thought and five minutes to think it over, and
+writes something mean and cruel and facetious, and perhaps undoes a
+whole year's work. Is that right?"
+
+"They ought to bar him from the theater," declared one of the women in
+the cast.
+
+"And what do you think of _that_?" inquired Marrineal, still addressing
+Banneker.
+
+Banneker laughed. "Admit only those who wear the bright and burnished
+badge of the Booster," he said. "Is that the idea?"
+
+"Nobody objects to honest criticism," began Betty Raleigh heatedly, and
+was interrupted by a mild but sardonic "Hear! Hear!" from one of the
+magazine reviewers.
+
+"Honest players don't object to honest criticism, then," she amended.
+"It's the unfairness that hurts."
+
+"All of which appears to be based on the assumption that it is
+impossible for Mr. Gurney honestly to have disliked Mr. Laurence's
+play," pointed out Banneker. "Now, delightful as it seemed to me, I can
+conceive that to other minds--"
+
+"Of course he could honestly dislike it," put in the playwright hastily.
+"It isn't that."
+
+"It's the mean, slurring way he treated it," said the star "Mr.
+Banneker, just what did he say to you about it?"
+
+Swiftly there leapt to his recollection the critic's words, at the close
+of the second act. "It's a relief to listen for once to comedy that is
+sincere and direct." ... Then why, why--"He said that you were all that
+the play required and the play was all that you required," he answered,
+which was also true, but another part of the truth. He was not minded to
+betray his associate.
+
+"He's rotten," murmured the manager, now busy on the margin of another
+paper. "But I dunno as he's any rottener than the rest."
+
+"On behalf of the profession of journalism, we thank you, Bezdek," said
+one of the critics.
+
+"Don't mind old Bez," put in the elderly first-nighter. "He always says
+what he thinks he means, but he usually doesn't mean it."
+
+"That is perhaps just as well," said Banneker quite quietly, "if he
+means that The Ledger is not straight."
+
+"I didn't say The Ledger. I said Gurney. He's crooked as a corkscrew's
+hole."
+
+There was a murmur of protest and apprehension, for this was going
+rather too far, which Banneker's voice stilled. "Just a minute. By that
+you mean that he takes bribes?"
+
+"Naw!" snorted Bezdek.
+
+"That he's influenced by favoritism, then?"
+
+"I didn't say so, did I?"
+
+"You've said either too little or too much."
+
+"I can clear this up, I think," proffered the elderly first-nighter, in
+his courteous voice. "Mr. Gurney is perhaps more the writer than the
+critic. He is carried away by the felicitous phrase."
+
+"He'd rather be funny than fair," said Miss Raleigh bluntly.
+
+"The curse of dramatic criticism," murmured a magazine representative.
+
+"Rotten," said Bezdek doggedly. "Crooked. Tryin' to be funny at other
+folks' expense. _I_'ll give his tail a twist!" By which he meant Mr.
+Gurney's printed words.
+
+"Apropos of the high cult of honesty," remarked Banneker.
+
+"The curse of all journalism," put in Laurence. "The temptation to be
+effective at the expense of honesty."
+
+"And what do you think of _that_?" inquired the cheerful Marrineal,
+still directing his query to Banneker.
+
+"I think it's rather a large order. Why do you keep asking my opinion?"
+
+"Because I suspect that you still bring a fresh mind to bear on these
+matters."
+
+Banneker rose, and bade Betty Raleigh good-night. She retained his hand
+in hers, looking up at him with a glint of anxiety in her weary,
+childlike eyes. "Don't mind what we've said," she appealed to him.
+"We're all a little above ourselves. It's always so after an opening."
+
+"I don't mind at all," he returned gravely: "unless it's true."
+
+"Ah, it's true right enough," she answered dispiritedly. "Don't forget
+about the investigation. And don't let them dare to put you on on a
+matinee day."
+
+Betty Raleigh was a conspicuous figure, at not one but half a dozen
+sessions of the investigation, which wound through an accelerating and
+sensational course, with Banneker as the chief figure. He was an
+extraordinary witness, ready, self-possessed, good-humored under the
+heckling of the politician lawyer who had claimed and received the right
+to appear, on the ground that his police clients might be summoned later
+on a criminal charge.
+
+Before the proceedings were over, a complete overturn in the city
+government was foreshadowed, and it became evident that Judge Enderby
+might either head the movement as its candidate, or control it as its
+leader. Nobody, however, knew what he wished or intended politically.
+Every now and again in the progress of the hearings, Banneker would
+surprise on the lawyer's face an expression which sent his memory
+questing fruitlessly for determination of that elusive likeness,
+flickering dimly in the past.
+
+Banneker's own role in the investigation kept him in the headlines; at
+times put him on the front page. Even The Ledger could only minimize,
+not suppress, his dominating and picturesque part.
+
+But there was another and less pleasant sequel to the shooting, in its
+effect upon the office status. Though he was a "space-man" now, dependent
+for his earnings upon the number of columns weekly which he had in the
+paper, and ostensibly equipped to handle matter of importance, a long
+succession of the pettiest kind of assignments was doled out to him by
+the city desk: obituary notices of insignificant people, small police
+items, tipsters' yarns, routine jobs such as ship news, police
+headquarters substitution, even the minor courts usually relegated to
+the fifteen or twenty-dollar-a-week men. Or, worst and most grinding
+ordeal of a reporter's life, he was kept idle at his desk, like a
+misbehaving boy after school, when all the other men had been sent out.
+One week his total space came to but twenty-eight dollars odd. What this
+meant was plain enough; he was being disciplined for his part in the
+investigation.
+
+Out of the open West which, under the rigor of the game, keeps its
+temper and its poise, Banneker had brought the knack of setting his
+teeth and smiling so serenely that one never even perceived the teeth to
+be set behind the smile. This ability stood him in good stead now. In
+his time of enforced leisure he bethought himself of the sketches which
+Miss Westlake had typed. With his just and keen perception, he judged
+them not to be magazine matter. But they might do as "Sunday stuff." He
+turned in half a dozen of them to Mr. Homans. When next he saw them they
+were lying, in uncorrected proof, on the managing editor's desk while
+Mr. Gordon gently rapped his knuckles over them.
+
+"Where did you get the idea for these, Mr. Banneker?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know. It came to me."
+
+"Would you care to sign them?"
+
+"Sign them?" repeated the reporter in surprise, for this was a
+distinction afforded to only a choice few on the conservative Ledger.
+
+"Yes. I'm going to run them on the editorial page. Do us some more and
+keep them within the three-quarters. What's your full name?"
+
+"I'd like to sign them 'Eban,'" answered the other, after some thought.
+"And thank you."
+
+Assignments or no assignments, thereafter Banneker was able to fill his
+idle time. Made adventurous by the success of the "Vagrancies," he next
+tried his hand at editorials on light or picturesque topics, and with
+satisfying though not equal results, for here he occasionally stumbled
+upon the hard-rooted prejudices of the Inside Office, and beheld his
+efforts vanish into the irreclaimable limbo of the scrap-basket.
+Nevertheless, at ten dollars per column for this kind of writing, he
+continued to make a decent space bill, and clear himself of the doldrums
+where the waning of the city desk's favor had left him. All that he
+could now make he needed, for his change of domicile had brought about a
+corresponding change of habit and expenditure into which he slipped
+imperceptibly. To live on fifteen dollars a week, plus his own small
+income, which all went for "extras," had been simple, at Mrs.
+Brashear's. To live on fifty at the Regalton was much more of a problem.
+Banneker discovered that he was a natural spender. The discovery caused
+him neither displeasure nor uneasiness. He confidently purposed to have
+money to spend; plenty of it, as a mere, necessary concomitant to other
+things that he was after. Good reporters on space, working moderately,
+made from sixty to seventy-five dollars a week. Banneker set himself a
+mark of a hundred dollars. He intended to work very hard ... if Mr.
+Greenough would give him a chance.
+
+Mr. Greenough's distribution of the day's news continued to be
+distinctly unfavorable to the new space-man. The better men on the staff
+began to comment on the city desk's discrimination. Banneker had, for a
+time, shone in heroic light: his feat had been honorable, not only to
+The Ledger office, but to the entire craft of reporting. In the
+investigation he had borne himself with unexceptionable modesty and
+equanimity. That he should be "picked on" offended that generous _esprit
+de corps_ which was natural to the office. Tommy Burt was all for
+referring the matter to Mr. Gordon.
+
+"You mind your own business, Tommy," said Banneker placidly. "Our friend
+the Joss will stick his foot into a gopher hole yet."
+
+The assignment that afforded Banneker his chance was of the most
+unpromising. An old builder, something of a local character over in the
+Corlears Hook vicinity, had died. The Ledger, Mr. Greenough informed
+Banneker, in his dry, polite manner, wanted "a sufficient obit" of the
+deceased. Banneker went to the queer, decrepit frame cottage at the
+address given, and there found a group of old Sam Corpenshire's
+congeners, in solemn conclave over the dead. They welcomed the reporter,
+and gave him a ceremonial drink of whiskey, highly superior whiskey.
+They were glad that he had come to write of their dead friend. If ever a
+man deserved a good write-up, it was Sam Corpenshire. From one mouth to
+another they passed the word of his shrewd dealings, of his good-will to
+his neighbors, of his ripe judgment, of his friendliness to all sound
+things and sound men, of his shy, sly charities, of the thwarted
+romance, which, many years before, had left him lonely but unembittered;
+and out of it Banneker, with pen too slow for his eager will, wove not a
+two-stick obit, but a rounded column shot through with lights that
+played upon the little group of characters, the living around the dead,
+like sunshine upon an ancient garden.
+
+Even Mr. Greenough congratulated Banneker, the next morning. In the
+afternoon mail came a note from Mr. Gaines of The New Era monthly. That
+perspicuous editor had instantly identified the style of the article
+with that of the "Eban" series, part of which he had read in typograph.
+He wrote briefly but warmly of the work: and would the writer not call
+and see him soon?
+
+Perhaps the reporter might have accepted the significant invitation
+promptly, as he at first intended. But on the following morning he found
+in his box an envelope under French stamp, inscribed with writing which,
+though he had seen but two specimens of it, drove everything else out of
+his tumultuous thoughts. He took it, not to his desk, but to a side room
+of the art department, unoccupied at that hour, and opened it with
+chilled and fumbling hands.
+
+Within was a newspaper clipping, from a Paris edition of an American
+daily. It gave a brief outline of the battle on the pier. In pencil on
+the margin were these words:
+
+"Do you remember practicing, that day, among the pines? I'm so proud!
+Io."
+
+He read it again. The last sentence affected him with a sensation of
+dizziness. Proud! Of his deed! It gave him the feeling that she had
+reclaimed, reappropriated him. No! That she had never for a moment
+released him. In a great surge, sweeping through his veins, he felt the
+pressure of her breast against his, the strong enfoldment of her arms,
+her breath upon his lips. He tore envelope and clipping into fragments.
+
+By one of those strange associations of linked memory, such as "clangs
+and flashes for a drowning man," he sharply recalled where he had seen
+Willis Enderby before. His was the face in the photograph to which
+Camilla Van Arsdale had turned when death stretched out a hand toward
+her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+While the police inquiry was afoot, Banneker was, perforce, often late
+in reporting for duty, the regular hour being twelve-thirty. Thus the
+idleness which the city desk had imposed upon him was, in a measure,
+justified. On a Thursday, when he had been held in conference with Judge
+Enderby, he did not reach The Ledger office until after two. Mr.
+Greenough was still out for luncheon. No sooner had Banneker entered the
+swinging gate than Mallory called to him. On the assistant city editor's
+face was a peculiar expression, half humorous, half dubious, as he said:
+
+"Mr. Greenough has left an assignment for you."
+
+"All right," said Banneker, stretching out his hand for the clipping or
+slip. None was forthcoming.
+
+"It's a tip," explained Mallory. "It's from a pretty convincing source.
+The gist of it is that the Delavan Eyres have separated and a divorce is
+impending. You know, of course, who the Eyres are."
+
+"I've met Eyre."
+
+"That so? Ever met his wife?"
+
+"No," replied Banneker, in good faith.
+
+"No; you wouldn't have, probably. They travel different paths. Besides,
+she's been practically living abroad. She's a stunner. It's big society
+stuff, of course. The best chance of landing the story is from Archie
+Densmore, her half-brother. The international polo-player, you know.
+You'll find him at The Retreat, down on the Jersey coast."
+
+The Retreat Banneker had heard of as being a bachelor country club whose
+distinguishing marks were a rather Spartan athleticism, and a more
+stiffly hedged exclusiveness than any other social institution known to
+the _elite_ of New York and Philadelphia, between which it stood midway.
+
+"Then I'm to go and ask him," said Banneker slowly, "whether his sister
+is suing for divorce?"
+
+"Yes," confirmed Mallory, a trifle nervously. "Find out who's to be
+named, of course. I suppose it's that new dancer, though there have been
+others. And there was a quaint story about some previous attachment of
+Mrs. Eyre's: that might have some bearing."
+
+"I'm to ask her brother about that, too?"
+
+"We want the story," answered Mallory, almost petulantly.
+
+On the trip down into Jersey the reporter had plenty of time to consider
+his unsavory task. Some one had to do this kind of thing, so long as the
+public snooped and peeped and eavesdropped through the keyhole of print
+at the pageant of the socially great: this he appreciated and accepted.
+But he felt that it ought to be some one other than himself--and, at the
+same time, was sufficiently just to smile at himself for his illogical
+attitude.
+
+A surprisingly good auto was found in the town of his destination, to
+speed him to the stone gateway of The Retreat. The guardian, always on
+duty there, passed him with a civil word, and a sober-liveried flunkey
+at the clubhouse door, after a swift, unobtrusive consideration of his
+clothes and bearing, took him readily for granted, and said that Mr.
+Densmore would be just about going on the polo field for practice. Did
+the gentleman know his way to the field? Seeing the flag on the stable,
+Banneker nodded, and walked over. A groom pointed out a spare, powerful
+looking young man with a pink face, startlingly defined by a straight
+black mustache and straighter black eyebrows, mounting a light-built
+roan, a few rods away. Banneker accosted him.
+
+"Yes, my name is Densmore," he answered the visitor's accost.
+
+"I'm a reporter from The Ledger," explained Banneker.
+
+"A reporter?" Mr. Densmore frowned. "Reporters aren't allowed here,
+except on match days. How did you get in?"
+
+"Nobody stopped me," answered the visitor in an expressionless tone.
+
+"It doesn't matter," said the other, "since you're here. What is it; the
+international challenge?"
+
+"A rumor has come to us--There's a tip come in at the office--We
+understood that there is--" Banneker pulled himself together and put the
+direct question. "Is Mrs. Delavan Eyre bringing a divorce suit against
+her husband?"
+
+For a time there was a measured silence. Mr. Densmore's heavy brows
+seemed to jut outward and downward toward the questioner.
+
+"You came out here from New York to ask me that?" he said presently.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Anything else?"
+
+"Yes. Who is named as co-respondent? And will there be a defense, or a
+counter-suit?"
+
+"A counter-suit," repeated the man in the saddle quietly. "I wonder if
+you realize what you're asking?"
+
+"I'm trying to get the news," said Banneker doggedly striving to hold to
+an ideal which momentarily grew more sordid and tawdry.
+
+"And I wonder if you realize how you ought to be answered."
+
+Yes; Banneker realized, with a sick realization. But he was not going to
+admit it. He kept silence.
+
+"If this polo mallet were a whip, now," observed Mr. Densmore
+meditatively. "A dog-whip, for preference."
+
+Under the shameful threat Banneker's eyes lightened. Here at least was
+something he could face like a man. His undermining nausea mitigated.
+
+"What then?" he inquired in tones as level as those of his opponent.
+
+"Why, then I'd put a mark on you. A reporter's mark."
+
+"I think not."
+
+"Oh; you think not?" The horseman studied him negligently. Trained to
+the fineness of steel in the school of gymnasium, field, and tennis
+court, he failed to recognize in the man before him a type as
+formidable, in its rugged power, as his own. "Or perhaps I'd have the
+grooms do it for me, before they threw you over the fence."
+
+"It would be safer," allowed the other, with a smile that surprised the
+athlete.
+
+"Safer?" he repeated. "I wasn't thinking of safety."
+
+"Think of it," advised the visitor; "for if you set your grooms on me,
+they could perhaps throw me out. But as sure as they did I'd kill you
+the next time we met."
+
+Densmore smiled. "You!" he said contemptuously. "Kill, eh? Did you ever
+kill any one?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Under their jet brows Densmore's eyes took on a peculiar look of
+intensity. "A Ledger reporter," he murmured. "See here! Is your name
+Banneker, by any chance?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You're the man who cleared out the wharf-gang."
+
+"Yes."
+
+Densmore had been born and brought up in a cult to which courage is the
+basic, inclusive virtue for mankind, as chastity is for womankind. To
+his inground prejudice a man who was simply and unaffectedly brave must
+by that very fact be fine and admirable. And this man had not only shown
+an iron nerve, but afterward, in the investigation, which Densmore had
+followed, he had borne himself with the modesty, discretion, and good
+taste of the instinctive gentleman. The poloist was almost pathetically
+at a loss. When he spoke again his whole tone and manner had undergone a
+vital transformation.
+
+"But, good God!" he cried in real distress and bewilderment, "a fellow
+who could do what you did, stand up to those gun-men in the dark and
+alone, to be garbaging around asking rotten, prying questions about a
+man's sister! No! I don't get it."
+
+Banneker felt the blood run up into his face, under the sting of the
+other's puzzled protest, as it would never have done under open contempt
+or threat. A miserable, dull hopelessness possessed him. "It's part of
+the business," he muttered.
+
+"Then it's a rotten business," retorted the horseman. "Do you _have_ to
+do this?"
+
+"Somebody has to get the news."
+
+"News! Scavenger's filth. See here, Banneker, I'm sorry I roughed you
+about the whip. But, to ask a man questions about the women of his own
+family--No: I'm _damned_ if I get it." He lost himself in thought, and
+when he spoke again it was as much to himself as to the man on the
+ground. "Suppose I did make a frank statement: you can never trust the
+papers to get it straight, even if they mean to, which is doubtful. And
+there's Io's name smeared all over--Hel-lo! What's the matter, now?" For
+his horse had shied away from an involuntary jerk of Banneker's muscles,
+responsive to electrified nerves, so sharply as to disturb the rider's
+balance.
+
+"What name did you say?" muttered Banneker, involuntarily.
+
+"Io. My foster-sister's nickname. Irene Welland, she was. You're a queer
+sort of society reporter if you don't know that."
+
+"I'm not a society reporter."
+
+"But you know Mrs. Eyre?"
+
+"Yes; in a way," returned Banneker, gaining command of himself.
+"Officially, you might say. She was in a railroad wreck that I
+stage-managed out West. I was the local agent."
+
+"Then I've heard about you," replied Densmore with interest, though he
+had heard only what little Io had deemed it advisable that he should
+know. "You helped my sister when she was hurt. We owe you something for
+that."
+
+"Official duty."
+
+"That's all right. But it was more than that. I recall your name now."
+Densmore's bearing had become that of a man to his equal. "I'll tell
+you, let's go up to the clubhouse and have a drink, shan't we? D' you
+mind just waiting here while I give this nag a little run to supple him
+up?"
+
+He was off, leaving Banneker with brain awhirl. To steady himself
+against this sudden flood of memory and circumstance, Banneker strove to
+focus his attention upon the technique of the horse and his rider. When
+they returned he said at once:
+
+"Are you going to play that pony?"
+
+The horseman looked mildly surprised. "After he's learned a bit more.
+Shapes up well, don't you think?"
+
+"Speed him up to me and give him a sharp twist to the right, will you?"
+
+Accepting the suggestion without comment, Densmore cantered away and
+brought the roan down at speed. To the rider, his mount seemed to make
+the sudden turn perfectly. But Banneker stepped out and examined the off
+forefoot with a dubious face.
+
+"Breaks a little there," he stated seriously.
+
+The horseman tried the turn again, throwing his weight over. This time
+he did feel a slightly perceptible "give." "What's the remedy?" he
+asked.
+
+"Build up the outer flange of the shoe. That may do it. But I shouldn't
+trust him without a thorough test. A good pony'll always overplay his
+safety a little in a close match."
+
+The implication of this expert view aroused Densmore's curiosity.
+"You've played," he said.
+
+"No: I've never played. I've knocked the ball about a little."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Out in Santa Barbara. With the stable-boys."
+
+So simply was it said that Densmore returned, quite as simply: "Were you
+a stable-boy?"
+
+"No such luck, then. Just a kid, out of a job."
+
+Densmore dismounted, handed reins and mallet to the visitor and said,
+"Try a shot or two."
+
+Slipping his coat and waistcoat, Banneker mounted and urged the pony
+after the ball which the other sent spinning out across the field. He
+made a fairly creditable cut away to the left, following down and
+playing back moderately. While his mallet work was, naturally,
+uncertain, he played with a full, easy swing and in good form. But it
+was his horsemanship which specially commended itself to the critical
+eye of the connoisseur.
+
+"Ridden range, haven't you?" inquired the poloist when the other came
+in.
+
+"Quite a bit of it, in my time."
+
+"Now, I'll tell you," said Densmore, employing his favorite formula.
+"There'll be practice later. It's an off day and we probably won't have
+two full teams. Let me rig you out, and you try it."
+
+Banneker shook his head. "I'm here on business. I'm a reporter with a
+story to get."
+
+"All right; it's up to a reporter to stick until he gets his news,"
+agreed the other. "You dismiss your taxi, and stay out here and dine,
+and I'll run you back to town myself. And at nine o'clock I'll answer
+your question and answer it straight."
+
+Banneker, gazing longingly at the bright turf of the field, accepted.
+
+Polo is to The Retreat what golf is to the average country club. The
+news that Archie Densmore had a new player down for a try-out brought to
+the side-lines a number of the old-time followers of the game, including
+Poultney Masters, the autocrat of Wall Street and even more of The
+Retreat, whose stables he, in large measure, supported. In the third
+period, the stranger went in at Number Three on the pink team. He played
+rather poorly, but there was that in his style which encouraged the
+enthusiasts.
+
+"He's material," grunted old Masters, blinking his pendulous eyelids, as
+Banneker, accepting the challenge of Jim Maitland, captain of the
+opposing team and roughest of players, for a ride-off, carried his own
+horse through by sheer adroitness and daring, and left the other rolling
+on the turf. "Anybody know who he is?"
+
+"Heard Archie call him Banker, I think," answered one of the great man's
+hangers-on.
+
+Later, Banneker having changed, sat in an angled window of the
+clubhouse, waiting for his host, who had returned from the stables. A
+group of members entering the room, and concealed from him by an L,
+approached the fireplace talking briskly.
+
+"Dick says the feller's a reporter," declared one of them, a middle-aged
+man named Kirke. "Says he saw him tryin' to interview somebody on the
+Street, one day."
+
+"Well, I don't believe it," announced an elderly member. "This chap of
+Densmore's looks like a gentleman and dresses like one. I don't believe
+he's a reporter. And he rides like a devil."
+
+"_I_ say there's ridin' and ridin'," proclaimed Kirke. "Some fellers
+ride like jockeys; some fellers ride like cowboys; some fellers ride
+like gentlemen. I say this reporter feller don't ride like a gentleman."
+
+"Oh, slush!" said another discourteously. "What is riding like a
+gentleman?"
+
+Kirke reverted to the set argument of his type. "I'll betcha a hundred
+he don't!"
+
+"Who's to settle such a bet?"
+
+"Leave it to Maitland," said somebody.
+
+"I'll leave it to Archie Densmore if you like," offered the bettor
+belligerently.
+
+"Leave it to Mr. Masters," suggested Kirke.
+
+"Why not leave it to the horse?"
+
+The suggestion, coming in a level and unconcerned tone from the depths
+of the chair in which Banneker was seated, produced an electrical
+effect. Banneker spoke only because the elderly member had walked over
+to the window, and he saw that he must be discovered in another moment.
+Out of the astonished silence came the elderly member's voice, gentle
+and firm.
+
+"Are you the visitor we have been so frankly discussing?"
+
+"I assume so."
+
+"Isn't it rather unfortunate that you did not make your presence known
+sooner?"
+
+"I hoped that I might have a chance to slip out unseen and save you
+embarrassment."
+
+The other came forward at once with hand outstretched. "My name is
+Forster," he said. "You're Mr. Banker, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes," said Banneker, shaking hands. For various reasons it did not seem
+worth while to correct the slight error.
+
+"Look out! Here's the old man," said some one.
+
+Poultney Masters plodded in, his broad paunch shaking with chuckles.
+"'Leave it to the horse,'" he mumbled appreciatively. "'Leave it to the
+horse.' It's good. It's damned good. The right answer. Who but the horse
+should know whether a man rides like a gentleman! Where's young
+Banneker?"
+
+Forster introduced the two. "You've got the makings of a polo-man in
+you," decreed the great man. "Where are you playing?"
+
+"I've never really played. Just practiced."
+
+"Then you ought to be with us. Where's Densmore? We'll put you up and
+have you in by the next meeting."
+
+"A reporter in The Retreat!" protested Kirke who had proffered the bet.
+
+"Why not?" snapped old Poultney Masters. "Got any objections?"
+
+Since the making or marring of his fortunes, like those of hundreds of
+other men, lay in the pudgy hollow of the financier's hand, poor Kirke
+had no objections which he could not and did not at once swallow. The
+subject of the flattering offer had, however.
+
+"I'm much obliged," said he. "But I couldn't join this club. Can't
+afford it."
+
+"You can't afford not to. It's a chance not many young fellows from
+nowhere get."
+
+"Perhaps you don't know what a reporter's earnings are, Mr. Masters."
+
+The rest of the group had drifted away, in obedience, Banneker
+suspected, to some indication given by Masters which he had not
+perceived.
+
+"You won't be a reporter long. Opportunities will open out for a young
+fellow of your kind."
+
+"What sort of opportunities?" inquired Banneker curiously.
+
+"Wall Street, for example."
+
+"I don't think I'd like the game. Writing is my line. I'm going to stick
+to it."
+
+"You're a fool," barked Masters.
+
+"That is a word I don't take from anybody," stated Banneker.
+
+"_You_ don't take? Who the--" The raucous snarl broke into laughter, as
+the other leaned abruptly forward. "Banneker," he said, "have you got
+_me_ covered?"
+
+Banneker laughed, too. Despite his brutal assumption of autocracy, it
+was impossible not to like this man. "No," he answered. "I didn't expect
+to be held up here. So I left my gun."
+
+"You did a job on that pier," affirmed the other. "But you're a fool
+just the same--if you'll take it with a smile."
+
+"I'll think it over," answered Banneker, as Densmore entered.
+
+"Come and see me at the office," invited Masters as he shambled pursily
+away.
+
+Across the dining-table Densmore said to his guest: "So the Old Boy
+wants to put you up here."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That means a sure election."
+
+"But even if I could afford it, I'd get very little use of the club. You
+see, I have only one day off a week."
+
+"It is a rotten business, for sure!" said Densmore sympathetically.
+"Couldn't you get on night work, so you could play afternoons?"
+
+"Play polo?" Banneker laughed. "My means would hardly support one pony."
+
+"That'll be all right," returned the other nonchalantly. "There are
+always fellows glad to lend a mount to a good player. And you're going
+to be that."
+
+The high lust of the game took and shook Banneker for a dim moment. Then
+he recovered himself. "No. I couldn't do that."
+
+"Let's leave it this way, then. Whether you join now or not, come down
+once in a while as my guest, and fill in for the scratch matches. Later
+you may be able to pick up a few nags, cheap."
+
+"I'll think it over," said Banneker, as he had said to old Poultney
+Masters.
+
+Not until after the dinner did Banneker remind his host of their
+understanding. "You haven't forgotten that I'm here on business?"
+
+"No; I haven't. I'm going to answer your question for publication. Mrs.
+Eyre has not the slightest intention of suing for divorce."
+
+"About the separation?"
+
+"No. No separation, either. Io is traveling with friends and will be
+back in a few months."
+
+"That is authoritative?"
+
+"You can quote me, if you like, though I'd rather nothing were
+published, of course. And I give you my personal word that it's true."
+
+"That's quite enough."
+
+"So much for publication. What follows is private: just between you and
+me."
+
+Banneker nodded. After a ruminative pause Densmore asked an abrupt
+question.
+
+"You found my sister after the wreck, didn't you?"
+
+"Well; she found me."
+
+"Was she hurt?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Badly?"
+
+"I think not. There was some concussion of the brain, I suppose. She was
+quite dazed."
+
+"Did you call a doctor?"
+
+"No. She wouldn't have one."
+
+"You know Miss Van Arsdale, don't you?"
+
+"She's the best friend I've got in the world," returned Banneker, so
+impulsively that his interrogator looked at him curiously before
+continuing:
+
+"Did you see Io at her house?"
+
+"Yes; frequently," replied Banneker, wondering to what this all tended,
+but resolved to be as frank as was compatible with discretion.
+
+"How did she seem?"
+
+"She was as well off there as she could be anywhere."
+
+"Yes. But how did she seem? Mentally, I mean."
+
+"Oh, that! The dazed condition cleared up at once."
+
+"I wish I were sure that it had ever cleared up," muttered Densmore.
+
+"Why shouldn't you be sure?"
+
+"I'm going to be frank with you because I think you may be able to help
+me with a clue. Since she came back from the West, Io has been unlike
+herself. The family has never understood her marriage with Del Eyre. She
+didn't really care for Del. [To his dismay, Banneker here beheld the
+glowing tip of his cigar perform sundry involuntary dips and curves. He
+hoped that his face was under better control.] The marriage was a
+fizzle. I don't believe it lasted a month, really. Eyre had always been
+a chaser, though he did straighten out when he married Io. He really was
+crazy about her; but when she chucked him, he went back to his old
+hunting grounds. One can understand that. But Io; that's different.
+She's always played the game before. With Del, I don't think she quite
+did. She quit: that's the plain fact of it. Just tired of him. No other
+cause that I can find. Won't get a divorce. Doesn't want it. So there's
+no one else in the case. It's queer. It's mighty queer. And I can't help
+thinking that the old jar to her brain--"
+
+"Have you suggested that to her?" asked Banneker as the other broke off
+to ruminate mournfully.
+
+"Yes. She only laughed. Then she said that poor old Del wasn't at fault
+except for marrying her in the face of a warning. I don't know what she
+meant by it; hanged if I do. But, you see, it's quite true: there'll be
+no divorce or separation.... You're sure she was quite normal when you
+last saw her at Miss Van Arsdale's?"
+
+"Absolutely. If you want confirmation, why not write Miss Van Arsdale
+yourself?"
+
+"No; I hardly think I'll do that.... Now as to that gray you rode, I've
+got a chance to trade him." And the talk became all of horse, which is
+exclusive and rejective of other interests, even of women.
+
+Going back in the train, Banneker reviewed the crowding events of the
+day. At the bottom of his thoughts lay a residue, acid and stinging, the
+shame of the errand which had taken him to The Retreat, and which the
+memory of what was no less than a personal triumph could not submerge.
+That he, Errol Banneker, whose dealings with all men had been on the
+straight and level status of self-respect, should have taken upon him
+the ignoble task of prying into intimate affairs, of meekly soliciting
+the most private information in order that he might make his living out
+of it--not different in kind from the mendicancy which, even as a hobo,
+he had scorned--and that, at the end, he should have discerned Io
+Welland as the object of his scandal-chase; that fermented within him
+like something turned to foulness.
+
+At the office he reported "no story." Before going home he wrote a note
+to the city desk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Impenetrability of expression is doubtless a valuable attribute to a
+joss. Otherwise so many josses would not display it. Upon the stony and
+placid visage of Mr. Greenough, never more joss-like than when, on the
+morning after Banneker went to The Retreat, he received the resultant
+note, the perusal thereof produced no effect. Nor was there anything
+which might justly be called an expression, discernible between Mr.
+Greenough's cloven chin-tip and Mr. Greenough's pale fringe of hair,
+when, as Banneker entered the office at noon, he called the reporter to
+him. Banneker's face, on the contrary, displayed a quite different
+impression; that of amiability.
+
+"Nothing in the Eyre story, Mr. Banneker!"
+
+"Not a thing."
+
+"You saw Mr. Densmore?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Would he talk?"
+
+"Yes; he made a statement."
+
+"It didn't appear in the paper."
+
+"There was nothing to it but unqualified denial."
+
+"I see; I see. That's all, Mr. Banneker.... Oh, by the way."
+
+Banneker, who had set out for his desk, turned back.
+
+"I had a note from you this morning."
+
+As this statement required no confirmation, Banneker gave it none.
+
+"Containing your resignation."
+
+"Conditional upon my being assigned to pry into society or private
+scandals or rumors of them."
+
+"The Ledger does not recognize conditional resignation."
+
+"Very well." Banneker's smile was as sunny and untroubled as a baby's.
+
+"I suppose you appreciate that some one must cover this kind of news."
+
+"Yes. It will have to be some one else."
+
+The faintest, fleeting suspicion of a frown troubled the Brahminical
+calm of Mr. Greenough's brow, only to pass into unwrinkled blandness.
+
+"Further, you will recognize that, for the protection of the paper, I
+must have at call reporters ready to perform any emergency duty."
+
+"Perfectly," agreed Banneker.
+
+"Mr. Banneker," queried Mr. Greenough in a semi-purr, "are you too good
+for your job?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+For once the personification of city-deskness, secure though he was in
+the justice of his position, was discomfited. "Too good for The Ledger?"
+he demanded in protest and rebuke.
+
+"Let me put it this way; I'm too good for any job that won't let me look
+a man square between the eyes when I meet him on it."
+
+"A dull lot of newspapers we'd have if all reporters took that view,"
+muttered Mr. Greenough.
+
+"It strikes me that what you've just said is the severest kind of an
+indictment of the whole business, then," retorted Banneker.
+
+"A business that is good enough for a good many first-class men, even
+though you may not consider it so for you. Possibly being for the
+time--for a brief time--a sort of public figure, yourself, has--"
+
+"Nothing at all to do with it," interrupted the urbane reporter. "I've
+always been this way. It was born in me."
+
+"I shall consult with Mr. Gordon about this," said Mr. Greenough,
+becoming joss-like again. "I hardly think--" But what it was that he
+hardly thought, the subject of his animadversions did not then or
+subsequently ascertain, for he was dismissed in the middle of the
+sentence with a slow, complacent nod.
+
+Loss of his place, had it promptly followed, would not have dismayed the
+rebel. It did not follow. Nothing followed. Nothing, that is, out of the
+ordinary run. Mr. Gordon said no word. Mr. Greenough made no reference
+to the resignation. Tommy Burt, to whom Banneker had confided his
+action, was of opinion that the city desk was merely waiting "to hand
+you something so raw that you'll have to buck it; something that not
+even Joe Bullen would take." Joe Bullen, an undertaker's assistant who
+had drifted into journalism through being a tipster, was The Ledger's
+"keyhole reporter" (unofficial).
+
+"The joss is just tricky enough for that," said Tommy. "He'll want to
+put you in the wrong with Gordon. You're a pet of the boss's."
+
+"Don't blame Greenough," said Banneker. "If you were on the desk you
+wouldn't want reporters that wouldn't take orders."
+
+Van Cleve, oldest in standing of any of the staff, approached Banneker
+with a grave face and solemn warnings. To leave The Ledger was to depart
+forever from the odor of journalistic sanctity. No other office in town
+was endurable for a gentleman. Other editors treated their men like
+muckers. The worst assignment given out from The Ledger desk was a
+perfumed cinch in comparison with what the average city room dealt out.
+And he gave a formidable sketch of the careers (invariably downhill) of
+reckless souls who had forsaken the true light of The Ledger for the
+false lures which led into outer and unfathomable darkness. By this
+system of subtly threatened excommunication had The Ledger saved to
+itself many a good man who might otherwise have gone farther and not
+necessarily fared worse. Banneker was not frightened. But he did give
+more than a thought to the considerate standards and generous
+comradeship of the office. Only--was it worth the price in occasional
+humiliation?
+
+Sitting, idle at his desk in one of the subsequent periods of penance,
+he bethought him of the note on the stationery of The New Era Magazine,
+signed, "Yours very truly, Richard W. Gaines." Perhaps this was
+opportunity beckoning. He would go to see the Great Gaines.
+
+The Great Gaines received him with quiet courtesy. He was a stubby,
+thick, bearded man who produced an instant effect of entire candor. So
+peculiar and exotic was this quality that it seemed to set him apart
+from the genus of humankind in an aura of alien and daunting honesty.
+Banneker recalled hearing of outrageous franknesses from his lips,
+directed upon small and great, and, most amazingly, accepted without
+offense, because of the translucent purity of the medium through which,
+as it were, the inner prophet had spoken. Besides, he was usually right.
+
+His first words to Banneker, after his greeting, were: "You are
+exceedingly well tailored."
+
+"Does it matter?" asked Banneker, smiling.
+
+"I'm disappointed. I had read into your writing midnight toil and
+respectable, if seedy, self-support."
+
+"After the best Grub Street tradition? Park Row has outlived that."
+
+"I know your tailor, but what's your college?" inquired this surprising
+man.
+
+Banneker shook his head.
+
+"At least I was right in that. I surmised individual education. Who
+taught you to think for yourself?"
+
+"My father."
+
+"It's an uncommon name. You're not a son of Christian Banneker,
+perhaps?"
+
+"Yes. Did you know him?"
+
+"A mistaken man. Whoring after strange gods. Strange, sterile, and
+disappointing. But a brave soul, nevertheless. Yes; I knew him well.
+What did he teach you?"
+
+"He tried to teach me to stand on my own feet and see with my own eyes
+and think for myself."
+
+"Ah, yes! With one's own eyes. So much depends upon whither one turns
+them. What have you seen in daily journalism?"
+
+"A chance. Possibly a great chance."
+
+"To think for yourself?"
+
+Banneker started, at this ready application of his words to the problem
+which was already outlining itself by small, daily limnings in his mind.
+
+"To write for others what you think for yourself?" pursued the editor,
+giving sharpness and definition to the outline.
+
+"Or," concluded Mr. Gaines, as his hearer preserved silence, "eventually
+to write for others what they think for themselves?" He smiled
+luminously. "It's a problem in stress: _x_ = the breaking-point of
+honesty. Your father was an absurdly honest man. Those of us who knew
+him best honored him."
+
+"Are you doubting my honesty?" inquired Banneker, without resentment or
+challenge.
+
+"Why, yes. Anybody's. But hopefully, you understand."
+
+"Or the honesty of the newspaper business?"
+
+A sigh ruffled the closer tendrils of Mr. Gaines's beard. "I have never
+been a journalist in the Park Row sense," he said regretfully.
+"Therefore I am conscious of solutions of continuity in my views. Park
+Row amazes me. It also appalls me. The daily stench that arises from the
+printing-presses. Two clouds; morning and evening.... Perhaps it is only
+the odor of the fertilizing agent, stimulating the growth of ideas. Or
+is it sheer corruption?"
+
+"Two stages of the same process, aren't they?" suggested Banneker.
+
+"Encouraging to think so. Yet labor in a fertilizing plant, though
+perhaps essential, is hardly conducive to higher thinking. You like it?"
+
+"I don't accept your definition at all," replied Banneker. "The
+newspapers are only a medium. If there is a stench, they do not
+originate it. They simply report the events of the day."
+
+"Exactly. They simply disseminate it."
+
+Banneker was annoyed at himself for flushing. "They disseminate news.
+We've got to have news, to carry on the world. Only a small fraction of
+it is--well, malodorous. Would you destroy the whole system because of
+one flaw? You're not fair."
+
+"Fair? Of course I'm not. How should I be? No; I would not destroy the
+system. Merely deodorize it a bit. But I suppose the public likes the
+odors. It sniffs 'em up like--like Cyrano in the bake-shop. A marvelous
+institution, the public which you and I serve. Have you ever thought of
+magazine work, Mr. Banneker?"
+
+"A little."
+
+"There might be a considerable future there for you. I say 'might.'
+Nothing is more uncertain. But you have certain--er--stigmata of the
+writer--That article, now, about the funereal eulogies over the old
+builder; did you report that talk as it was?"
+
+"Approximately."
+
+"How approximately?"
+
+"Well; the basic idea was there. The old fellows gave me that, and I
+fitted it up with talk. Surely there's nothing dishonest in that,"
+protested Banneker.
+
+"Surely not," agreed the other. "You gave the essence of the thing. That
+is a higher veracity than any literal reporting which would be dull and
+unreadable. I thought I recognized the fictional quality in the
+dialogue."
+
+"But it wasn't fiction," denied Banneker eagerly.
+
+The Great Gaines gave forth one of his oracles. "But it was. Good
+dialogue is talk as it should be talked, just as good fiction is life as
+it should be lived--logically and consecutively. Why don't you try
+something for The New Era?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"When?"
+
+"Before I got your note."
+
+"It never reached me."
+
+"It never reached anybody. It's in my desk, ripening."
+
+"Send it along, green, won't you? It may give more indications that way.
+And first work is likely to be valuable chiefly as indication."
+
+"I'll mail it to you. Before I go, would you mind telling me more
+definitely why you advise me against the newspaper business?"
+
+"I advise? I never advise as to questions of morals or ethics. I have
+too much concern with keeping my own straight."
+
+"Then it _is_ a question of morals?"
+
+"Or ethics. I think so. For example, have you tried your hand at
+editorials?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Successfully?"
+
+"As far as I've gone."
+
+"Then you are in accord with the editorial policy of The Ledger?"
+
+"Not in everything."
+
+"In its underlying, unexpressed, and immanent theory that this country
+can best be managed by an aristocracy, a chosen few, working under the
+guise of democracy?"
+
+"No; I don't believe that, of course."
+
+"I do, as it happens. But I fail to see how Christian Banneker's son and
+_eleve_ could. Yet you write editorials for The Ledger."
+
+"Not on those topics."
+
+"Have you never had your editorials altered or cut or amended, in such
+manner as to give a side-slant toward the paper's editorial fetiches?"
+
+Again and most uncomfortably Banneker felt his color change. "Yes; I
+have," he admitted.
+
+"What did you do?"
+
+"What could I do? The Chief controls the editorial page."
+
+"You might have stopped writing for it."
+
+"I needed the money. No; that isn't true. More than the money, I wanted
+the practice and the knowledge that I could write editorials if I wished
+to."
+
+"Are you thinking of going on the editorial side?"
+
+"God forbid!" cried Banneker.
+
+"Unwilling to deal in other men's ideas, eh? Well, Mr. Banneker, you
+have plenty of troubles before you. Interesting ones, however."
+
+"How much could I make by magazine writing?" asked Banneker abruptly.
+
+"Heaven alone knows. Less than you need, I should say, at first. How
+much do you need?"
+
+"My space bill last week was one hundred and twenty-one dollars. I
+filled 'em up on Sunday specials."
+
+"And you need that?"
+
+"It's all gone," grinned Banneker boyishly.
+
+"As between a safe one hundred dollars-plus, and a highly speculative
+nothing-and-upwards, how could any prudent person waver?" queried Mr.
+Gaines as he shook hands in farewell.
+
+For the first time in the whole unusual interview, Banneker found
+himself misliking the other's tone, particularly in the light emphasis
+placed upon the word prudent. Banneker did not conceive kindly of
+himself as a prudent person.
+
+Back at the office, Banneker got out the story of which he had spoken to
+Mr. Gaines, and read it over. It seemed to him good, and quite in the
+tradition of The New Era. It was polite, polished, discreet, and, if not
+precisely subtle, it dealt with interests and motives lying below the
+obvious surfaces of life. It had amused Banneker to write it; which is
+not to say that he spared laborious and conscientious effort. The New
+Era itself amused him, with its air of well-bred aloofness from the
+flatulent romanticism which filled the more popular magazines of the day
+with duke-like drummers or drummer-like dukes, amiable criminals and
+brisk young business geniuses, possessed of rather less moral sense than
+the criminals, for its heroes, and for its heroines a welter of
+adjectives exhaling an essence of sex. Banneker could imagine one of
+these females straying into Mr. Gaines's editorial ken, and that
+gentleman's bland greeting as to his own sprightly second maid arrayed
+and perfumed, unexpectedly encountered at a charity bazar. Too rarefied
+for Banneker's healthy and virile young tastes, the atmosphere in which
+The New Era lived and moved and had its consistently successful
+editorial being! He preferred a freer air to the mild scents of lavender
+and rose-ash, even though it might blow roughly at times. Nevertheless,
+that which was fine and fastidious in his mind recognized and admired
+the restraint, the dignity, the high and honorably maintained standards
+of the monthly. It had distinction. It stood apart from and consciously
+above the reading mob. In some respects it was the antithesis of that
+success for which Park Row strove and sweated.
+
+Banneker felt that he, too, could claim a place on those heights. Yes;
+he liked his story. He thought that Mr. Gaines would like it. Having
+mailed it, he went to Katie's to dinner. There he found Russell Edmonds
+discussing his absurdly insufficient pipe with his customary air of
+careworn watchfulness lest it go out and leave him forlorn and unsolaced
+in a harsh world. The veteran turned upon the newcomer a grim twinkle.
+
+"Don't you do it," he advised positively.
+
+"Do what?"
+
+"Quit."
+
+"Who told you I was considering it?"
+
+"Nobody. I knew it was about time for you to reach that point. We all
+do--at certain times."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Disenchantment. Disillusionment. Besides, I hear the city desk has been
+horsing you."
+
+"Then some one _has_ been blabbing."
+
+"Oh, those things ooze out. Can't keep 'em in. Besides, all city desks
+do that to cubs who come up too fast. It's part of the discipline. Like
+hazing."
+
+"There are some things a man can't do," said Banneker with a sort of
+appeal in his voice.
+
+"Nothing," returned Edmonds positively. "Nothing he can't do to get the
+news."
+
+"Did you ever peep through a keyhole?"
+
+"Figuratively speaking?"
+
+"If you like. Either way."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Would you do it to-day?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then it's a phase a reporter has to go through?"
+
+"Or quit."
+
+"You haven't quit?"
+
+"I did. For a time. In a way. I went to jail."
+
+"Jail? You?" Banneker had a flash of intuition. "I'll bet it was for
+something you were proud of."
+
+"I wasn't ashamed of the jail sentence, at any rate. Youngster, I'm
+going to tell you about this." Edmonds's fine eyes seemed to have
+receded into their hollows as he sat thinking with his pipe neglected on
+the table. "D'you know who Marna Corcoran was?"
+
+"An actress, wasn't she?"
+
+"Leading lady at the old Coliseum Theater. A good actress and a good
+woman. I was a cub then on The Sphere under Red McGraw, the worst
+gutter-pup that ever sat at a city desk, and a damned good newspaper
+man. In those days The Sphere specialized on scandals; the rottener, the
+better; stuff that it wouldn't touch to-day. Well, a hell-cat of a
+society woman sued her husband for divorce and named Miss Corcoran. Pure
+viciousness, it was. There wasn't a shadow of proof, or even suspicion."
+
+"I remember something about that case. The woman withdrew the charge,
+didn't she?"
+
+"When it was too late. Red McGraw had an early tip and sent me to
+interview Marna Corcoran. He let me know pretty plainly that my job
+depended on my landing the story. That was his style; a bully. Well, I
+got the interview; never mind how. When I left her home Miss Corcoran
+was in a nervous collapse. I reported to McGraw. 'Keno!' says he. 'Give
+us a column and a half of it. Spice it.' I spiced it--I guess. They tell
+me it was a good job. I got lost in the excitement of writing and forgot
+what I was dealing with, a woman. We had a beat on that interview. They
+raised my salary, I remember. A week later Red called me to the desk.
+'Got another story for you, Edmonds. A hummer. Marna Corcoran is in a
+private sanitarium up in Connecticut; hopelessly insane. I wouldn't
+wonder if our story did it.' He grinned like an ape. 'Go up there and
+get it. Buy your way in, if necessary. You can always get to some of the
+attendants with a ten-spot. Find out what she raves about; whether it's
+about Allison. Perhaps she's given herself away. Give us another red-hot
+one on it. Here's the address.'
+
+"I wadded up the paper and stuffed it in his mouth. His lips felt pulpy.
+He hit me with a lead paper-weight and cut my head open. I don't know
+that I even hit him; I didn't specially want to hit him. I wanted to
+mark him. There was an extra-size open ink-well on his desk. I poured
+that over him and rubbed it into his face. Some of it got into his eyes.
+How he yelled! Of course he had me arrested. I didn't make any defense;
+I couldn't without bringing in Marna Corcoran's name. The Judge thought
+_I_ was crazy. I was, pretty near. Three months, he gave me. When I came
+out Marna Corcoran was dead. I went to find Red McGraw and kill him. He
+was gone. I think he suspected what I would do. I've never set eyes on
+him since. Two local newspapers sent for me as soon as my term was up
+and offered me jobs. I thought it was because of what I had done to
+McGraw. It wasn't. It was on the strength of the Marna Corcoran
+interview."
+
+"Good God!"
+
+"I needed a job, too. But I didn't take either of those. Later I got a
+better one with a decent newspaper. The managing editor said when he
+took me on: 'Mr. Edmonds, we don't approve of assaults on the city desk.
+But if you ever receive in this office an assignment of the kind that
+caused your outbreak, you may take it out on me.' There are pretty fine
+people in the newspaper business, too."
+
+Edmonds retrieved his pipe, discovering with a look of reproach and
+dismay that it was out. He wiped away some tiny drops of sweat which had
+come out upon the grayish skin beneath his eyes, while he was recounting
+his tragedy.
+
+"That makes my troubles seem petty," said Banneker, under his breath. "I
+wonder--"
+
+"You wonder why I told you all this," supplemented the veteran. "Since I
+have, I'll tell you the rest; how I made atonement in a way. Ten years
+ago I was on a city desk myself. Not very long; but long enough to find
+I didn't like it. A story came to me through peculiar channels. It was a
+scandal story; one of those things that New York society whispers about
+all over the place, yet it's almost impossible to get anything to go on.
+When I tell you that even The Searchlight, which lives on scandal, kept
+off it, you can judge how dangerous it was. Well; I had it pat. It was
+really big stuff of its kind. The woman was brilliant, a daughter of one
+of the oldest and most noted New York families; and noted in her own
+right. She had never married: preferred to follow her career. The man
+was eminent in his line: not a society figure, except by marriage--his
+wife was active in the Four Hundred--because he had no tastes in that
+direction. He was nearly twenty years senior to the girl. The affair was
+desperate from the first. How far it went is doubtful; my informant gave
+it the worst complexion. Certainly there must have been compromising
+circumstances, for the wife left him, holding over him the threat of
+exposure. He cared nothing for himself; and the girl would have given up
+everything for him. But he was then engaged on a public work of
+importance; exposure meant the ruin of that. The wife made conditions;
+that the man should neither speak to, see, nor communicate with the
+girl. He refused. The girl went into exile and forced him to make the
+agreement. My informant had a copy of the letter of agreement; you can
+see how close she was to the family. She said that, if we printed it,
+the man would instantly break barriers, seek out the girl, and they
+would go away together. A front-page story, and exclusive."
+
+"So it was a woman who held the key!" exclaimed Banneker.
+
+Edmonds turned on him. "What does that mean? Do you know anything of the
+story?"
+
+"Not all that you've told me. I know the people."
+
+"Then why did you let me go on?"
+
+"Because they--one of them--is my friend. There is no harm to her in my
+knowing. It might even be helpful."
+
+"Nevertheless, I think you should have told me at once," grumbled the
+veteran. "Well, I didn't take the story. The informer said that she
+would place it elsewhere. I told her that if she did I would publish the
+whole circumstances of her visit and offer, and make New York too hot to
+hold her. She retired, bulging with venom like a mad snake. But she
+dares not tell."
+
+"The man's wife, was it not?"
+
+"Some one representing her, I suspect. A bad woman, that wife. But I
+saved the girl in memory of Marna Corcoran. Think what the story would
+be worth, now that the man is coming forward politically!" Edmonds
+smiled wanly. "It was worth a lot even then, and I threw my paper down
+on it. Of course I resigned from the city desk at once."
+
+"It's a fascinating game, being on the inside of the big things,"
+ruminated Banneker. "But when it comes to a man's enslaving himself to
+his paper, I--don't--know."
+
+"No: you won't quit," prophesied the other.
+
+"I have. That is, I've resigned."
+
+"Of course. They all do, of your type. It was the peck of dirt, wasn't
+it?"
+
+Banneker nodded.
+
+"Gordon won't let you go. And you won't have any more dirt thrown at
+you--probably. If you do, it'll be time enough then."
+
+"There's more than that."
+
+"Is there? What?"
+
+"We're a pariah caste, Edmonds, we reporters. People look down on us."
+
+"Oh, that be damned! You can't afford to be swayed by the ignorance or
+snobbery of outsiders. Play the game straight, and let the rest go."
+
+"But we are, aren't we?" persisted Banneker.
+
+"What! Pariahs?" The look which the old-timer bent upon the rising star
+of the business had in it a quality of brooding and affection. "Son,
+you're too young to have come properly to that frame of mind. That comes
+later. With the dregs of disillusion after the sparkle has died out."
+
+"But it's true. You admit it."
+
+"If an outsider said that we were pariahs I'd call him a liar. But,
+what's the use, with you? It isn't reporting alone. It's the whole
+business of news-getting and news-presenting; of journalism. We're under
+suspicion. They're afraid of us. And at the same time they're
+contemptuous of us."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because people are mostly fools and fools are afraid or contemptuous of
+what they don't understand."
+
+Banneker thought it over. "No. That won't do," he decided. "Men that
+aren't fools and aren't afraid distrust us and despise the business.
+Edmonds, there's nothing wrong, essentially, in furnishing news for the
+public. It's part of the spread of truth. It's the handing on of the
+light. It's--it's as big a thing as religion, isn't it?"
+
+"Bigger. Religion, seven days a week."
+
+"Well, then--"
+
+"I know, son," said Edmonds gently. "You're thirsting for the clear and
+restoring doctrine of journalism. And I'm going to give you hell's own
+heresy. You'll come to it anyway, in time." His fierce little pipe
+glowed upward upon his knotted brows. "You talk about truth, news: news
+and truth as one and the same thing. So they are. But newspapers aren't
+after news: not primarily. Can't you see that?"
+
+"No. What are they after?"
+
+"Sensation."
+
+Banneker turned the word over in his mind, evoking confirmation in the
+remembered headlines even of the reputable Ledger.
+
+"Sensation," repeated the other. "We've got the speed-up motto in
+industry. Our newspaper version of it is 'spice-up.' A conference that
+may change the map of Europe will be crowded off any front page any day
+by young Mrs. Poultney Masters making a speech in favor of giving girls
+night-keys, or of some empty-headed society dame being caught in a
+roadhouse with another lady's hubby. Spice: that's what we're looking
+for. Something to tickle their jaded palates. And they despise us when
+we break our necks or our hearts to get it for 'em."
+
+"But if it's what they want, the fault lies with the public, not with
+us," argued Banneker.
+
+"I used to know a white-stuff man--a cocaine-seller--who had the same
+argument down pat," retorted Edmonds quietly.
+
+Banneker digested that for a time before continuing.
+
+"Besides, you imply that because news is sensational, it must be
+unworthy. That isn't fair. Big news is always sensational. And of course
+the public wants sensation. After all, sensation of one sort or another
+is the proof of life."
+
+"Hence the noble profession of the pander," observed Edmonds through a
+coil of minute and ascending smoke-rings. "He also serves the public."
+
+"You're not drawing a parallel--"
+
+"Oh, no! It isn't the same thing, quite. But it's the same public. Let
+me tell you something to remember, youngster. The men who go to the top
+in journalism, the big men of power and success and grasp, come through
+with a contempt for the public which they serve, compared to which the
+contempt of the public for the newspaper is as skim milk to corrosive
+sublimate."
+
+"Perhaps that's what is wrong with the business, then."
+
+"Have you any idea," inquired Edmonds softly, "what the philosophy of
+the Most Ancient Profession is?"
+
+Banneker shook his head.
+
+"I once heard a street-walker on the verge of D.T.'s--she was
+intelligent; most of 'em are fools--express her analytical opinion of
+the men who patronized her. The men who make our news system have much
+the same notion of their public. How much poison _they_ scatter abroad
+we won't know until a later diagnosis."
+
+"Yet you advise me to stick in the business."
+
+"You've got to. You are marked for it."
+
+"And help scatter the poison!"
+
+"God forbid! I've been pointing out the disease of the business. There's
+a lot of health in it yet. But it's got to have new blood. I'm too old
+to do more than help a little. Son, you've got the stuff in you to do
+the trick. Some one is going to make a newspaper here in this rotten,
+stink-breathing, sensation-sniffing town that'll be based on news.
+Truth! There's your religion for you. Go to it."
+
+"And serve a public that I'll despise as soon as I get strong enough to
+disregard it's contempt for me," smiled Banneker.
+
+"You'll find a public that you can't afford to despise," retorted the
+veteran. "There is such a public. It's waiting."
+
+"Well; I'll know in a couple of weeks," said Banneker. "But _I_ think
+I'm about through."
+
+For Edmonds's bitter wisdom had gone far toward confirming his
+resolution to follow up his first incursion into the magazine field if
+it met with the success which he confidently expected of it.
+
+As if to hold him to his first allegiance, the ruling spirits of The
+Ledger now began to make things easy for him. Fat assignments came his
+way again. Events which seemed almost made to order for his pen were
+turned over to him by the city desk. Even though he found little time
+for Sunday "specials," his space ran from fifteen to twenty-five dollars
+a day, and the "Eban" skits on the editorial page, now paid at double
+rates because of their popularity, added a pleasant surplus. To put a
+point to his mysteriously restored favor, Mr. Greenough called up one
+hot morning and asked Banneker to make what speed he could to Sippiac,
+New Jersey. Rioting had broken out between mill-guards and the strikers
+of the International Cloth Company factories, with a number of resulting
+fatalities. It was a "big story." That Banneker was specially fitted,
+through his familiarity with the ground, to handle it, the city editor
+was not, of course, aware.
+
+At Sippiac, Banneker found the typical industrial tragedy of that time
+and condition, worked out to its logical conclusion. On the one side a
+small army of hired gun-men, assured of full protection and endorsement
+in whatever they might do: on the other a mob of assorted foreigners,
+ignorant, resentful of the law, which seemed only a huge mechanism of
+injustice manipulated by their oppressors, inflamed by the heavy
+potations of a festal night carried over into the next day, and, because
+of the criminally lax enforcement of the law, tacitly permitted to go
+armed. Who had started the clash was uncertain and, perhaps in
+essentials, immaterial; so perfectly and fatefully had the stage been
+set for mutual murder. At the close of the fray there were ten dead. One
+was a guard: the rest, strikers or their dependents, including a woman
+and a six-year-old child, both shot down while running away.
+
+By five o'clock that afternoon Banneker was in the train returning to
+the city with a board across his knees, writing. Five hours later his
+account was finished. At the end of his work, he had one of those ideas
+for "pointing" a story, mere commonplaces of journalism nowadays, which
+later were to give him his editorial reputation. In the pride of his
+publicity-loving soul, Mr. Horace Vanney, chief owner of the
+International Cloth Mills, had given to Banneker a reprint of an address
+by himself, before some philosophical and inquiring society, wherein he
+had set forth some of his simpler economic theories. A quotation,
+admirably apropos to Banneker's present purposes, flashed forth clear
+and pregnant, to his journalistic memory. From the Ledger "morgue" he
+selected one of several cuts of Mr. Vanney, and turned it in to the
+night desk for publication, with this descriptive note:
+
+Horace Vanney, Chairman of the Board of the International Cloth Company,
+Who declares that if working-women are paid more than a bare living wage,
+The surplus goes into finery and vanities which tempt them to ruin, Mr.
+Vanney's mills pay girls four dollars a week.
+
+Ravenously hungry, Banneker went out to order a long-delayed dinner at
+Katie's. Hardly had he swallowed his first mouthful of soup, when an
+office boy appeared.
+
+"Mr. Gordon wants to know if you can come back to the office at once."
+
+On the theory that two minutes, while important to his stomach, would
+not greatly matter to the managing editor, Banneker consumed the rest of
+his soup and returned. He found Mr. Gordon visibly disturbed.
+
+"Sit down, Mr. Banneker," he said.
+
+Banneker compiled.
+
+"We can't use that Sippiac story."
+
+Banneker sat silent and attentive.
+
+"Why did you write it that way?"
+
+"I wrote it as I got it."
+
+"It is not a fair story."
+
+"Every fact--"
+
+"It is a most unfair story."
+
+"Do you know Sippiac, Mr. Gordon?" inquired Banneker equably.
+
+"I do not. Nor can I believe it possible that you could acquire the
+knowledge of it implied in your article, in a few hours."
+
+"I spent some time investigating conditions there before I came on the
+paper."
+
+Mr. Gordon was taken aback. Shifting his stylus to his left hand, he
+assailed severally the knuckles of his right therewith before he spoke.
+"You know the principles of The Ledger, Mr. Banneker."
+
+"To get the facts and print them, so I have understood."
+
+"These are not facts." The managing editor rapped sharply upon the
+proof. "This is editorial matter, hardly disguised."
+
+"Descriptive, I should call it," returned the writer amiably.
+
+"Editorial. You have pictured Sippiac as a hell on earth."
+
+"It is."
+
+"Sentimentalism!" snapped the other. His heavy visage wore a disturbed
+and peevish expression that rendered it quite plaintive. "You have been
+with us long enough, Mr. Banneker, to know that we do not cater to the
+uplift-social trade, nor are we after the labor vote."
+
+"Yes, sir. I understand that."
+
+"Yet you present here, what is, in effect, a damning indictment of the
+Sippiac Mills."
+
+"The facts do that; not I."
+
+"But you have selected your facts, cleverly--oh, very cleverly--to
+produce that effect, while ignoring facts on the other side."
+
+"Such as?"
+
+"Such as the presence and influence of agitators. The evening editions
+have the names, and some of the speeches."
+
+"That is merely clouding the main issue. Conditions are such there that
+no outside agitation is necessary to make trouble."
+
+"But the agitators are there. They're an element and you have ignored
+it. Mr. Banneker, do you consider that you are dealing fairly with this
+paper, in attempting to commit it to an inflammatory, pro-strike
+course?"
+
+"Certainly, if the facts constitute that kind of an argument."
+
+"What of that picture of Horace Vanney? Is that news?"
+
+"Why not? It goes to the root of the whole trouble."
+
+"To print that kind of stuff," said Mr. Gordon forcibly, "would make The
+Ledger a betrayer of its own cause. What you personally believe is not
+the point."
+
+"I believe in facts."
+
+"It is what The Ledger believes that is important here. You must
+appreciate that, as long as you remain on the staff, your only honorable
+course is to conform to the standards of the paper. When you write an
+article, it appears to our public, not as what Mr. Banneker says, but as
+what The Ledger says."
+
+"In other words," said Banneker thoughtfully, "where the facts conflict
+with The Ledger's theories, I'm expected to adjust the facts. Is that
+it?"
+
+"Certainly not! You are expected to present the news fairly and without
+editorial emphasis."
+
+"I'm sorry, Mr. Gordon, but I don't believe I could rewrite that story
+so as to give a favorable slant to the International's side. Shooting
+down women and kids, you know--"
+
+Mr. Gordon's voice was crisp as he cut in. "There is no question of your
+rewriting it. That has been turned over to a man we can trust."
+
+"To handle facts tactfully," put in Banneker in his mildest voice.
+
+Considerably to his surprise, he saw a smile spread over Mr. Gordon's
+face. "You're an obstinate young animal, Banneker," he said. "Take this
+proof home, put it under your pillow and dream over it. Tell me a week
+from now what you think of it."
+
+Banneker rose. "Then, I'm not fired?" he said.
+
+"Not by me."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I'm trusting in your essential honesty to bring you around."
+
+"To be quite frank," returned Banneker after a moment's thought, "I'm
+afraid I've got to be convinced of The Ledger's essential honesty to
+come around."
+
+"Go home and think it over," suggested the managing editor.
+
+To his associate, Andreas, he said, looking at Banneker's retreating
+back: "We're going to lose that young man, Andy. And we can't afford to
+lose him."
+
+"What's the matter?" inquired Andreas, the fanatical devotee of the
+creed of news for news' sake.
+
+"Quixotism. Did you read his story?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Mr. Gordon looked up from his inflamed knuckles for an opinion.
+
+"A great job," pronounced Andreas, almost reverently.
+
+"But not for us."
+
+"No; no. Not for us."
+
+"It wasn't a fair story," alleged the managing editor with a hint of the
+defensive in his voice.
+
+"Too hot for that," the assistant supported his chief. "And yet
+perhaps--"
+
+"Perhaps what?" inquired Mr. Gordon with roving and anxious eye.
+
+"Nothing," said Andreas.
+
+As well as if he had finished, Mr. Gordon supplied the conclusion.
+"Perhaps it is quite as fair as our recast article will be."
+
+It was, on the whole, fairer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+What next? Banneker put the query to himself with more seriousness than
+he had hitherto given to estimating the future. Money, as he told Betty
+Raleigh, had never concerned him much. His start at fifteen dollars a
+week had been more than he expected; and though his one weekly evening
+of mild sybaritism ate up all his margin, and his successful sartorial
+experiments consumed his private surplus, he had no cause for worry,
+since his salary had been shortly increased to twenty, and even more
+shortly thereafter to twenty-five. Now it was a poor week in which he
+did not exceed the hundred. All of it went, rather more fluently than
+had the original fifteen. Frugal though he could be in normal
+expenditures, the rental of his little but fashionably situated
+apartment, his new club expenses, his polo outfit, and his occasional
+associations with the after-theater clique, which centered at The Avon,
+caused the debit column to mount with astonishing facility. Furthermore,
+through his Western associations he had an opportunity to pick up two
+half-broken polo ponies at bargain prices. He had practically decided to
+buy them. Their keep would be a serious item. He must have more money.
+How to get it? Harder work was the obvious answer. Labor had no terrors
+for Banneker. Mentally he was a hardened athlete, always in training.
+Being wise and self-protective, he did no writing on his day off. But
+except for this period of complete relaxation, he gave himself no
+respite. Any morning which did not find him writing in his den, after a
+light, working breakfast, he put in at the Library near by, insatiably
+reading economics, sociology, politics, science, the more serious
+magazines, and always the news and comments of the day. He was possessed
+of an assertive and sane curiosity to know what was going on in the
+world, an exigence which pressed upon him like a healthy appetite, the
+stimulus of his hard-trained mental condition. The satisfaction of this
+demand did not pay an immediate return; he obtained little or no actual
+material to be transmuted into the coin of so-much-per-column, except as
+he came upon suggestions for editorial use; and, since his earlier
+experience of The Ledger's editorial method with contributions (which he
+considered light-fingered), he had forsworn this medium. Notwithstanding
+this, he wrote or sketched out many an editorial which would have
+astonished, and some which would have benefited, the Inside Room where
+the presiding genius, malicious and scholarly, dipped his pen
+alternately into luminous ether and undiluted venom. Some day, Banneker
+was sure, he himself was going to say things editorially.
+
+His opinion of the editorial output in general was unflattering. It
+seemed to him bound by formalism and incredibly blind to the immense and
+vivid interest of the news whereby it was surrounded, as if a man, set
+down in a meadow full of deep and clear springs, should elect to drink
+from a shallow, torpid, and muddy trickle. Legislation, taxes,
+transportation problems, the Greatness of Our City, our National Duty
+(whatever it might be at the time--and according to opinion), the drink
+question, the race problem, labor and capital; these were the reiterated
+topics, dealt with informatively often, sometimes wittily, seldom
+impartially. But, at best, this was but the creaking mechanism of the
+artificial structure of society, and it was varied only by an occasional
+literary or artistic sally, or a preachment in the terms of a convinced
+moralization upon the unvarying text that the wages of sin is death. Why
+not a touch of humanism, now and again, thought Banneker, following the
+inevitable parallels in paper after paper; a ray of light striking
+through into the life-texture beneath?
+
+By way of experiment he watched the tide of readers, flowing through the
+newspaper room of the Public Library, to ascertain what they read. Not
+one in thirty paid any attention to the editorial pages. Essaying
+farther afield, he attended church on several occasions. His suspicions
+were confirmed; from the pulpit he heard, addressed to scanty
+congregations, the same carefully phrased, strictly correct comments,
+now dealing, however, with the mechanism of another world. The chief
+point of difference was that the newspaper editorials were, on the
+whole, more felicitously worded and more compactly thought out.
+Essentially, however, the two ran parallel.
+
+Banneker wondered whether the editorial rostrum, too, was fated to
+deliver its would-be authoritative message to an audience which
+threatened to dwindle to the vanishing point. Who read those carefully
+wrought columns in The Ledger? Pot-bellied chair-warmers in clubs;
+hastening business men appreciative of the daily assurance that
+stability is the primal and final blessing, discontent the cardinal sin,
+the extant system perfect and holy, and any change a wile of the forces
+of destruction--as if the human race had evoluted by the power of
+standing still! For the man in the street they held no message. No; nor
+for the woman in the home. Banneker thought of young Smith of the yacht
+and the coming millions, with a newspaper waiting to drop into his
+hands. He wished he could have that newspaper--any newspaper, for a
+year. He'd make the man in the street sit up and read his editorials.
+Yes, and the woman in the home. Why not the boy and the girl in school,
+also? Any writer, really master of his pen, ought to be able to make
+even a problem in algebra editorially interesting!
+
+And if he could make it interesting, he could make it pay.... But how
+was he to profit by all this hard work, this conscientious technical
+training to which he was devoting himself? True, it was improving his
+style. But for the purposes of Ledger reporting, he wrote quite well
+enough. Betterment here might be artistically satisfactory; financially
+it would be fruitless. Already his space bills were the largest,
+consistently, on the staff, due chiefly to his indefatigable industry in
+devoting every spare office hour to writing his "Eban" sketches, now
+paid at sixteen dollars a column, and Sunday "specials." He might push
+this up a little, but not much.
+
+From the magazine field, expectations were meager in the immediate
+sense. True, The Bon Vivant had accepted the story which The Era
+rejected; but it had paid only seventy-five dollars. Banneker did not
+care to go farther on that path. Aside from the unsatisfactory return,
+his fastidiousness revolted from being identified with the output of a
+third-class and flashy publication. Whatever The Ledger's shortcomings,
+it at least stood first in its field. But was there any future for him
+there, other than as a conspicuously well-paid reporter? In spite of the
+critical situation which his story of the Sippiac riots had brought
+about, he knew that he was safe as long as he wished to stay.
+
+"You're too valuable to lose," said Tommy Burt, swinging his pudgy legs
+over Banneker's desk, having finished one of his mirthful stories of a
+row between a wine agent and a theatrical manager over a doubly reserved
+table in a conspicuous restaurant. "Otherwise--phutt! But they'll be
+very careful what kind of assignments they hand over to your reckless
+hands in future. You mustn't throw expensive and brittle conventions at
+the editor's head. They smash."
+
+"And the fragments come back and cut. I know. But what does it all lead
+to, Tommy?"
+
+"Depends on which way you're going."
+
+"To the top, naturally."
+
+"From anybody else that would sound blatant, Ban," returned Tommy
+admiringly. "Somehow you get away with it. Are you as sincere as you
+act?"
+
+"In so far as my intentions go. Of course, I may trip up and break
+myself in two."
+
+"No. You'll always fall light. There's a buoyancy about you.... But what
+about coming to the end of the path and finding nowhere else to
+proceed?"
+
+"Paragon of wisdom, you have stated the situation. Now produce the
+answer."
+
+"More money?" inquired Tommy.
+
+"More money. More opportunity."
+
+"Then you've got to aim at the executive end. Begin by taking a
+copy-desk."
+
+"At forty a week?"
+
+"It isn't so long ago that twenty-five looked pretty big to you, Ban."
+
+"A couple of centuries ago," stated Banneker positively. "Forty a week
+wouldn't keep me alive now."
+
+"You could write a lot of specials. Or do outside work."
+
+"Perhaps. But what would a desk lead to?
+
+"City editor. Night city editor. Night editor. Managing editor at
+fifteen thou."
+
+"After ten years. If one has the patience. I haven't. Besides, what
+chance would _I_ have?'
+
+"None, with the present lot in the Inside Room. You're a heretic. You're
+unsound. You've got dangerous ideas--accent on the dangerous. I doubt if
+they'd even trust you with a blue pencil. You might inject something
+radical into a thirty-head."
+
+"Tommy," said Banneker, "I'm still new at this game. What becomes of
+star reporters?"
+
+"Drink," replied Tommy brusquely.
+
+"Rats!" retorted Banneker. "That's guff. There aren't three heavy
+drinkers in this office."
+
+"A lot of the best men go that way," persisted Burt. "It's the late
+hours and the irregular life, I suppose. Some drift out into other
+lines. This office has trained a lot of playwrights and authors and
+ad-men."
+
+"But some must stick."
+
+"They play out early. The game is too hard. They get to be hacks. _Or_
+permanent desk-men. D'you know Philander Akely?"
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"Ask me who he _was_ and I'll tell you. He was the brilliant youngster,
+the coruscating firework, the--the Banneker of ten years ago. Come into
+the den and meet him."
+
+In one of the inner rooms Banneker was introduced to a fragile,
+desiccated-looking man languidly engaged in scissoring newspaper after
+newspaper which he took from a pile and cast upon the floor after
+operation. The clippings he filed in envelopes. A checkerboard lay on
+the table beside him.
+
+"Do you play draughts, Mr. Banneker?" he asked in a rumbling bass.
+
+"Very little and very poorly."
+
+The other sighed. "It is pure logic, in the form of contest. Far more so
+than chess, which is merely sustained effort of concentration. Are you
+interested in emblemology?"
+
+"I'm afraid I know almost nothing of it," confessed Banneker.
+
+Akely sighed again, gave Banneker a glance which proclaimed an utter
+lack of interest, and plunged his shears into the editorial vitals of
+the Springfield Republican. Tommy Burt led the surprised Banneker away.
+
+"Dried up, played out, and given a measly thirty-five a week as
+hopper-feeder for the editorial room," he announced. "And he was the
+star man of his time."
+
+"That's pretty rotten treatment for him, then," said Banneker
+indignantly.
+
+"Not a bit of it. He isn't worth what he gets. Most offices would have
+chucked him out on the street."
+
+"What was his trouble?"
+
+"Nothing in particular. Just wore his machine out. Everything going out,
+nothing coming in. He spun out enough high-class copy to keep the
+ordinary reporter going for a life-time; but he spun it out too fast.
+Nothing left. The tragedy of it is that he's quite happy."
+
+"Then it isn't a tragedy at all."
+
+"Depends on whether you take the Christian or the Buddhist point of
+view. He's found his Nirvana in checker problems and collecting
+literature about insignia. Write? I don't suppose he'd want to if he
+could. 'There but for the grace of God goes'--you or I. _I_ think the
+_facilis descensus_ to the gutter is almost preferable."
+
+"So you've shown him to me as a dreadful warning, have you, Tommy?"
+mused Banneker aloud.
+
+"Get out of it, Ban; get out of it."
+
+"Why don't you get out of it yourself?"
+
+"Inertia. Or cowardice. And then, I haven't come to the turning-point
+yet. When I do reach it, perhaps it'll be too late."
+
+"What do you reckon the turning-point?"
+
+"As long as you feel the excitement of the game," explained this veteran
+of thirty, "you're all right. That will keep you going; the sense of
+adventure, of change, of being in the thick of things. But there's an
+underlying monotony, so they tell me: the monotony of seeing things by
+glimpses, of never really completing a job, of being inside important
+things, but never of them. That gets into your veins like a clogging
+poison. Then you're through. Quit it, Ban, before it's too late."
+
+"No. I'm not going to quit the game. It's my game. I'm going to beat
+it."
+
+"Maybe. You've got the brains. But I think you're too stiff in the
+backbone. Go-to-hell-if-you-don't-like-the-way-I-do-it may be all right
+for a hundred-dollar-a-week job; but it doesn't get you a managing
+editorship at fifteen to twenty thousand. Even if it did, you'd give up
+the go-to-hell attitude as soon as you landed, for fear it would cost
+you your job and be too dear a luxury."
+
+"All right, Mr. Walpole," laughed Banneker. "When I find what my price
+is, I'll let you know. Meantime I'll think over your well-meant advice."
+
+If the normal way of advancement were closed to him in The Ledger office
+because of his unsound and rebellious attitude on social and labor
+questions, there might be better opportunities in other offices,
+Banneker reflected.
+
+Before taking any step he decided to talk over the general situation
+with that experienced campaigner, Russell Edmonds. Him and his
+diminutive pipe he found at Katie's, after most of the diners had left.
+The veteran nodded when Banneker told him of his having reached what
+appeared to be a _cul-de-sac_.
+
+"It's about time you quit," said Edmonds vigorously.
+
+"You've changed your mind?"
+
+The elder nodded between two spirals of smoke which gave him the
+appearance of an important godling delivering oracles through incense.
+"That was a dam' bad story you wrote of the Sippiac killings."
+
+"I didn't write it."
+
+"Didn't uh? You were there."
+
+"My story went to the office cat."
+
+"What was the stuff they printed? Amalgamated Wire Association?"
+
+"No. Machine-made rewrite in the office."
+
+"It wasn't dishonest. The Ledger's too clever for that. It was unhonest.
+You can't be both neutral and fair on cold-blooded murder."
+
+"You weren't precisely neutral in The Courier."
+
+Edmonds chuckled. "I did rather put it over on the paper. But that was
+easy. Simply a matter of lining up the facts in logical sequence."
+
+"Horace Vanney says you're an anarchist."
+
+"It's mutual. I think he's one. To hell with all laws and rights that
+discommode _Me_ and _My_ interests. That's the Vanney platform."
+
+"He thinks he ought to have advertised."
+
+"Wise guy! So he ought."
+
+"To secure immunity?"
+
+It required six long, hard puffs to elicit from Edmonds the opinion:
+"He'd have got it. Partly. Not all he paid for."
+
+"Not from The Ledger," said Banneker jealously. "We're independent in
+that respect."
+
+Edmonds laughed. "You don't have to bribe your own heeler. The Ledger
+believes in Vanney's kind of anarchism, as in a religion."
+
+"Could he have bought off The Courier?"
+
+"Nothing as raw as that. But it's quite possible that if the Sippiac
+Mills had been a heavy advertiser, the paper wouldn't have sent me to
+the riots. Some one more sympathetic, maybe."
+
+"Didn't they kick on your story?"
+
+"Who? The mill people? Howled!"
+
+"But it didn't get them anything?"
+
+"Didn't it! You know how difficult it is to get anything for publication
+out of old Rockface Enderby. Well, I had a brilliant idea that this was
+something he'd talk about. Law Enforcement stuff, you know. And he did.
+Gave me a hummer of an interview. Tore the guts out of the mill-owners
+for violating all sorts of laws, and put it up that the mill-guards were
+themselves a lawless organization. There's nothing timid about Enderby.
+Why, we'd have started a controversy that would be going yet."
+
+"Well, why didn't you?"
+
+"Interview was killed," replied Edmonds, grinning ruefully. "For the
+best interests of the paper. That's what the Vanney crowd's kick got
+them."
+
+"Pop, what do you make of Willis Enderby?"
+
+"Oh, he's plodding along only a couple of decades behind his time."
+
+"A reactionary?"
+
+"Didn't I say he was plodding along? A reactionary is immovable except
+in the wrong direction. Enderby's a conservative."
+
+"As a socialist you're against any one who isn't as radical as you are."
+
+"I'm not against Willis Enderby. I'm for him," grunted the veteran.
+
+"Why; if he's a conservative?"
+
+"Oh, as for that, I can bring a long indictment against him. He's a firm
+believer in the capitalistic system. He's enslaved to the old economic
+theories, supply and demand, and all that rubbish from the ruins of
+ancient Rome. He believes that gold is the only sound material for
+pillars of society. The aristocratic idea is in his bones." Edmonds, by
+a feat of virtuosity, sent a thin, straight column of smoke, as it might
+have been an allegorical and sardonic pillar itself, almost to the
+ceiling. "But he believes in fair play. Free speech. Open field. The
+rigor of the game. He's a sportsman in life and affairs. That's why he's
+dangerous."
+
+"Dangerous? To whom?"
+
+"To the established order. To the present system. Why, son, all we
+Socialists ask is fair play. Give us an even chance for labor, for the
+proletariat; an even show before the courts, an open forum in the
+newspapers, the right to organize as capital organizes, and we'll win.
+If we can't win, we deserve to lose. I say that men like Willis Enderby
+are our strongest supporters."
+
+"Probably he thinks his side will win, under the strict rules of the
+game."
+
+"Of course. But if he didn't, he'd still be for fair play, to the last
+inch."
+
+"That's a pretty fine thing to say of a man, Pop."
+
+"It's a pretty fine man," said Edmonds.
+
+"What does Enderby want? What is he after?"
+
+"For himself? Nothing. It's something to be known as the ablest honest
+lawyer in New York. Or, you can turn it around and say he's the
+honestest able lawyer in New York. I think, myself, you wouldn't be far
+astray if you said the ablest and honestest. No; he doesn't want
+anything more than what he's got: his position, his money, his
+reputation. Why should he? But it's going to be forced on him one of
+these days."
+
+"Politically?"
+
+"Yes. Whatever there is of leadership in the reform element here centers
+in him. It's only a question of time when he'll have to carry the
+standard."
+
+"I'd like to be able to fall in behind him when the time comes."
+
+"On The Ledger?" grunted Edmonds.
+
+"But I shan't be on The Ledger when the time comes. Not if I can find
+any other place to go."
+
+"Plenty of places," affirmed Edmonds positively.
+
+"Yes; but will they give me the chance I want?"
+
+"Not unless you make it for yourself. But let's canvass 'em. You want a
+morning paper."
+
+"Yes. Not enough salary in the evening field."
+
+"Well: you've thought of The Sphere first, I suppose."
+
+"Naturally. I like their editorial policy. Their news policy makes me
+seasick."
+
+"I'm not so strong for the editorials. They're always for reform and
+never for progress."
+
+"Ah, but that's epigram."
+
+"It's true, nevertheless. The Sphere is always tiptoeing up to the edge
+of some decisive policy, and then running back in alarm. What of The
+Observer? They're looking for new blood."
+
+"The Observer! O Lord! Preaches the eternal banalities and believes them
+the eternal verities."
+
+"Epigram, yourself," grinned Edmonds. "Well, The Monitor?"
+
+"The three-card Monitor, and marked cards at that."
+
+"Yes; you'd have to watch the play. The Graphic then?"
+
+"Nothing but an ornamental ghost. The ghost of a once handsomely kept
+lady. I don't aspire to write daily epitaphs."
+
+"And The Messenger I suppose you wouldn't even call a kept lady. Too
+common. Babylonian stuff. But The Express is respectable enough for
+anybody."
+
+"And conscious of it in every issue. One long and pious scold, after a
+high-minded, bad-tempered formula of its own."
+
+"Then I'll give you a motto for your Ledger." Edmonds puffed it out
+enjoyably,--decorated with bluish and delicate whorls. "'_Meliora video
+proboque, deleriora sequor_.'"
+
+"No; I won't have that. The last part will do; we do follow the worser
+way; but if we see the better, we don't approve it. We don't even
+recognize it as the better. We're honestly convinced in our advocacy of
+the devil."
+
+"I don't know that we're honestly convinced of anything on The Courier,
+except of the desirability of keeping friendly with everybody. But such
+as we are, we'd grab at you."
+
+"No; thanks, Pop. You yourself are enough in the troubled-water duckling
+line for one old hen like The Courier."
+
+"Then there remains only The Patriot, friend of the Pee-pul."
+
+"Skimmed scum," was Banneker's prompt definition. "And nothing in the
+soup underneath."
+
+Ernst, the waiter, scuttled across the floor below, and disappeared back
+of the L-angle a few feet away.
+
+"Somebody's dining there," remarked Edmonds, "while we've been stripping
+the character off every paper in the field."
+
+"May it be all the editors and owners in a lump!" said Banneker. "I'm
+sorry I didn't talk louder. I'm feeling reckless."
+
+"Bad frame of mind for a man seeking a job. By the way, what _are_ you
+out after, exactly? Aiming at the editorial page, aren't you?"
+
+Banneker leaned over the table, his face earnest to the point of
+somberness. "Pop," he said, "you know I can write."
+
+"You can write like the devil," Edmonds offered up on twin supports of
+vapor.
+
+"Yes, and I can do more than that. I can think."
+
+"For self, or others?" propounded the veteran.
+
+"I take you. I can think for myself and make it profitable to others, if
+I can find the chance. Why, Pop, this editorial game is child's play!"
+
+"You've tried it?"
+
+"Experimentally. The opportunities are limitless. I could make people
+read editorials as eagerly as they read scandal or baseball."
+
+"How?"
+
+"By making them as simple and interesting as scandal or baseball."
+
+"Oh! As easy as that," observed Edmonds scornfully. "High art, son!
+Nobody's found the way yet. Perhaps, if--"
+
+He stopped, took his pipe from his lips and let his raised eyes level
+themselves toward the corner of the L where appeared a figure.
+
+"Would you gentlemen mind if I took my coffee with you?" said the
+newcomer smoothly.
+
+Banneker looked with questioning eyebrows toward Edmonds, who nodded.
+"Come up and sit down, Mr. Marrineal," invited Banneker, moving his
+chair to leave a vacancy between himself and his companion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Tertius C. Marrineal was a man of forty, upon whom the years had laid no
+bonds. A large fortune, founded by his able but illiterate father in the
+timber stretches of the Great Lakes region, and spread out into various
+profitable enterprises of mining, oil, cattle, and milling, provided him
+with a constantly increasing income which, though no amateur at
+spending, he could never quite overtake. Like many other hustlers of his
+day and opportunity, old Steve Marrineal had married a shrewd little
+shopgirl who had come up with him through the struggle by the slow,
+patient steps described in many of our most improving biographies. As
+frequently occurs, though it doesn't get into the biographies, she who
+had played a helpful role in adversity, could not withstand affluence.
+She bloated physically and mentally, and became the juicy and
+unsuspecting victim of a horde of parasites and flatterers who swarmed
+eagerly upon her, as soon as the rough and contemptuous protection of
+her husband was removed by the hand of a medical prodigy who advertised
+himself as the discoverer of a new and infallible cure for cancer, and
+whom Mrs. Marrineal, with an instinctive leaning toward quackery, had
+forced upon her spouse. Appraising his prospective widow with an
+accurate eye, the dying man left a testament bestowing the bulk of his
+fortune upon his son, with a few heavy income-producing properties for
+Mrs. Marrineal. Tertius Marrineal was devoted to his mother, with a
+jealous, pitying, and protective affection. This is popularly approved
+as the infallible mark of a good man. Tertius Marrineal was not a good
+man.
+
+Nor was there any particular reason why he should be. Boys who have a
+business pirate for father, and a weak-minded coddler for mother, seldom
+grow into prize exhibits. Young Marrineal did rather better than might
+have been expected, thanks to the presence at his birth-cradle of a
+robust little good-fairy named Self-Preservation, who never gets half
+the credit given to more picturesque but less important gift-bringers.
+He grew up with an instinctive sense of when to stop. Sometimes he
+stopped inopportunely. He quit several courses of schooling too soon,
+because he did not like the unyielding regimen of the institutions.
+When, a little, belated, he contrived to gain entrance to a small, old,
+and fashionable Eastern college, he was able, or perhaps willing, to go
+only halfway through his sophomore year. Two years in world travel with
+a well-accredited tutor seemed to offer an effectual and not too
+rigorous method of completing the process of mind-formation. Young
+Marrineal got a great deal out of that trip, though the result should
+perhaps be set down under the E of Experience rather than that of
+Erudition. The mentor also acquired experience, but it profited him
+little, as he died within the year after the completion of the trip, his
+health having been sacrificed in a too conscientious endeavor to keep
+even pace with his pupil. Young Marrineal did not suffer in health. He
+was a robust specimen. Besides, there was his good and protective fairy
+always ready with the flag of warning at the necessary moment.
+
+Launched into the world after the elder Marrineal's death, Tertius
+interested himself in sundry of the businesses left by his father.
+Though they had been carefully devised and surrounded with safeguards,
+the heir managed to break into and improve several of them. The result
+was more money. After having gambled with fair luck, played the profuse
+libertine for a time, tried his hand at yachting, horse-racing, big-game
+hunting, and even politics, he successively tired of the first three,
+and was beaten at the last, but retained an unsatisfied hunger for it.
+To celebrate his fortieth birthday, he had bought a house on the eastern
+vista of Central Park, and drifted into a rather indeterminate life,
+identified with no special purpose, occupation, or set. Large though his
+fortune was, it was too much disseminated and he was too indifferent to
+it, for him to be conspicuous in the money game which constitutes New
+York's lists of High Endeavor. His reputation, in the city of careless
+reckonings, was vague, but just a trifle tarnished; good enough for the
+casual contacts which had hitherto made up his life, but offering
+difficulties should he wish to establish himself more firmly.
+
+The best clubs were closed to him; he had reached his possible summit
+along that path in achieving membership in the recently and superbly
+established Oligarchs Club, which was sumptuous, but over-vivid like a
+new Oriental rug. As to other social advancement, his record was an
+obstacle. Not that it was worse than, nor indeed nearly as bad as, that
+of many an established member of the inner circle; but the test for an
+outsider seeking admittance is naturally made more severe. Delavan Eyre,
+for example, an average sinner for one of his opportunities and
+standing, had certainly no better a general repute, and latterly a much
+more dubious one than Marrineal. But Eyre "belonged" of right.
+
+As sufficient indication of Marrineal's status, by the way, it may be
+pointed out that, while he knew Eyre quite well, it was highly
+improbable that he would ever know Mrs. Eyre, or, if he did fortuitously
+come to know her, that he would be able to improve upon the
+acquaintance. All this Marrineal himself well understood. But it must
+not be inferred that he resented it. He was far too much of a
+philosopher for that. It amused him as offering a new game to be played,
+more difficult certainly and inferentially more interesting than any of
+those which had hitherto enlisted his somewhat languid efforts. He
+appreciated also, though with a cynical disbelief in the logic of the
+situation, that he must polish up his reputation. He was on the new
+quest at the time when he overheard Banneker and Edmonds discuss the
+journalistic situation in Katie's restaurant, and had already determined
+upon his procedure.
+
+Sitting between the two newspaper workers, Marrineal overtopped them
+both; the supple strength of Banneker as well as the gnarly slenderness
+of Edmonds. He gave an impression of loose-jointed and rather lazy
+power; also of quiet self-confidence. He began to talk at once, with the
+easy, drifting commentary of a man who had seen everything, measured
+much, and liked the glittering show. Both of the others, one his elder,
+the other his junior, felt the ready charm of the man. Both were content
+to listen, waiting for the clue to his intrusion which he had contrived
+to make not only inoffensive, but seemingly a casual act of
+good-fellowship. The clue was not afforded, but presently some shrewd
+opinion of the newcomer upon the local political situation set them both
+to discussion. Quite insensibly Marrineal withdrew from the
+conversation, sipping his coffee and listening with an effect of
+effortless amenity.
+
+"If we had a newspaper here that wasn't tied hard and fast,
+politically!" cried Edmonds presently.
+
+Marrineal fingered a specially fragrant cigar. "But a newspaper must be
+tied to something, mustn't it?" he queried. "Otherwise it drifts."
+
+"Why not to its reading public?" suggested Banneker.
+
+"That's an idea. But can you tie to a public? Isn't the public itself
+adrift, like seaweed?"
+
+"Blown about by the gales of politics." Edmonds accepted the figure.
+"Well, the newspaper ought to be the gale."
+
+"I gather that you gentlemen do not think highly of present journalistic
+conditions."
+
+"You overheard our discussion," said Banneker bluntly.
+
+Marrineal assented. "It did not seem private. Katie's is a sort of free
+forum. That is why I come. I like to listen. Besides, it touched me
+pretty closely at one or two points."
+
+The two others turned toward him, waiting. He nodded, and took upon
+himself an air of well-pondered frankness. "I expect to take a more
+active part in journalism from now on."
+
+Edmonds followed up the significant phrase. "_More_ active? You have
+newspaper interests?"
+
+"Practically speaking, I own The Patriot. What do you gentlemen think of
+it?"
+
+"Who reads The Patriot?" inquired Banneker. He was unprepared for the
+swift and surprised flash from Marrineal's fine eyes, as if some
+profoundly analytical or revealing suggestion had been made.
+
+"Forty thousand men, women, and children. Not half enough, of course."
+
+"Not a tenth enough, I would say, if I owned the paper. Nor are they the
+right kind of readers."
+
+"How would you define them, then?" asked Marrineal, still in that smooth
+voice.
+
+"Small clerks. Race-track followers. People living in that class of
+tenements which call themselves flats. The more intelligent servants.
+Totally unimportant people."
+
+"Therefore a totally unimportant paper?"
+
+"A paper can be important only through what it makes people believe and
+think. What possible difference can it make what The Patriot's readers
+think?"
+
+"If there were enough of them?" suggested Marrineal.
+
+"No. Besides, you'll never get enough of them, in the way you're running
+the paper now."
+
+"Don't say 'you,' please," besought Marrineal. "I've been keeping my
+hands off. Watching."
+
+"And now you're going to take hold?" queried Edmonds. "Personally?"
+
+"As soon as I can find my formula--and the men to help me work it out,"
+he added, after a pause so nicely emphasized that both his hearers had a
+simultaneous inkling of the reason for his being at their table.
+
+"I've seen newspapers run on formula before," muttered Edmonds.
+
+"Onto the rocks?"
+
+"Invariably."
+
+"That's because the formulas were amateur formulas, isn't it?"
+
+The veteran of a quarter-century turned a mildly quizzical smile upon
+the adventurer into risky waters. "Well?" he jerked out.
+
+Marrineal's face was quite serious as he took up the obvious
+implication. "Where is the dividing line between professional and
+amateur in the newspaper business? You gentlemen will bear with me if I
+go into personal details a little. I suppose I've always had the
+newspaper idea. When I was a youngster of twenty, I tried myself out.
+Got a job as a reporter in St. Louis. It was just a callow escapade. And
+of course it couldn't last. I was an undisciplined sort of cub. They
+fired me; quite right, too. But I did learn a little. And at least it
+educated me in one thing; how to read newspapers." He laughed lightly.
+"Perhaps that is as nearly thorough an education as I've ever had in
+anything."
+
+"It's rather an art, newspaper reading," observed Banneker.
+
+"You've tried it, I gather. So have I, rather exhaustively in the last
+year. I've been reading every paper in New York every day and all
+through."
+
+"That's a job for an able-minded man," commented Edmonds, looking at him
+with a new respect.
+
+"It put eye-glasses on me. But if it dimmed my eyes, it enlightened my
+mind. The combined newspapers of New York do not cover the available
+field. They do not begin to cover it.... Did you say something, Mr.
+Banneker?"
+
+"Did I? I didn't mean to," said Banneker hastily. "I'm a good deal
+interested."
+
+"I'm glad to hear that," returned Marrineal with gravity. "After I'd
+made my estimate of what the newspapers publish and fail to publish,
+I canvassed the circulation lists and news-stands and made another
+discovery. There is a large potential reading public not yet tied up to
+any newspaper. It's waiting for the right paper."
+
+"The imputation of amateurishness is retracted, with apologies,"
+announced Russell Edmonds.
+
+"Accepted. Though there are amateur areas yet in my mind. I bought The
+Patriot."
+
+"Does that represent one of the areas?"
+
+"It represents nothing, thus far, except what it has always represented,
+a hand-to-mouth policy and a financial deficit. But what's wrong with it
+from your point of view?"
+
+"Cheap and nasty," was the veteran's succinct criticism.
+
+"Any more so than The Sphere? The Sphere's successful."
+
+"Because it plays fair with the main facts. It may gloss 'em up with a
+touch of sensationalism, like the oil on a barkeep's hair. But it does
+go after the facts, and pretty generally it presents 'em as found. The
+Patriot is fakey; clumsy at it, too. Any man arrested with more than
+five dollars in his pocket is a millionaire clubman. If Bridget
+O'Flaherty jumps off Brooklyn Bridge, she becomes a prominent society
+woman with picture (hers or somebody else's) in The Patriot. And the
+cheapest little chorus-girl tart, who blackmails a broker's clerk with a
+breach of promise, gets herself called a 'distinguished actress' and him
+a 'well-known financier.' Why steal the Police Gazette's rouge and
+lip-stick?"
+
+"Because it's what the readers want."
+
+"All right. But at least give it to 'em well done. And cut out the
+printing of wild rumors as news. That doesn't get a paper anything in
+the long run. None of your readers have any faith in The Patriot."
+
+"Does any paper have the confidence of its public?" returned Marrineal.
+
+Touched upon a sensitive spot, Edmonds cursed briefly. "If it hasn't,
+it's because the public has a dam'-fool fad for pretending it doesn't
+believe what it reads. Of course it believes it! Otherwise, how would
+it know who's president, or that the market sagged yesterday? This
+'I-never-believe-what-I-read-in-the-papers' guff makes me sick to the
+tips of my toes."
+
+"Only the man who knows newspapers from the inside can disbelieve them
+scientifically," put in Banneker with a smile.
+
+"What would _you_ do with The Patriot if you had it?" interrogated the
+proprietor.
+
+"I? Oh, I'd try to make it interesting," was the prompt and simple
+reply.
+
+"How, interesting?"
+
+For his own purposes Banneker chose to misinterpret the purport of the
+question. "So interesting that half a million people would have to read
+it."
+
+"You think you could do that?"
+
+"I think it could be done."
+
+"Will you come with me and try it?"
+
+"You're offering me a place on The Patriot staff?"
+
+"Precisely. Mr. Edmonds is joining."
+
+That gentleman breathed a small cloud of blue vapor into the air
+together with the dispassionate query: "Is that so? Hadn't heard of it."
+
+"My principle in business is to determine whether I want a man or an
+article, and then bid a price that can't be rejected."
+
+"Sound," admitted the veteran. "Perfectly sound. But I'm not specially
+in need of money."
+
+"I'm offering you opportunity."
+
+"What kind?"
+
+"Opportunity to handle big stories according to the facts as you see
+them. Not as you had to handle the Sippiac strike story."
+
+Edmonds set down his pipe. "What did you think of that?"
+
+"A masterpiece of hinting and suggestion and information for those who
+can read between the lines. Not many have the eye for it. With me you
+won't have to write between the lines. Not on labor or political
+questions, anyway. You're a Socialist, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes. You're not going to make The Patriot a Socialist paper, are you?"
+
+"Some people might call it that. I'm going to make it a popular paper.
+It's going to be for the many against the few. How are you going to
+bring about Socialism?"
+
+"Education."
+
+"Exactly! What better chance could you ask? A paper devoted to the
+interests of the masses, and willing to print facts. I want you to do
+the same sort of thing that you've been doing for The Courier; a job of
+handling the big, general stories. You'll be responsible to me alone.
+The salary will be a third higher than you are now getting. Think it
+over."
+
+"I've thought. I'm bought," said Russell Edmonds. He resumed his pipe.
+
+"And you, Mr. Banneker?"
+
+"I'm not a Socialist, in the party sense. Besides a Socialist paper in
+New York has no chance of big circulation."
+
+"Oh, The Patriot isn't going to tag itself. Politically it will be
+independent. Its policy will be socialistic only in that it will be for
+labor rather than capital and for the under dog as against the upper
+dog. It certainly won't tie up to the Socialist Party or advocate its
+principles. It's for fair play and education."
+
+"What's your purpose?" demanded Banneker. "Money?"
+
+"I've a very comfortable income," replied Marrineal modestly.
+
+"Political advancement? Influence? Want to pull the wires?" persisted
+the other.
+
+"The game. I'm out of employment and tired of it."
+
+"And you think I could be of use in your plan? But you don't know much
+about me."
+
+Marrineal murmured smilingly something indefinite but complimentary as
+to Banneker's reputation on Park Row; but this was by no means a fair
+index to what he knew about Banneker.
+
+Indeed, that prematurely successful reporter would have been surprised
+at the extent to which Marrineal's private investigations had gone. Not
+only was the purchaser of The Patriot apprised of Banneker's
+professional career in detail, but he knew of his former employment, and
+also of his membership in The Retreat, which he regarded with perplexity
+and admiration. Marrineal was skilled at ascertainments. He made a
+specialty of knowing all about people.
+
+"With Mr. Edmonds on roving commission and you to handle the big local
+stuff," he pursued, "we should have the nucleus of a news organization.
+Like him, you would be responsible to me alone. And, of course, it would
+be made worth your while. What do you think? Will you join us?"
+
+"No."
+
+"No?" There was no slightest hint of disappointment, surprise, or
+resentment in Marrineal's manner. "Do you mind giving me the reason?"
+
+"I don't care to be a reporter on The Patriot."
+
+"Well, this would hardly be reporting. At least, a very specialized and
+important type."
+
+"For that matter, I don't care to be a reporter on any paper much
+longer. Besides, you need me--or some one--in another department more
+than in the news section."
+
+"You don't like the editorials," was the inference which Marrineal drew
+from this, and correctly.
+
+"I think they're solemn flapdoodle."
+
+"So do I. Occasionally I write them myself and send them in quietly. It
+isn't known yet that I own the property; so I don't appear at the
+office. Mine are quite as solemn and flapdoodlish as the others. To
+which quality do you object the most?"
+
+"Solemnity. It's the blight of editorial expression. All the papers
+suffer from it."
+
+"Then you wouldn't have the editorial page modeled on that of any of our
+contemporaries."
+
+"No. I'd try to make it interesting. There isn't a page in town that the
+average man-in-the-street-car can read without a painful effort at
+thought."
+
+"Editorials are supposed to be for thinking men," put in Edmonds.
+
+"Make the thinking easy, then. Don't make it hard, with heavy words and
+a didactic manner. Talk to 'em. You're trying to reach for their brain
+mechanism. Wrong idea. Reach for their coat-lapels. Hook a finger in the
+buttonholes and tell 'em something about common things they never
+stopped to consider. Our editorializers are always tucking their hands
+into their oratorical bosoms and discoursing in a sonorous voice about
+freight differentials as an element in stabilizing the market. How does
+that affect Jim Jones? Why, Jim turns to the sporting page. But if you
+say to him casually, in print, 'Do you realize that every woman who
+brings a child into the world shows more heroism than Teddy Roosevelt
+when he charged up San Juan Hill?'--what'll Jim do about that? Turn to
+the sporting page just the same, maybe. But after he's absorbed the
+ball-scores, he'll turn back to the editorial. You see, he never thought
+about Mrs. Jones just that way before."
+
+"Sentimentalism," observed Marrineal. "Not altogether original, either."
+But he did not speak as a critic. Rather as one pondering upon new
+vistas of thought.
+
+"Why shouldn't an editorial be sentimental about something besides the
+starry flag and the boyhood of its party's candidate? Original? I
+shouldn't worry overmuch about that. All my time would be occupied in
+trying to be interesting. After I got 'em interested, I could perhaps be
+instructive. Very cautiously, though. But always man to man: that's the
+editorial trick, as I see it. Not preacher to congregation."
+
+"Where are your editorials, son?" asked the veteran Edmonds abruptly.
+
+"Locked up." Banneker tapped his forehead.
+
+"In the place of their birth?" smiled Marrineal.
+
+"Oh, I don't want too much credit for my idea. A fair share of it
+belongs to a bald-headed and snarling old nondescript whom I met one day
+in the Public Library and shall probably never meet again anywhere.
+Somebody had pointed me out--it was after that shooting mess--and the
+old fellow came up to me and growled out, 'Employed on a newspaper?' I
+admitted it. 'What do you know about news?' was his next question. Well,
+I'm always open to any fresh slants on the business, so I asked him
+politely what he knew. He put on an expression like a prayerful owl and
+said, 'Suppose I came into your office with the information that a
+destructive plague was killing off the earthworms?' Naturally, I thought
+one of the librarians had put up a joke on me; so I said, 'Refer you to
+the Anglers' Department of the All-Outdoors Monthly.' 'That is as far as
+you could see into the information?' he said severely. I had to confess
+that it was. 'And you are supposed to be a judge of news!' he snarled.
+Well, he seemed so upset about it that I tried to be soothing by asking
+him if there was an earthworm pestilence in progress. 'No,' answers he,
+'and lucky for you. For if the earthworms all died, so would you and the
+rest of us, including your accursed brood of newspapers, which would be
+some compensation. Read Darwin,' croaks the old bird, and calls me a
+callow fool, and flits."
+
+"Who was he? Did you find out?" asked Edmonds.
+
+"Some scientific grubber from the museum. I looked up the Darwin book
+and decided that he was right; not Darwin; the old croaker."
+
+"Still, that was not precisely news," pointed out Marrineal.
+
+"Theoretical news. I'm not sure," pursued Banneker, struck with a new
+idea, "that that isn't the formula for editorial writing; theoretical
+news. Supplemented by analytical news, of course."
+
+"Philosophizing over Darwin and dead worms would hardly inspire half a
+million readers to follow your editorial output, day after day."
+Marrineal delivered his opinion suavely.
+
+"Not if written in the usual style, suggesting a conscientious rehash
+of the encyclopedia. But suppose it were done differently, and with a
+caption like this, 'Why Does an Angle-Worm Wriggle?' Set that in
+irregular type that weaved and squirmed across the column, and
+Jones-in-the-street-car would at least look at it."
+
+"Good Heavens! I should think so," assented Marrineal. "And call for the
+police."
+
+"Or, if that is too sensational," continued Banneker, warming up, "we
+could head it 'Charles Darwin Would Never Go Fishing, Because' and a
+heavy dash after 'because.'"
+
+"Fakey," pronounced Edmonds. "Still, I don't know that there's any harm
+in that kind of faking."
+
+"Merely a trick to catch the eye. I don't know whether Darwin ever went
+fishing or not. Probably he did if only for his researches. But, in
+essentials, I'm giving 'em a truth; a big truth."
+
+"What?" inquired Marrineal.
+
+"Solemn sermonizers would call it the inter-relations of life or
+something to that effect. What I'm after is to coax 'em to think a
+little."
+
+"About angle-worms?"
+
+"About anything. It's the process I'm after. Only let me start them
+thinking about evolution and pretty soon I'll have them thinking about
+the relations of modern society--and thinking my way. Five hundred
+thousand people, all thinking in the way we told 'em to think--"
+
+"Could elect Willis Enderby mayor of New York," interjected the
+practical Edmonds.
+
+Marrineal, whose face had become quite expressionless, gave a little
+start. "Who?" he said.
+
+"Judge Enderby of the Law Enforcement Society."
+
+"Oh! Yes. Of course. Or any one else."
+
+"Or any one else," agreed Banneker, catching a quick, informed glance
+from Edmonds.
+
+"Frankly, your scheme seems a little fantastic to me," pronounced the
+owner of The Patriot. "But that may be only because it's new. It might
+be worth trying out." He reverted again to his expressionless reverie,
+out of which exhaled the observation: "I wonder what the present
+editorial staff could do with that."
+
+"Am I to infer that you intend to help yourself to my idea?" inquired
+Banneker.
+
+Mr. Marrineal aroused himself hastily from his editorial dream. Though
+by no means a fearful person, he was uncomfortably sensible of a menace,
+imminent and formidable. It was not in Banneker's placid face, nor in
+the unaltered tone wherein the pertinent query was couched.
+Nevertheless, the object of that query became aware that young Banneker
+was not a person to be trifled with. He now went on, equably to say:
+
+"Because, if you do, it might be as well to give me the chance of
+developing it."
+
+Possibly the "Of course," with which Marrineal responded to this
+reasonable suggestion, was just a little bit over-prompt.
+
+"Give me ten days. No: two weeks, and I'll be ready to show my wares.
+Where can I find you?"
+
+Marrineal gave a telephone address. "It isn't in the book," he said. "It
+will always get me between 9 A.M. and noon."
+
+They talked of matters journalistic, Marrineal lapsing tactfully into
+the role of attentive listener again, until there appeared in the lower
+room a dark-faced man of thirty-odd, spruce and alert, who, upon
+sighting them, came confidently forward. Marrineal ordered him a drink
+and presented him to the two journalists as Mr. Ely Ives. As Mr. Ives,
+it appeared, was in the secret of Marrineal's journalistic connection,
+the talk was resumed, becoming more general. Presently Marrineal
+consulted his watch.
+
+"You're not going up to the After-Theater Club to-night?" he asked
+Banneker, and, on receiving a negative reply, made his adieus and went
+out with Ives to his waiting car.
+
+Banneker and Edmonds looked at each other. "Don't both speak at once,"
+chuckled Banneker. "What do _you_?"
+
+"Think of him? He's a smooth article. Very smooth. But I've seen 'em
+before that were straight as well as smooth."
+
+"Bland," said Banneker. "Bland with a surpassing blandness. A blandness
+amounting to blandeur, as grandness in the highest degree becomes
+grandeur. I like that word," Banneker chucklingly approved himself. "But
+I wouldn't use it in an editorial, one of those editorials that our
+genial friend was going to appropriate so coolly. A touch of the pirate
+in him, I think. I like him."
+
+"Yes; you have to. He makes himself likable. What do you figure Mr. Ely
+Ives to be?"
+
+"Henchman."
+
+"Do you know him?"
+
+"I've seen him uptown, once or twice. He has some reputation as an
+amateur juggler."
+
+"I know him, too. But he doesn't remember me or he wouldn't have been so
+pleasant," said the veteran, committing two errors in one sentence, for
+Ely Ives had remembered him perfectly, and in any case would never have
+exhibited any unnecessary rancor in his carefully trained manner. "Wrote
+a story about him once. He's quite a betting man; some say a sure-thing
+bettor. Several years ago Bob Wessington was giving one of his famous
+booze parties on board his yacht 'The Water-Wain,' and this chap was in
+on it somehow. When everybody was tanked up, they got to doing stunts
+and he bet a thousand with Wessington he could swarm up the backstay to
+the masthead. Two others wished in for a thousand apiece, and he cleaned
+up the lot. It cut his hands up pretty bad, but that was cheap at three
+thousand. Afterwards it turned out that he'd been practicing that very
+climb in heavy gloves, down in South Brooklyn. So I wrote the story. He
+came back with a threat of a libel suit. Fool bluff, for it wasn't
+libelous. But I looked up his record a little and found he was an
+ex-medical student, from Chicago, where he'd been on The Chronicle for a
+while. He quit that to become a press-agent for a group of oil-gamblers,
+and must have done some good selling himself, for he had money when he
+landed here. To the best of my knowledge he is now a sort of lookout for
+the Combination Traction people, with some connection with the City
+Illuminating Company on the side. It's a secret sort of connection."
+
+Banneker made the world-wide symbolistic finger-shuffle of
+money-handling. "Legislative?" he inquired.
+
+"Possibly. But it's more keeping a watch on publicity and politics. He
+gives himself out as a man-about-town, and is supposed to make a good
+thing out of the market. Maybe he does, though I notice that generally
+the market makes a good thing out of the smart guy who tries to beat
+it."
+
+"Not a particularly desirable person for a colleague."
+
+"I doubt if he'd be Marrineal's colleague exactly. The inside of the
+newspaper isn't his game. More likely he's making himself attractive and
+useful to Marrineal just to find out what he's up to with his paper."
+
+"I'll show him something interesting if I get hold of that editorial
+page."
+
+"Son, are you up to it, d'you think?" asked Edmonds with affectionate
+solicitude. "It takes a lot of experience to handle policies."
+
+"I'll have you with me, won't I, Pop? Besides, if my little scheme
+works, I'm going out to gather experience like a bee after honey."
+
+"We'll make a queer team, we three," mused the veteran, shaking his bony
+head, as he leaned forward over his tiny pipe. His protuberant forehead
+seemed to overhang the idea protectively. Or perhaps threateningly.
+"None of us looks at a newspaper from the same angle or as the same kind
+of a machine as the others view it."
+
+"Never mind our views. They'll assimilate. What about his?"
+
+"Ah! I wish I knew. But he wants something. Like all of us." A shade
+passed across the clearly modeled severity of the face. Edmonds sighed.
+"I don't know but that I'm too old for this kind of experiment. Yet I've
+fallen for the temptation."
+
+"Pop," said Banneker with abrupt irrelevance, "there's a line from
+Emerson that you make me think of when you look like that. 'His sad
+lucidity of soul.'"
+
+"Do I? But it isn't Emerson. It's Matthew Arnold."
+
+"Where do you find time for poetry, you old wheelhorse! Never mind; you
+ought to be painted as the living embodiment of that line."
+
+"Or as a wooden automaton, jumping at the end of a special wire from
+'our correspondent.' Ban, can you see Marrineal's hand on a wire?"
+
+"If it's plain enough to be visible, I'm underestimating his tact. I'd
+like to have a lock of his hair to dream on to-night. I'm off to think
+things over, Pop. Good-night."
+
+Banneker walked uptown, through dimmed streets humming with the harmonic
+echoes of the city's never-ending life, faint and delicate. He stopped
+at Sherry's, and at a small table in the side room sat down with a
+bottle of ale, a cigarette, and some stationery. When he rose, it was to
+mail a letter. That done, he went back to his costly little apartment
+upon which the rent would be due in a few days. He had the cash in hand:
+that was all right. As for the next month, he wondered humorously
+whether he would have the wherewithal to meet the recurring bill, not to
+mention others. However, the consideration was not weighty enough to
+keep him sleepless.
+
+Custom kindly provides its own patent shock-absorbers to all the various
+organisms of nature; otherwise the whole regime would perish.
+Necessarily a newspaper is among the best protected of organisms against
+shock: it deals, as one might say, largely in shocks, and its hand is
+subdued to what it works in. Nevertheless, on the following noon The
+Ledger office was agitated as it hardly would have been had Brooklyn
+Bridge fallen into the East River, or the stalest mummy in the Natural
+History Museum shown stirrings of life. A word was passing from eager
+mouth to incredulous ear.
+
+Banneker had resigned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Not being specially gifted with originality of either thought or
+expression, Mr. Herbert Cressey stopped Banneker outside of his
+apartment with the remark made and provided for the delayed reunion of
+frequent companions: "Well I thought you were dead!"
+
+By way of keeping to the same level Banneker replied cheerfully: "I'm
+not."
+
+"Where've you been all this while?"
+
+"Working."
+
+"Where were you Monday last? Didn't see you at Sherry's."
+
+"Working."
+
+"And the week before? You weren't at The Retreat."
+
+"Working, also."
+
+"And the week before that? Nobody's seen so much--"
+
+"Working. Working. Working."
+
+"I stopped in at your roost and your new man told me you were away and
+might be gone indefinitely. Funny chap, your new man. Mysterious sort of
+manner. Where'd you pick him up?"
+
+"Oh, Lord! Hainer!" exclaimed Banneker appreciatively. "Well, he told
+the truth."
+
+"You look pulled down, too, by Jove!" commented Cressey, concern on his
+sightly face. "Ridin' for a fall, aren't you?"
+
+"Only for a test. I'm going to let up next week."
+
+"Tell you what," proffered Cressey. "Let's do a day together. Say
+Wednesday, eh? I'm giving a little dinner that night. And, oh, I say! By
+the way--no: never mind that. You'll come, won't you? It'll be at The
+Retreat."
+
+"Yes: I'll come. I'll be playing polo that afternoon."
+
+"Not if Jim Maitland sees you first. He's awfully sore on you for not
+turning up to practice. Had a place for you on the second team."
+
+"Don't want it. I'm through with polo."
+
+"Ban! What the devil--"
+
+"Work, I tell you. Next season I may be able to play. For the present
+I'm off everything."
+
+"Have they made you _all_ the editors of The Ledger in one?"
+
+"I'm off The Ledger, too. Give you all the painful details Wednesday.
+Fare-you-well."
+
+General disgust and wrath pervaded the atmosphere of the polo field when
+Banneker, making his final appearance on Wednesday, broke the news to
+Maitland, Densmore, and the others.
+
+"Just as you were beginning to know one end of your stick from the
+other," growled the irate team captain.
+
+Banneker played well that afternoon because he played recklessly. Lack
+of practice sometimes works out that way; as if luck took charge of a
+man's play and carried him through. Three of the five goals made by the
+second team fell to his mallet, and he left the field heartily cursed on
+all sides for his recalcitrancy in throwing himself away on work when
+the sport of sports called him. Regretful, yet well pleased with
+himself, he had his bath, his one, lone drink, and leisurely got into
+his evening clothes. Cressey met him at the entry to the guest's lounge
+giving on the general dining-room.
+
+"Damned if you're not a good-lookin' chap, Ban!" he declared with
+something like envy in his voice. "Thinning down a bit gives you a kind
+of look. No wonder Mertoun puts in his best licks on your clothes."
+
+"Which reminds me that I've neglected even Mertoun," smiled Banneker.
+
+"Go ahead in, will you? I've got to bone some feller for a fresh collar.
+My cousin's in there somewhere. Mrs. Rogerson Lyle from Philadelphia.
+She's a pippin in pink. Go in and tell on yourself, and order her a
+cocktail."
+
+Seeking to follow the vague direction, Banneker turned to the left and
+entered a dim side room. No pippin in pink disclosed herself. But a
+gracious young figure in black was bending over a table looking at a
+magazine, the long, free curve of her back turned toward him. He
+advanced. The woman said in a soft voice that shook him to the depths of
+his soul:
+
+"Back so soon, Archie? Want Sis to fix your tie?"
+
+She turned then and said easily: "Oh, I thought you were my
+brother.... How do you do, Ban?"
+
+Io held out her hand to him. He hardly knew whether or not he took it
+until he felt the close, warm pressure of her fingers. Never before had
+he so poignantly realized that innate splendor of femininity that was
+uniquely hers, a quality more potent than any mere beauty. Her look met
+his straight and frankly, but he heard the breath flutter at her lips,
+and he thought to read in her eyes a question, a hunger, and a delight.
+His voice was under rigid control as he said:
+
+"I didn't know you were to be here, Mrs. Eyre."
+
+"I knew that you were," she retorted. "And I'm not Mrs. Eyre, please.
+I'm Io."
+
+He shook his head. "That was in another world."
+
+"Oh, Ban, Ban!" she said. Her lips seemed to cherish the name that they
+gave forth so softly. "Don't be a silly Ban. It's the same world, only
+older; a million years older, I think.... I came here only because you
+were coming. Are you a million years older, Ban?"
+
+"Unfair," he said hoarsely.
+
+"I'm never unfair. I play the game." Her little, firm chin went up
+defiantly. Yes: she was more lovely and vivid and desirable than in the
+other days. Or was it only the unstifled yearning in his heart that made
+her seem so? "Have you missed me?" she asked simply.
+
+He made no answer.
+
+"I've missed you." She walked over to the window and stood looking out
+into the soft and breathing murk of the night. When she came back to
+him, her manner had changed. "Fancy finding you here of all places!" she
+said gayly.
+
+"It isn't such a bad place to be," he said, relieved to meet her on the
+new ground.
+
+"It's a goal," she declared. "Half of the aspiring gilded youth of the
+city would give their eye-teeth to make it. How did you manage?"
+
+"I didn't manage. It was managed for me. Old Poultney Masters put me
+in."
+
+"Well, don't scowl at me! For a reporter, you know, it's rather an
+achievement to get into The Retreat."
+
+"I suppose so. Though I'm not a reporter now."
+
+"Well, for any newspaper man. What are you, by the way?"
+
+"A sort of all-round experimental editor."
+
+"I hadn't heard of that," said Io, with a quickness which apprised him
+that she had been seeking information about him.
+
+"Nobody has. It's only just happened."
+
+"And I'm the first to know of it? That's as it should be," she asserted
+calmly. "You shall tell me all about it at dinner."
+
+"Am I taking you in?"
+
+"No: you're taking in my cousin, Esther Forbes. But I'm on your left. Be
+nice to me."
+
+Others came in and joined them. Banneker, his inner brain a fiery whorl,
+though the outer convolutions which he used for social purposes remained
+quite under control, drifted about making himself agreeable and
+approving himself to his host as an asset of the highest value. At
+dinner, sprightly and mischievous Miss Forbes, who recalled their former
+meeting at Sherry's, found him wholly delightful and frankly told him
+so. He talked little with Io; but he was conscious to his nerve-ends of
+the sweet warmth of her so near him. To her questions about his
+developing career he returned vague replies or generalizations.
+
+"You're not drinking anything," she said, as the third course came
+on. "Have you renounced the devil and all his works?" There was an
+impalpable stress upon the "all."
+
+His answer, composed though it was in tone, quite satisfied her. "I
+wouldn't dare touch drink to-night."
+
+After dinner there was faro bank. Banneker did not play. Io, after a run
+of indifferent luck, declared herself tired of the game and turned to
+him.
+
+"Take me out somewhere where there is air to breathe."
+
+They stood together on the stone terrace, blown lightly upon by a
+mist-ladden breeze.
+
+"It ought to be a great drive of rain, filling the world," said Io in
+her voice of dreams. "The roar of waters above us and below, and the
+glorious sense of being in the grip of a resistless current.... We're
+all in the grip of resistless currents. D'you believe that yet, Ban?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Skeptic! You want to work out your own fate. You 'strive to see, to
+choose your path.' Well, you've climbed. Is it success. Ban?"
+
+"It will be."
+
+"And have you reached the Mountains of Fulfillment?"
+
+He shook his head. "One never does, climbing alone."
+
+"Has it been alone, Ban?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Always?"
+
+"Always."
+
+"So it has been for me--really. No," she added swiftly; "don't ask me
+questions. Not now. I want to hear more of your new venture."
+
+He outlined his plan and hopes for The Patriot.
+
+"It's good," she said gravely. "It's power, and so it's danger. But it's
+good.... Are we friends, Ban?"
+
+"How can we be!"
+
+"How can we not be! You've tried to drop me out of your life. Oh, I
+know, because I know you--better than you think. You'll never drop me
+out of your life again," she murmured with confident wistfulness.
+"Never, Ban.... Let's go in."
+
+Not until she came to bid him good-night, with a lingering handclasp,
+her palm cleaving to his like the reluctant severance of lips, did she
+tell him that she was going away almost immediately. "But I had to make
+sure first that you were really alive, and still Ban," she said.
+
+It was many months before he saw her again.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+FULFILLMENT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The House With Three Eyes sent forth into the darkness a triple glow of
+hospitality. Through the aloof Chelsea district street, beyond the
+westernmost L structure, came taxicabs, hansoms, private autos, to
+discharge at the central door men who were presently revealed, under the
+lucent globe above the lintel, to be for the most part silhouette
+studies in the black of festal tailoring and silk hat against the white
+of expansive shirt-front. Occasionally, though less often, one of the
+doors at either flank of the house, also overwatched by shining orbs,
+opened to discharge an early departure. A midnight wayfarer, pausing
+opposite to contemplate this inexplicable grandeur in a dingy
+neighborhood, sought enlightenment from the passing patrolman:
+
+"Wot's doin'? Swell gamblin' joint? Huh?" As he spoke a huge, silent car
+crept swiftly to the entry, which opened to swallow up two bareheaded,
+luxuriously befurred women, with their escorts. The curious wayfarer
+promptly amended his query, though not for the better.
+
+"Naw!" replied the policeman with scorn. "That's Mr. Banneker's house."
+
+"Banneker? Who's Banneker?"
+
+With augmented contempt the officer requested the latest quotations on
+clover seed. "He's the editor of The Patriot," he vouchsafed. "A
+millionaire, too, they say. And a good sport."
+
+"Givin' a party, huh?"
+
+"Every Saturday night," answered he of the uniform and night-stick,
+who, having participated below-stairs in the reflections of the
+entertainment, was condescending enough to be informative. "Say, the
+swellest folks in New York fall over themselves to get invited here."
+
+"Why ain't he on Fi'th Avenyah, then?" demanded the other.
+
+"He makes the Fi'th Avenyah bunch come to him," explained the policeman,
+with obvious pride. "Took a couple of these old houses on long lease,
+knocked out the walls, built 'em into one, on his own plan, and, say!
+It's a pallus! I been all through it."
+
+A lithely powerful figure took the tall steps of the house three at a
+time, and turned, under the light, to toss away a cigar.
+
+"Cheest!" exclaimed the wayfarer in tones of awe: "that's K.O. Doyle,
+the middleweight, ain't it?"
+
+"Sure! That's nothin'. If you was to get inside there you'd bump into
+some of the biggest guys in town; a lot of high-ups from Wall Street,
+and maybe a couple of these professors from Columbyah College, and some
+swell actresses, and a bunch of high-brow writers and painters, and a
+dozen dames right off the head of the Four Hundred list. He takes 'em,
+all kinds, Mr. Banneker does, just so they're _somethin_'. He's a
+wonder."
+
+The wayfarer passed on to his oniony boarding-house, a few steps along,
+deeply marveling at the irruption of magnificence into the neighborhood
+in the brief year since he had been away.
+
+Equipages continued to draw up, unload, and withdraw, until twelve
+thirty, when, without so much as a preliminary wink, the House shut its
+Three Eyes. A scant five minutes earlier, an alert but tired-looking
+man, wearing the slouch hat of the West above his dinner coat, had
+briskly mounted the steps and, after colloquy with the cautious, black
+guardian of the door, had been admitted to a side room, where he was
+presently accosted by a graying, spare-set guest with ruminative eyes.
+
+"I heard about this show by accident, and wanted in," explained the
+newcomer in response to the other's look of inquiry. "If I could see
+Banneker--"
+
+"It will be some little time before you can see him. He's at work."
+
+"But this is his party, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes. The party takes care of itself until he comes down."
+
+"Oh; does it? Well, will it take care of me?"
+
+"Are you a friend of Mr. Banneker's?"
+
+"In a way. In fact, I might claim to have started him on his career of
+newspaper crime. I'm Gardner of the Angelica City Herald."
+
+"Ban will be glad to see you. Take off your things. I am Russell
+Edmonds."
+
+He led the way into a spacious and beautiful room, filled with the
+composite hum of voices and the scent of half-hidden flowers. The
+Westerner glanced avidly about him, noting here a spoken name familiar
+in print, there a face recognized from far-spread photographic
+reproduction.
+
+"Some different from Ban's shack on the desert," he muttered. "Hello!
+Mr. Edmonds, who's the splendid-looking woman in brown with the yellow
+orchids, over there in the seat back of the palms?"
+
+Edmonds leaned forward to look. "Royce Melvin, the composer, I believe.
+I haven't met her."
+
+"I have, then," returned the other, as the guest changed her position,
+fully revealing her face. "Tried to dig some information out of her
+once. Like picking prickly pears blindfold. That's Camilla Van Arsdale.
+What a coincidence to find her here!"
+
+"No! Camilla Van Arsdale? You'll excuse me, won't you? I want to speak
+to her. Make yourself known to any one you like the looks of. That's the
+rule of the house; no introductions."
+
+He walked across the room, made his way through the crescent curving
+about Miss Van Arsdale, and, presenting himself, was warmly greeted.
+
+"Let me take you to Ban," he said. "He'll want to see you at once."
+
+"But won't it disturb his work?"
+
+"Nothing does. He writes with an open door and a shut brain."
+
+He led her up the east flight of stairs and down a long hallway to an
+end room with door ajar, notwithstanding that even at that distance the
+hum of voices and the muffled throbbing of the concert grand piano from
+below were plainly audible. Banneker's voice, regular, mechanical,
+desensitized as the voices of those who dictate habitually are prone to
+become, floated out:
+
+"Quote where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise end quote comma
+said a poet who was also a cynic period. Many poets are comma but not
+the greatest period. Because of their--turn back to the beginning of the
+paragraph, please, Miss Westlake."
+
+"I've brought up an old friend, Ban," announced Edmonds, pushing wide
+the door.
+
+Vaguely smiling, for he had trained himself to be impervious to
+interruptions, the editorializer turned in his chair. Instantly he
+sprang to his feet, and caught Miss Van Arsdale by both hands.
+
+"Miss Camilla!" he cried. "I thought you said you couldn't come."
+
+"I'm defying the doctors," she replied. "They've given me so good a
+report of myself that I can afford to. I'll go down now and wait for
+you."
+
+"No; don't. Sit up here with me till I finish. I don't want to lose any
+of you," said he affectionately.
+
+But she laughingly refused, declaring that he would be through all the
+sooner for his other guests, if she left him.
+
+"See that she meets some people, Bop," Banneker directed. "Gaines of The
+New Era, if he's here, and Betty Raleigh, and that new composer, and the
+Junior Masters."
+
+Edmonds nodded, and escorted her downstairs. Nicely judging the time
+when Banneker would have finished, he was back in quarter of an hour.
+The stenographer had just left.
+
+"What a superb woman, Ban!" he said. "It's small wonder that Enderby
+lost himself."
+
+Banneker nodded. "What would she have said if she could know that you,
+an absolute stranger, had been the means of saving her from a terrific
+scandal? Gives one a rather shivery feeling about the power and
+responsibility of the press, doesn't it?"
+
+"It would have been worse than murder," declared the veteran, with so
+much feeling that his friend gave him a grateful look. "What's she doing
+in New York? Is it safe?"
+
+"Came on to see a specialist. Yes; it's all right. The Enderbys are
+abroad."
+
+"I see. How long since you'd seen her?"
+
+"Before this trip? Last spring, when I took a fortnight off."
+
+"You went clear West, just to see her?"
+
+"Mainly. Partly, too, to get back to the restfulness of the place where
+I never had any troubles. I've kept the little shack I used to own; pay
+a local chap named Mindle to keep it in shape. So I just put in a week
+of quiet there."
+
+"You're a queer chap, Ban. And a loyal one."
+
+"If I weren't loyal to Camilla Van Arsdale--" said Banneker, and left
+the implication unconcluded.
+
+"Another friend from your picturesque past is down below," said Edmonds,
+and named Gardner.
+
+"Lord! That fellow nearly cost me my life, last time we met," laughed
+Banneker. Then his face altered. Pain drew its sharp lines there, pain
+and the longing of old memories still unassuaged. "Just the same, I'll
+be glad to see him."
+
+He sought out the Californian, found him deep in talk with Guy Mallory
+of The Ledger, who had come in late, gave him hearty greeting, and
+looked about for Camilla Van Arsdale. She was supping in the center of a
+curiously assorted group, part of whom remembered the old romance of her
+life, and part of whom had identified her, by some chance, as Royce
+Melvin, the composer. All of them were paying court to her charm and
+intelligence. She made a place beside herself for Banneker.
+
+"We've been discussing The Patriot, Ban," she said, "and Mr. Gaines has
+embalmed you, as an editorial writer, in the amber of one of his best
+epigrams."
+
+The Great Gaines made a deprecating gesture. "My little efforts always
+sound better when I'm not present," he protested.
+
+"To be the subject of any Gaines epigram, however stinging, is fame in
+itself," said Banneker.
+
+"And no sting in this one. 'Attic salt and American pep,'" she quoted.
+"Isn't it truly spicy?"
+
+Banneker bowed with half-mocking appreciation. "I fancy, though, that
+Mr. Gaines prefers his journalistic egg more _au naturel_."
+
+"Sometimes," admitted the most famous of magazine editors, "I could
+dispense with some of the pep."
+
+"I like the pep, too, Ban." Betty Raleigh, looking up from a seat where
+she sat talking to a squat and sensual-looking man, a dweller in the
+high places and cool serenities of advanced mathematics whom
+jocular-minded Nature had misdowered with the face of a satyr,
+interposed the suave candor of her voice. "I actually lick my lips over
+your editorials even where I least agree with them. But the rest of the
+paper--Oh, dear! It screeches."
+
+"Modern life is such a din that one has to screech to be heard above
+it," said Banneker pleasantly.
+
+"Isn't it the newspapers which make most of the din, though?" suggested
+the mathematician.
+
+"Shouting against each other," said Gaines.
+
+"Like Coney Island barkers for rival shows," put in Junior Masters.
+
+"Just for variety how would it do to try the other tack and practice a
+careful but significant restraint?" inquired Betty.
+
+"Wouldn't sell a ticket," declared Banneker.
+
+"Still, if we all keep on yelling in the biggest type and hottest words
+we can find," pointed out Edmonds, "the effect will pall."
+
+"Perhaps the measure of success is in finding something constantly more
+strident and startling than the other fellow's war whoop," surmised
+Masters.
+
+"I have never particularly admired the steam calliope as a form of
+expression," observed Miss Van Arsdale.
+
+"Ah!" said the actress, smiling, "but Royce Melvin doesn't make music
+for circuses."
+
+"And a modern newspaper is a circus," pronounced the satyr-like scholar.
+
+"Three-ring variety; all the latest stunts; list to the voice of the
+ballyhoo," said Masters.
+
+"_Panem et circenses_" pursued the mathematician, pleased with his
+simile, "to appease the howling rabble. But it is mostly circus, and
+very little bread that our emperors of the news give us."
+
+"We've got to feed what the animal eats," defended Banneker lightly.
+
+"After having stimulated an artificial appetite," said Edmonds.
+
+As the talk flowed on, Betty Raleigh adroitly drew Banneker out of the
+current of it. "Your Patriot needn't have screeched at me, Ban," she
+murmured in an injured tone.
+
+"Did it, Betty? How, when, and where?"
+
+"I thought you were horridly patronizing about the new piece, and quite
+unkind to me, for a friend."
+
+"It wasn't my criticism, you know," he reminded her patiently. "I don't
+write the whole paper, though most of my acquaintances seem to think
+that I do. Any and all of it to which they take exception, at least."
+
+"Of course, I know you didn't write it, or it wouldn't have been so
+stupid. I could stand anything except the charge that I've lost my
+naturalness and become conventional."
+
+"You're like the man who could resist anything except temptation, my
+dear: you can stand anything except criticism," returned Banneker with a
+smile so friendly that there was no sting in the words. "You've never
+had enough of that. You're the spoiled pet of the critics."
+
+"Not of this new one of yours. He's worse than Gurney. Who is he and
+where does he come from?"
+
+"An inconsiderable hamlet known as Chicago. Name, Allan Haslett.
+Dramatic criticism out there is still so unsophisticated as to be
+intelligent as well as honest--at its best."
+
+"Which it isn't here," commented the special pet of the theatrical
+reviewers.
+
+"Well, I thought a good new man would be better than the good old ones.
+Less hampered by personal considerations. So I sent and got this one."
+
+"But he isn't good. He's a horrid beast. We've been specially nice to
+him, on your account mostly--Ban, if you grin that way I shall hate you!
+I had Bezdek invite him to one of the rehearsal suppers and he wouldn't
+come. Sent word that theatrical suppers affected his eyesight when he
+came to see the play."
+
+Banneker chuckled. "Just why I got him. He doesn't let the personal
+element prejudice him."
+
+"He is prejudiced. And most unfair. Ban," said Betty in her most
+seductive tones, "do call him down. Make him write something decent
+about us. Bez is fearfully upset."
+
+Banneker sighed. "The curse of this business," he reflected aloud, "is
+that every one regards The Patriot as my personal toy for me or my
+friends to play with."
+
+"This isn't play at all. It's very much earnest. Do be nice about it,
+Ban."
+
+"Betty, do you remember a dinner party in the first days of our
+acquaintance, at which I told you that you represented one essential
+difference from all the other women there?"
+
+"Yes. I thought you were terribly presuming."
+
+"I told you that you were probably the only woman present who wasn't
+purchasable."
+
+"Not understanding you as well as I do now, I was quite shocked.
+Besides, it was so unfair. Nearly all of them were most respectable
+married people."
+
+"Bought by their most respectable husbands. Some of 'em bought away from
+other husbands. But I gave you credit for not being on that market--or
+any other. And now you're trying to corrupt my professional virtue."
+
+"Ban! I'm not."
+
+"What else is it when you try to use your influence to have me fire our
+nice, new critic?"
+
+"If that's being corruptible, I wonder if any of us are incorruptible."
+She stretched upward an idle hand and fondled a spray of freesia that
+drooped against her cheek. "Ban; there's something I've been waiting to
+tell you. Tertius Marrineal wants to marry me."
+
+"I've suspected as much. That would settle the obnoxious critic,
+wouldn't it! Though it's rather a roundabout way."
+
+"Ban! You're beastly."
+
+"Yes; I apologize," he replied quickly. "But--have I got to revise my
+estimate of you, Betty? I should hate to."
+
+"Your estimate? Oh, as to purchasability. That's worse than what you've
+just said. Yet, somehow, I don't resent it. Because it's honest, I
+suppose," she said pensively. "No: it wouldn't be a--a market deal. I
+like Tertius. I like him a lot. I won't pretend that I'm madly in love
+with him. But--"
+
+"Yes; I know," he said gently, as she paused, looking at him steadily,
+but with clouded eyes. He read into that "but" a world of opportunities;
+a theater of her own--the backing of a powerful newspaper--wealth--and
+all, if she so willed it, without interruption to her professional
+career.
+
+"Would you think any the less of me?" she asked wistfully.
+
+"Would you think any the less of yourself?" he countered.
+
+The blossoming spray broke under her hand. "Ah, yes; that's the question
+after all, isn't it?" she murmured.
+
+Meantime, Gardner, the eternal journalist, fostering a plan of his own,
+was gathering material from Guy Mallory who had come in late.
+
+"What gets me," he said, looking over at the host, "is how he can do a
+day's work with all this social powwow going on."
+
+"A day's? He does three days' work in every one. He's the hardest
+trained mind in the business. Why, he could sit down here this minute,
+in the middle of this room, and dictate an editorial while keeping up
+his end in the general talk. I've seen him do it."
+
+"He must be a wonder at concentration."
+
+"Concentration? If he didn't invent it, he perfected it. Tell you a
+story. Ban doesn't go in for any game except polo. One day some of the
+fellows at The Retreat got talking golf to him--"
+
+"The Retreat? Good Lord! He doesn't belong to The Retreat, does he?"
+
+"Yes; been a member for years. Well, they got him to agree to try it.
+Jim Tamson, the pro--he's supposed to be the best instructor in
+America--was there then. Banneker went out to the first tee, a 215-yard
+hole, watched Jim perform his show-em-how swing, asked a couple of
+questions. 'Eye on the ball,' says Jim. 'That's nine tenths of it. The
+rest is hitting it easy and following through. Simple and easy,' says
+Jim, winking to himself. Banneker tries two or three clubs to see which
+feels easiest to handle, picks out a driving-iron, and slams the ball
+almost to the edge of the green. Chance? Of course, there was some luck
+in it. But it was mostly his everlasting ability to keep his attention
+focused. Jim almost collapsed. 'First time I ever saw a beginner that
+didn't top,' says he. 'You'll make a golfer, Mr. Banneker.'
+
+"'Not me,' says Ban. 'This game is too easy. It doesn't interest me.' He
+hands Jim a twenty-dollar bill, thanks him, goes in and has his bath,
+and has never touched a golf-stick since."
+
+Gardner had been listening with a kindling eye. He brought his fist down
+on his knee. "You've told me something!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Going to try it out on your own game?"
+
+"Not about golf. About Banneker. I've been wondering how he managed to
+establish himself as an individual figure in this big town. Now I begin
+to see it. It's publicity; that's what it is. He's got the sense of how
+to make himself talked about. He's picturesque. I'll bet Banneker's
+first and last golf shot is a legend in the clubs yet, isn't it?"
+
+"It certainly is," confirmed Mallory. "But do you really think that he
+reasoned it all out on the spur of the moment?"
+
+"Oh, reasoned; probably not. It's instinctive, I tell you. And the
+twenty to the professional was a touch of genius. Tamson will never stop
+talking about it. Can't you hear him, telling it to his fellow pros?
+'Golf's too easy for me,' he says, 'and hands me a double sawbuck! Did
+ye ever hear the like!' And so the legend is built up. It's a great
+thing to become a local legend. I know, for I've built up a few of 'em
+myself.... I suppose the gun-play on the river-front gave him his start
+at it and the rest came easy."
+
+"Ask him. He'll probably tell you," said Mallory. "At least, he'll be
+interested in your theory."
+
+Gardner strolled over to Banneker's group, not for the purpose of
+adopting Mallory's suggestion, for he was well satisfied with his own
+diagnosis, but to congratulate him upon the rising strength of The
+Patriot. As he approached, Miss Van Arsdale, in response to a plea from
+Betty Raleigh, went to the piano, and the dwindled crowd settled down
+into silence. For music, at The House With Three Eyes, was invariably
+the sort of music that people listen to; that is, the kind of people
+whom Banneker gathered around him.
+
+After she had played, Miss Van Arsdale declared that she must go,
+whereupon Banneker insisted upon taking her to her hotel. To her
+protests against dragging him away from his own party, he retorted that
+the party could very well run itself without him; his parties often did,
+when he was specially pressed in his work. Accepting this, his friend
+elected to walk; she wanted to hear more about The Patriot. What did she
+think of it, he asked.
+
+"I don't expect you to like it," he added.
+
+"That doesn't matter. I do tremendously admire your editorials. They're
+beautifully done; the perfection of clarity. But the rest of the
+paper--I can't see you in it."
+
+"Because I'm not there, as an individual."
+
+He expounded to her his theory of journalism. That was a just
+characterization of Junior Masters, he said: the three-ringed circus.
+He, Banneker, would run any kind of a circus they wanted, to catch and
+hold their eyes; the sensational acts, the clowns of the funny pages,
+the blare of the bands, the motion, the color, and the spangles; all to
+beguile them into reading and eventually to thinking.
+
+"But we haven't worked it out yet, as we should. What I'm really aiming
+at is a saturated solution, as the chemists say: Not a saturated
+solution of circulation, for that isn't possible, but a saturated
+solution of influence. If we can't put The Patriot into every man's
+house, we ought to be able to put it into every man's mind. All things
+to all men: that's the formula. We're far from it yet, but we're on the
+road. And in the editorials, I'm making people stir their minds about
+real things who never before developed a thought beyond the everyday,
+mechanical processes of living."
+
+"To what end?" she asked doubtfully.
+
+"Does it matter? Isn't the thinking, in itself, end enough?"
+
+"Brutish thinking if it's represented in your screaming headlines."
+
+"Predigested news. I want to preserve all their brain-power for my
+editorial page. And, oh, how easy I make it for them! Thoughts of one
+syllable."
+
+"And you use your power over their minds to incite them to discontent."
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"But that's dreadful, Ban! To stir up bitterness and rancor among
+people."
+
+"Don't you be misled by cant, Miss Camilla," adjured Banneker. "The
+contented who have everything to make them content have put a stigma on
+discontent. They'd have us think it a crime. It isn't. It's a virtue."
+
+"Ban! A virtue?"
+
+"Well; isn't it? Call it by the other name, ambition. What then?"
+
+Miss Van Arsdale pondered with troubled eyes. "I see what you mean," she
+confessed. "But the discontent that arises within one's self is one
+thing; the 'divine discontent.' It's quite another to foment it for your
+own purposes in the souls of others."
+
+"That depends upon the purpose. If the purpose is to help the others,
+through making their discontent effective to something better, isn't it
+justified?"
+
+"But isn't there always the danger of making a profession of
+discontent?"
+
+"That's a shrewd hit," confessed Banneker. "I've suspected that
+Marrineal means to capitalize it eventually, though I don't know just
+how. He's a secret sort of animal, Marrineal."
+
+"But he gives you a free hand?" she asked.
+
+"He has to," said Banneker simply.
+
+Camilla Van Arsdale sighed. "It's success, Ban. Isn't it?"
+
+"Yes. It's success. In its kind."
+
+"Is it happiness?"
+
+"Yes. Also in its kind."
+
+"The real kind? The best kind?"
+
+"It's satisfaction. I'm doing what I want to do."
+
+She sighed. "I'd hoped for something more."
+
+He shook his head. "One can't have everything."
+
+"Why not?" she demanded almost fiercely. "You ought to have. You're made
+for it." After a pause she added: "Then it isn't Betty Raleigh. I'd
+hoped it was. I've been watching her. There's character there, Ban, as
+well as charm."
+
+"She has other interests. No; it isn't Betty."
+
+"Ban, there are times when I could hate her," broke out Miss Van
+Arsdale.
+
+"Who? Betty?"
+
+"You know whom well enough."
+
+"I stand corrected in grammar as well as fact," he said lightly.
+
+"Have you seen her?"
+
+"Yes. I see her occasionally. Not often."
+
+"Does she come here?"
+
+"She has been."
+
+"And her husband?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ban, aren't you ever going to get over it?"
+
+He looked at her silently.
+
+"No; you won't. There are a few of us like that. God help us!" said
+Camilla Van Arsdale.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Others than Banneker's friends and frequenters now evinced symptoms of
+interest in his influence upon his environment. Approve him you might,
+or disapprove him; the palpable fact remained that he wielded a growing
+power. Several promising enterprises directed at the City Treasury had
+aborted under destructive pressure from his pen. A once impregnably
+cohesive ring of Albany legislators had disintegrated with such violence
+of mutual recrimination that prosecution loomed imminent, because of a
+two weeks' "vacation" of Banneker's at the State Capitol. He had hunted
+some of the lawlessness out of the Police Department and bludgeoned some
+decent housing measures through the city councils. Politically he was
+deemed faithless and unreliable which meant that, as an independent, he
+had ruined some hopefully profitable combinations in both parties.
+Certain men, high up in politics and finance at the point where they
+overlap, took thoughtful heed of him. How could they make him useful?
+Or, at least, prevent him from being harmful?
+
+No less a potentate than Poultney Masters had sought illumination from
+Willis Enderby upon the subject in the days when people in street-cars
+first began to rustle through the sheets of The Patriot, curious to see
+what the editorial had to say to them that day.
+
+"What do you think of him?" began the magnate.
+
+"Able," grunted the other.
+
+"If he weren't, I wouldn't be troubling my head about him. What else?
+Dangerous?"
+
+"As dangerous as he is upright. Exactly."
+
+"Now, I wonder what the devil you mean by that, Enderby," said the
+financier testily. "Dangerous as long as he's upright? Eh? And dangerous
+to what?"
+
+"To anything he goes after. He's got a following. I might almost say a
+blind following."
+
+"Got a boss, too, hasn't he?"
+
+"Marrineal? Ah, I don't know how far Marrineal interferes. And I don't
+know Marrineal."
+
+"Upright, too; that one?" The sneer in Masters's heavy voice was
+palpable.
+
+"You consider that no newspaper can be upright," the lawyer interpreted.
+
+"I've bought 'em and bluffed 'em and stood 'em in a corner to be good,"
+returned the other simply. "What would you expect my opinion to be?"
+
+"The Sphere, among them?" queried the lawyer.
+
+"Damn The Sphere!" exploded the other. "A dirty, muck-grubbing, lying,
+crooked rag."
+
+"Your actual grudge against it is not for those latter qualities,
+though," pointed out Enderby. "On questions where it conflicts with your
+enterprises, it's straight enough. That's it's defect. Upright equals
+dangerous. You perceive?"
+
+Masters shrugged the problem away with a thick and ponderous jerk of his
+shoulders. "What's young Banneker after?" he demanded.
+
+"You ought to know him as well as I. He's a sort of protege of yours,
+isn't he?"
+
+"At The Retreat, you mean? I put him in because he looked to be polo
+stuff. Now the young squirt won't practice enough to be certain team
+material."
+
+"Found a bigger game."
+
+"Umph! But what's in back of it?"
+
+"It's the game for the game's sake with him, I suspect. I can only tell
+you that, wherever I've had contact with him, he has been perfectly
+straightforward."
+
+"Maybe. But what about this anarchistic stuff of his?"
+
+"Oh, anarchistic! You mean his attacks on Wall Street? The Stock
+Exchange isn't synonymous with the Constitution of the United States,
+you know, Masters. Do moderate your language."
+
+"Now you're laughing at me, damn you, Enderby."
+
+"It's good for you. You ought to laugh at yourself more. Ask Banneker
+what he's at. Very probably he'll laugh at you inside. But he'll answer
+you."
+
+"That reminds me. He had an editorial last week that stuck to me.
+'It is the bitter laughter of the people that shakes thrones. Have
+a care, you money kings, not to become too ridiculous!' Isn't that
+socialist-anarchist stuff?"
+
+"It's very young stuff. But it's got a quality, hasn't it?"
+
+"Oh, hell, yes; quality!" rumbled the profane old man. "Well, I will
+tackle your young prodigy one of these days."
+
+Which, accordingly, he did, encountering, some days later, Banneker in
+the reading-room at The Retreat.
+
+"What are you up to; making trouble with that editorial screed of
+yours?" he growled at the younger man.
+
+Banneker smiled. He accepted that growl from Poultney Masters, not
+because Masters was a great and formidable figure in the big world, but
+because beneath the snarl there was a quality of--no, not of
+friendliness, but of man-to-man approach.
+
+"No. I'm trying to cure trouble, not make it."
+
+"Umph! Queer idea of curing. Here we are in the midst of good times,
+everywhere, and you talk about--what was the stuff?--oh, yes: 'The
+grinning mask of prosperity, beneath which Want searches with haggard
+and threatening eyes for the crust denied.' Fine stuff!"
+
+"Not mine. I don't write as beautifully as all that. It's quoted from a
+letter. But I'll take the responsibility, since I quoted it. There's
+some truth in it, you know."
+
+"Not a hair's-weight. If you fill the minds of the ignorant with that
+sort of thing, where shall we end?"
+
+"If you fill the minds of the ignorant, they will no longer be
+ignorant."
+
+"Then they'll be above their class and their work. Our whole trouble is
+in that; people thinking they're too good for the sort of work they're
+fitted for."
+
+"Aren't they too good if they can think themselves into something
+better?"
+
+Poultney Masters delivered himself of a historical profundity. "The man
+who first had the notion of teaching the mass of people to read will
+have something to answer for."
+
+"Destructive, isn't it?" said Banneker, looking up quickly.
+
+"Now, you want to go farther. You want to teach 'em to think."
+
+"Exactly. Why not?"
+
+"Why not? Why, because, you young idiot, they'll think wrong."
+
+"Very likely. At first. We all had to spell wrong before we spelled
+right. What if people do think wrong? It's the thinking that's
+important. Eventually they'll think right."
+
+"With the newspapers to guide them?" There was a world of scorn in the
+magnate's voice.
+
+"Some will guide wrong. Some will guide right. The most I hope to do is
+to teach 'em a little to use their minds. Education and a fair field. To
+find out and to make clear what is found; that's the business of a
+newspaper as I see it."
+
+"Tittle-tattle. Tale-mongering," was Masters's contemptuous
+qualification.
+
+"A royal mission," laughed Banneker. "I call the Sage to witness. 'But
+the glory of kings is to search out a matter.'"
+
+"But they've got to be kings," retorted the other quickly. "It's a
+tricky business, Banneker. Better go in for polo. We need you." He
+lumbered away, morose and growling, but turned back to call over his
+shoulder: "Read your own stuff when you get up to-morrow and see if polo
+isn't a better game and a cleaner."
+
+What the Great of the city might think of his journalistic achievement
+troubled Banneker but little, so long as they thought of it at all,
+thereby proving its influence; the general public was his sole arbiter,
+except for the opinions of the very few whose approval he really
+desired, Io Eyre, Camilla Van Arsdale, and more remotely the men for
+whose own standards he maintained a real respect, such as Willis Enderby
+and Gaines. Determined to make Miss Van Arsdale see his point of view,
+as well as to assure himself of hers, he had extracted from her a
+promise that she would visit The Patriot office before she returned to
+the West. Accordingly, on a set morning she arrived on her trip of
+inspection, tall, serene, and, in her aloof _genre_, beautiful, an alien
+figure in the midst of that fevered and delirious energy. He took her
+through the plant, elucidating the mechanical processes of the daily
+miracle of publication, more far-reaching than was ever any other voice
+of man, more ephemeral than the day of the briefest butterfly.
+Throughout, the visitor's pensive eyes kept turning from the creature to
+the creator, until, back in the trim quietude of his office, famed as
+the only orderly working-room of journalism, she delivered her wondering
+question:
+
+"And _you_ have made all this, Ban?"
+
+"At least I've remade it."
+
+She shook her head. "No; as I told you before, I can't see you in it."
+
+"You mean, it doesn't express me. It isn't meant to.'
+
+"Whom does it express, then? Mr. Marrineal?"
+
+"No. It isn't an expression at all in that sense. It's a--a response. A
+response to the demand of hundreds of thousands of people who have never
+had a newspaper made for them before."
+
+"An echo of _vox populi_? Does that excuse its sins?"
+
+"I'm not putting it forth as an excuse. Is it really sins or only bad
+taste that offends you?"
+
+"Clever, Ban. And true in a measure. But insincerity is more than bad
+taste. It's one of the primal sins."
+
+"You find The Patriot insincere?"
+
+"Can I find it anything else, knowing you?"
+
+"Ah, there you go wrong again, Miss Camilla. As an expression of my
+ideals, the news part of the paper would be insincere. I don't like it
+much better than you do. But I endure it; yes, I'll be frank and admit
+that I even encourage it, because it gives me wider scope for the things
+I want to say. Sincere things. I've never yet written in my editorial
+column anything that I don't believe from the bottom of my soul. Take
+that as a basis on which to judge me."
+
+"My dear Ban! I don't want to judge you."
+
+"I want you to," he cried eagerly. "I want your judgment and your
+criticism. But you must see what I'm aiming for. Miss Camilla, I'm
+making people stir their minds and think who never before had a thought
+beyond the everyday processes of life."
+
+"For your own purposes? Thought, as you manipulate it, might be a
+high-explosive. Have you thought of using it in that way?"
+
+"If I found a part of the social edifice that had to be blown to pieces,
+I might."
+
+"Take care that you don't involve us all in the crash. Meantime, what is
+the rest of your editorial page; a species of sedative to lull their
+minds? Who is Evadne Ellington?"
+
+"One of our most prominent young murderesses."
+
+"And you let her sign a column on your page?"
+
+"Oh, she's a highly moral murderess. Killed her lover in defense of her
+honor, you know. Which means that she shot him when he got tired of her.
+A sobbing jury promptly acquitted her, and now she's writing 'Warnings
+to Young Girls.' They're most improving and affecting, I assure you. We
+look after that."
+
+"Ban! I hate to have you so cynical."
+
+"Not at all," he protested. "Ask the Prevention of Vice people and the
+criminologists. They'll tell you that Evadne's column is a real
+influence for good among the people who read and believe it."
+
+"What class is Reformed Rennigan's sermon aimed at?" she inquired, with
+wrinkling nostrils. "'Soaking it to Satan'; is that another regular
+feature?"
+
+"Twice a week. It gives us a Y.M.C.A. circulation that is worth a good
+deal to us. Outside of my double column, the page is a sort of forum.
+I'll take anything that is interesting or authoritative. For example, if
+Royce Melvin had something of value to say to the public about music,
+where else could she find so wide a hearing as through The Patriot?"
+
+"No, I thank you," returned his visitor dryly.
+
+"No? Are you sure? What is your opinion of 'The Star-Spangled Banner' as
+a national song?"
+
+"It's dreadful."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"For every reason. The music misfits the words. It's beyond the range of
+most voices. The harmonies are thin. No crowd in the world can sing it.
+What is the value or inspiration of a national song that the people
+can't sing?"
+
+"Ask it of The Patriot's public. I'll follow it up editorially; 'Wanted;
+A Song for America.'"
+
+"I will," she answered impulsively. Then she laughed. "Is that the way
+you get your contributors?"
+
+"Often, as the spider said to the fly," grinned Banneker the shameless.
+"Take a thousand words or more and let us have your picture."
+
+"No. Not that. I've seen my friends' pictures too often in your society
+columns. By the way, how comes it that a paper devoted to the interests
+of the common people maintains that aristocratic feature?"
+
+"Oh, the common people eat it alive. Russell Edmonds is largely
+responsible for keeping it up. You should hear his theory. It's
+ingenious. I'll send for him."
+
+Edmonds, who chanced to be at his desk, entered the editorial den with
+his tiny pipe between his teeth, and, much disconcerted at finding a
+lady there, hastily removed it until Miss Van Arsdale suggested its
+restitution.
+
+"What? The society page?" said he. "Yes; I was against dropping it. You
+see, Miss Van Arsdale, I'm a Socialist in belief."
+
+"Is there a pun concealed in that or are you serious, Mr. Edmonds?"
+
+"Serious. I'm always that on the subjects of Socialism and The Patriot."
+
+"Then you must explain if I'm to understand."
+
+"By whom is society news read? By two classes," expounded the veteran;
+"those whose names appear, and those who are envious of those whose
+names appear. Well, we're after the envious."
+
+"Still I don't see. With what purpose?'
+
+"Jim Simpson, who has just got his grocery bill for more than he can
+pay, reads a high-colored account of Mrs. Stumpley-Triggs's aquatic
+dinner served in the hundred-thousand-dollar swimming-pool on her
+Westchester estate. That makes Jim think."
+
+"You mean that it makes him discontented."
+
+"Well, discontent is a mighty leaven."
+
+Miss Van Arsdale directed her fine and serious eyes upon Banneker. "So
+it comes back to the cult of discontent. Is that Mr. Marrineal's
+formula, too, Mr. Edmonds?"
+
+"Underneath all his appearance of candor, Marrineal's a secret animal,"
+said Edmonds.
+
+"Does he leave you a free hand with your editorials, Ban?" inquired the
+outsider.
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"Watches the circulation only," said Edmonds. "Thus far," he added.
+
+"You're looking for an ulterior motive, then," interpreted Miss Van
+Arsdale.
+
+"I'm looking for whatever I can find in Marrineal, Miss Van Arsdale,"
+confessed the patriarch of the office. "As yet I haven't found much."
+
+"I have," said Banneker. "I've discovered his theory of journalism. We
+three, Edmonds, Marrineal, and I, regard this business from three
+diverse viewpoints. To Edmonds it's a vocation and a rostrum. He wants
+really, under his guise as the most far-seeing news man of his time, to
+call sinners against society to repentance, or to force repentance down
+their throats. There's a good deal of the stern evangelist about you,
+you know, Pop."
+
+"And you?" The other's smile seemed enmeshed in the dainty spiral of
+smoke brooding above his pursed lips.
+
+"Oh, I'm more the pedagogue. With me, too, the game is a vocation. But
+it's a different one. I'd like to marshal men's minds as a generalissimo
+marshals armies."
+
+"In the bonds of your own discipline?" asked Miss Van Arsdale.
+
+"If I could chain a mind I'd be the most splendid tyrant of history. No.
+Free leadership of the free is good enough."
+
+"If Marrineal will leave you free," commented the veteran. "What's your
+diagnosis of Marrineal, then?"
+
+"A priest of Baal."
+
+"With The Patriot in the part of Baal?"
+
+"Not precisely The Patriot. Publicity, rather, of which The Patriot is
+merely the instrument. Marrineal's theory of publicity is interesting.
+It may even be true. Substantially it is this: All civilized Americans
+fear and love print; that is to say, Publicity, for which read Baal.
+They fear it for what it may do to them. They love and fawn on it for
+what it may do for them. It confers the boon of glory and launches the
+bolts of shame. Its favorites, made and anointed from day to day, are
+the blessed of their time. Those doomed by it are the outcasts. It sits
+in momentary judgment, and appeal from its decisions is too late to
+avail anything to its victims. A species of auto-juggernaut, with
+Marrineal at the wheel."
+
+"What rubbish!" said Miss Van Arsdale with amused scorn.
+
+"Oh, because you've nothing to ask or fear from Baal. Yet even you would
+use it, for your musical preachment."
+
+As he spoke, he became aware of Edmonds staring moodily and with pinched
+lips at Miss Van Arsdale. To the mind's eye of the old stager had
+flashed a sudden and astounding vision of all that pride of womanhood
+and purity underlying the beauty of the face, overlaid and fouled by the
+inky vomit of Baal of the printing-press, as would have come to pass had
+not he, Edmonds, obstructed the vengeance.
+
+"I can imagine nothing printed," said the woman who had loved Willis
+Enderby, "that could in any manner influence my life."
+
+"Fortunate you!" Edmonds wreathed his little congratulation in festoons
+of light vapor. "But you live in a world of your own making. Marrineal
+is reckoning on the world which lives and thinks largely in terms of
+what its neighbor thinks of it."
+
+"He once said to me," remarked Banneker, "that the desire to get into or
+keep out of print could be made the master-key to new and undreamed-of
+powers of journalism if one had the ability to find a formula for it."
+
+"I'm not sure that I understand what he means," said Miss Van Arsdale,
+"but it has a sinister sound."
+
+"Are Baal's other names Bribery and Blackmail?" glowered Edmonds.
+
+"There has never been a hint of any illegitimate use of the paper, so
+far as I can discover. Yet it's pretty plain to me that he intends to
+use it as an instrument."
+
+"As soon as we've made it strong enough," supplied Edmonds.
+
+"An instrument of what?" inquired Miss Van Arsdale.
+
+"Power for himself. Political, I suppose."
+
+"Does he want office?" she asked.
+
+"Perhaps. Perhaps he prefers the deeper-lying power to make and unmake
+politicians. We've done it already in a few cases. That's Edmonds's
+specialty. I'll know within a few days what Marrineal wants, if I can
+get a showdown. He and I are coming to a new basis of finance."
+
+"Yes; he thinks he can't afford to keep on paying you by circulation.
+You're putting on too much." This from Edmonds.
+
+"That's what he got me here for. However, I don't really believe he can.
+I'm eating up what should be the paper's legitimate profits. And
+yet"--he smiled radiantly--"there are times when I don't see how I'm
+going to get along with what I have. It's pretty absurd, isn't it, to
+feel pinched on fifty thousand a year, when I did so well at Manzanita
+on sixty a month?"
+
+"It's a fairy-tale," declared Miss Van Arsdale. "I knew that you were
+going to arrive sooner or later, Ban. But this isn't an arrival. It's a
+triumph."
+
+"Say rather it's a feat of balancing," he propounded. "A tight-rope
+stunt on a gilded rope. Failure on one side; debt on the other. Keep
+going like the devil to save yourself from falling."
+
+"What is it making of him, Mr. Edmonds?" Banneker's oldest friend turned
+her limpid and anxious regard upon his closest friend.
+
+"A power. Oh, it's real enough, all this empire of words that crumbles
+daily. It leaves something behind, a little residue of thought, ideals,
+convictions. What do you fear for him?"
+
+"Cynicism," she breathed uneasily.
+
+"It's the curse of the game. But it doesn't get the worker who feels his
+work striking home."
+
+"Do you see any trace of cynicism in the paper?" asked Banneker
+curiously.
+
+"All this blaring and glaring and froth and distortion," she replied,
+sweeping her hand across the issue which lay on the desk before her.
+"Can you do that sort of thing and not become that sort of thing?"
+
+"Ask Edmonds," said Banneker.
+
+"Thirty years I've been in this business," said the veteran slowly. "I
+suppose there are few of its problems and perplexities that I haven't
+been up against. And I tell you, Miss Van Arsdale, all this froth and
+noise and sensationalism doesn't matter. It's an offense to taste, I
+know. But back of it is the big thing that we're trying to do; to enlist
+the ignorant and helpless and teach them to be less ignorant and
+helpless. If fostering the political ambitions of a Marrineal is part of
+the price, why, I'm willing to pay it, so long as the paper keeps
+straight and doesn't sell itself for bribe money. After all, Marrineal
+can ride to his goal only on our chariot. The Patriot is an institution
+now. You can't alter an institution, not essentially. You get committed
+to it, to the thing you've made yourself. Ban and I have made the new
+Patriot, not Marrineal. Even if he got rid of us, he couldn't change the
+paper; not for a long time and only very gradually. The following that
+we've built up would be too strong for him."
+
+"Isn't it too strong for you two?" asked the doubting woman-soul.
+
+"No. We understand it because we made it."
+
+"Frankenstein once said something like that," she murmured.
+
+"It isn't a monster," rumbled Edmonds. "Sometimes I think it's a toy
+dog, with Ban's ribbon around its cute little neck. I'll answer for Ban,
+Miss Van Arsdale."
+
+The smoke of his minute pipe went up, tenuous and graceful, incense
+devoted to the unseen God behind the strangely patterned curtain of
+print; to Baal who was perhaps even then grinning down upon his
+unsuspecting worshipers.
+
+But Banneker, moving purposefully amidst that vast phantasmagoria of
+pulsing print, wherein all was magnified, distorted, perverted to the
+claims of a gross and rabid public appetite, dreamed his pure, untainted
+dream; the conception of his newspaper as a voice potent enough to reach
+and move all; dominant enough to impose its underlying ideal; confident
+enough of righteousness to be free of all silencing and control. That
+voice should supply the long unsatisfied hunger of the many for truth
+uncorrupted. It should enunciate straightly, simply, without
+reservation, the daily verities destined to build up the eternal
+structure. It should be a religion of seven days a week, set forth by a
+thousand devoted preachers for a million faithful hearers.
+
+Camilla Van Arsdale had partly read his dream, and could have wept for
+it and him.
+
+Io Eyre had begun to read it, and her heart went out to him anew. For
+this was the test of success.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+It was one of those mornings of coolness after cloying heat when even
+the crowded, reeking, frowzy metropolis wakes with a breath of freshness
+in its nostrils. Independent of sleep as ever, Banneker was up and
+footing it briskly for the station before eight o'clock, for Camilla Van
+Arsdale was returning to Manzanita, having been ordered back to her
+seclusion with medical science's well-considered verdict wrapped up in
+tactful words to bear her company on the long journey. When she would be
+ordered on a longer journey by a mightier Authority, medical science
+forbore to specify; but in the higher interests of American music it was
+urgently pressed upon her that she be abstemious in diet, niggardly of
+work, careful about fatigue and excitement, and in general comport
+herself in such manner as to deprive the lease of life remaining to her
+of most of its savor and worth. She had told Ban that the physicians
+thought her condition favorable.
+
+Invalidism was certainly not suggested in her erect bearing and serene
+face as she moved about her stateroom setting in order the books,
+magazines, flowers, and candy, with which Banneker had sought to fortify
+her against the tedium of the trip. As the time for departure drew near,
+they fell into and effortfully maintained that meaningless, banal, and
+jerky talk which is the inevitable concomitant of long partings between
+people who, really caring for each other, can find nothing but
+commonplaces wherewith to ease their stress of mind. Miss Van Arsdale's
+common sense came to the rescue.
+
+"Go away, my dear," she said, with her understanding smile. "Don't think
+that you're obliged to cling to the dragging minutes. It's an ungraceful
+posture.... Ban! What makes you look like that?"
+
+"I thought--I heard--"
+
+A clear voice outside said, "Then it must be this one." There was a
+decisive tap on the door. "May I come in?"..."Come in," responded Miss
+Van Arsdale. "Bring them here, porter," directed the voice outside, and
+Io entered followed by an attendant almost hidden in a huge armful of
+such roses as are unpurchasable even in the most luxurious of stores.
+
+"I've looted our conservatory," said she. "Papa will slay me. They'll
+last to Chicago."
+
+After an almost imperceptible hesitation she kissed the older woman. She
+gave her hand to Banneker. "I knew I should find you here."
+
+"Any other woman of my acquaintance would have said, 'Who would have
+expected to find you here!'" commented Miss Van Arsdale.
+
+"Yes? I suppose so. But we've never been on that footing, Ban and I."
+Io's tone was casual; almost careless.
+
+"I thought that you were in the country," said Banneker.
+
+"So we are. I drove up this morning to bid Miss Van Arsdale _bon
+voyage_, and all the luck in the world. I suppose we three shall meet
+again one of these days."
+
+"You prophesy in the most matter-of-fact tone a gross improbability,"
+observed Miss Van Arsdale.
+
+"Oh, our first meeting was the gross improbability," retorted the girl
+lightly. "After that anything might be logical. _Au revoir_."
+
+"Go with her, Ban," said Miss Camilla.
+
+"It isn't leaving time yet," he protested. "There's five whole minutes."
+
+"Yes; come with me, Ban," said Io tranquilly.
+
+Camilla Van Arsdale kissed his cheek, gave him a little, half-motherly
+pat, said, "Keep on making me proud of you," in her even, confident
+tones, and pushed him out of the door.
+
+Ban and Io walked down the long platform in a thoughtful silence which
+disconcerted neither of them. Io led the way out of it.
+
+"At half-past four," she stated, "I had a glass of milk and one
+cracker."
+
+"Where do you want to breakfast?"
+
+"Thanking you humbly, sir, for your kind invitation, the nearer the
+better. Why not here?"
+
+They found a table in the well-appointed railroad restaurant and
+ordered. Over her honey-dew melon Io asked musingly:
+
+"What do you suppose she thinks of us?"
+
+"Miss Camilla? What should she think?"
+
+"What, indeed? What do we think, ourselves?"
+
+"Has it any importance?" he asked gloomily.
+
+"And that's rather rude," she chided. "Anything that I think should, by
+courtesy, be regarded as important.... Ban, how often have we seen each
+other?"
+
+"Since I came to New York, you mean?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Nine times."
+
+"So many? And how much have we talked together? All told; in time, I
+mean."
+
+"Possibly a solid hour. Not more."
+
+"It hasn't made any difference, has it? There's been no interruption.
+We've never let the thread drop. We've never lost touch. Not really."
+
+"No. We've never lost touch."
+
+"You needn't repeat it as if it were a matter for mourning and
+repentance. I think it rather wonderful.... Take our return from the
+train, all the way down without a word. Were you sulking, Ban?"
+
+"No. You know I wasn't."
+
+"Of course I know it. It was simply that we didn't need to talk. There's
+no one else in the world like that.... How long is it? Three
+years--four--more than four years.
+
+'We twain once well in sunder
+What will the mad gods do
+For hate with me, I wond--'"
+
+"My God, Io! Don't!"
+
+"Oh, Ban; I'm sorry! Have I hurt you? I was dreaming back into the old
+world."
+
+"And I've been trying all these years not to."
+
+"Is the reality really better? No; don't answer that! I don't want you
+to. Answer me something else. About Betty Raleigh."
+
+"What about her?"
+
+"If I were a man I should find her an irresistible sort of person.
+Entirely aside from her art. Are you going to marry her, Ban?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Tell me why not."
+
+"For one reason because she doesn't want to marry me."
+
+"Have you asked her? It's none of my business. But I don't believe you
+have. Tell me this; would you have asked her, if it hadn't been for--if
+Number Three had never been wrecked in the cut? You see the old railroad
+terms you taught me still cling. Would you?"
+
+"How do I know? If the world hadn't changed under my feet, and the sky
+over my head--"
+
+"Is it so changed? Do the big things, the real things, ever change?...
+Don't answer that, either. Ban, if I'll go out of your life now, and
+stay out, _honestly_, will you marry Betty Raleigh and--and live happy
+ever after?"
+
+"Would you want me to?"
+
+"Yes. Truly. And I'd hate you both forever."
+
+"Betty Raleigh is going to marry some one else."
+
+"No! I thought--people said--Are you sorry, Ban?"
+
+"Not for myself. I think he's the wrong man for her."
+
+"Yes; that would be a change of the earth underfoot and the sky
+overhead, if one cared," she mused. "And I said they didn't change."
+
+"Don't they!" retorted Banneker bitterly. "You are married."
+
+"I have been married," she corrected, with an air of amiable
+rectification. "It was a wise thing to do. Everybody said so. It didn't
+last. Nobody thought it would. I didn't really think so myself."
+
+"Then why in Heaven's name--"
+
+"Oh, let's not talk about it now. Some other time, perhaps. Say next
+time we meet; five or six months from now.... No; I won't tease you any
+more, Ban. It won't be that. It won't be long. I'll tell you the truth:
+I'd heard a lot about you and Betty Raleigh, and I got to know her and I
+hoped it would be a go. I did; truly, Ban. I owed you that chance of
+happiness. I took mine, you see; only it wasn't happiness that I gambled
+for. Something else. Safety. The stakes are usually different for men
+and women. So now you know.... Well, if you don't, you've grown stupid.
+And I don't want to talk about it any more. I want to talk about--about
+The Patriot. I read it this morning while I was waiting; your editorial.
+Ban"--she drew a derisive mouth--"I was shocked."
+
+"What was it? Politics?" asked Banneker, who, turning out his editorials
+several at a time, seldom bothered to recall on what particular day any
+one was published. "You wouldn't be expected to like our politics."
+
+"Not politics. It is about Harvey Wheelwright."
+
+Banneker was amused. "The immortally popular Wheelwright. We're
+serializing his new novel, 'Satiated with Sin,' in the Sunday edition.
+My idea. It'll put on circulation where we most need it."
+
+"Is that any reason why you should exploit him as if he were the
+foremost living novelist?"
+
+"Certainly. Besides, he is, in popularity."
+
+"But, Ban; his stuff is awful! If this latest thing is like the earlier.
+["Worse," murmured Banneker.] And you're writing about him as if he
+were--well, Conrad and Wells rolled into one."
+
+"He's better than that, for the kind of people that read him. It's
+addressed to them, that editorial. All the stress is on his piety, his
+popularity, his power to move men's minds; there isn't a word that even
+touches on the domain of art or literary skill."
+
+"It has that effect."
+
+"Ah! That's my art," chuckled Banneker. "_That's_ literary skill, if you
+choose!"
+
+"Do you know what I call it? I call it treason."
+
+His mind flashed to meet hers. She read comprehension in his changed
+face and the shadow in her eyes, lambent and profound, deepened.
+
+"Treason to the world that we two made for ourselves out there," she
+pursued evenly.
+
+"You shattered it."
+
+"To the Undying Voices."
+
+"You stilled them, for me."
+
+"Oh, Ban! Not that!" A sudden, little sob wrenched at her throat. She
+half thrust out a hand toward him, and withdrew it, to cup and hold her
+chin in the old, thoughtful posture that plucked at his heart with
+imperious memories. "Don't they sing for you any more?" begged Io,
+wistful as a child forlorn for a dream of fairies dispelled.
+
+"I wouldn't let them. They all sang of you."
+
+She sighed, but about the tender corners of her lips crept the tremor of
+a smile. Instantly she became serious again.
+
+"If you still heard the Voices, you could never have written that
+editorial.... What I hate about it is that it has charm; that it imparts
+charm to a--to a debasing thing."
+
+"Oh, come, Io!" protested the victim of this criticism, more easily.
+"Debasing? Why, Wheelwright is considered the most uplifting of all our
+literary morality-improvers."
+
+Io amplified and concluded her critique briefly and viciously. "A slug!"
+
+"No; seriously. I'm not sure that he doesn't inculcate a lot of good in
+his way. At least he's always on the side of the angels."
+
+"What kind of angels? Tinsel seraphs with paint on their cheeks, playing
+rag-time harps out of tune! There's a sickly slaver of sentiment over
+everything he touches that would make any virtue nauseous."
+
+"Don't you want a job as a literary critic Our Special Reviewer, Miss Io
+Wel--Mrs. Delavan Eyre," he concluded, in a tone from which the raillery
+had flattened out.
+
+At that bald betrayal, Io's color waned slightly. She lifted her
+water-glass and sipped at it. When she spoke again it was as if an inner
+scene had been shifted.
+
+"What did you come to New York for?"
+
+"Success."
+
+"As in all the fables. And you've found it. It was almost too easy,
+wasn't it?"
+
+"Indeed, not. It was touch and go."
+
+"Would you have come but for me?"
+
+He stared at her, considering, wondering.
+
+"Remember," she adjured him; "success was my prescription. Be flattering
+for once. Let me think that I'm responsible for the miracle."
+
+"Perhaps. I couldn't stay out there--afterward. The loneliness...."
+
+"I didn't want to leave you loneliness," she burst out passionately
+under her breath. "I wanted to leave you memory and ambition and the
+determination to succeed."
+
+"For what?"
+
+"Oh, no; no!" She answered the harsh thought subtending his query. "Not
+for myself. Not for any pride. I'm not cheap, Ban."
+
+"No; you're not cheap."
+
+"I would have kept my distance.... It was quite true what I said to you
+about Betty Raleigh. It was not success alone that I wanted for you; I
+wanted happiness, too. I owed you that--after my mistake."
+
+He caught up the last word. "You've admitted to yourself, then, that it
+was a mistake?"
+
+"I played the game," she retorted. "One can't always play right. But one
+can always play fair."
+
+"Yes; I know your creed of sportsmanship. There are worse religions."
+
+"Do you think I played fair with you, Ban? After that night on the
+river?"
+
+He was mute.
+
+"Do you know why I didn't kiss you good-bye in the station? Not really
+kiss you, I mean, as I did on the island?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Because, if I had, I should never have had the strength to go away."
+She lifted her eyes to his. Her voice fell to a half whisper. "You
+understood, on the island?... What I meant?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But you didn't take me. I wonder. Ban, if it hadn't been for the light
+flashing in our eyes and giving us hope...?"
+
+"How can I tell? I was dazed with the amazement and the glory of it--of
+you. But--yes. My God, yes! And then? Afterward?"
+
+"Could there have been any afterward?" she questioned dreamily. "Would
+we not just have waited for the river to sweep us up and carry us away?
+What other ending could there have been, so fitting?"
+
+"Anyway," he said with a sudden savage jealousy, "whatever happened you
+would not have gone away to marry Eyre."
+
+"Should I not? I'm by no means sure. You don't understand much of me, my
+poor Ban."
+
+"How could you!" he burst out. "Would that have been--"
+
+"Oh, I should have told him, of course. I'd have said, 'Del, there's
+been another man, a lover.' One could say those things to him."
+
+"Would he have married you?"
+
+"You wouldn't, would you?" she smiled. "All or nothing, Ban, for you.
+About Del, I don't know." She shrugged dainty shoulders. "I shouldn't
+have much cared."
+
+"And would you have come back to me, Io?"
+
+"Do you want me to say 'Yes'? You do want me to say' Yes,' don't you, my
+dear? How can I tell?... Sooner or later, I suppose. Fate. The
+irresistible current. I am here now."
+
+"Io." He leaned to her across the little table, his somber regard
+holding hers. "Why did you tell Camilla Van Arsdale that you would never
+divorce Eyre?"
+
+"Because it's true."
+
+"But why tell her? So that it should come back to me?"
+
+She answered him straight and fearlessly. "Yes. I thought it would be
+easier for you to hear from her."
+
+"Did you?" He sat staring past her at visions. It was not within
+Banneker's code, his sense of fair play in the game, to betray to Io his
+wonderment (shared by most of her own set) that she should have endured
+the affront of Del Eyre's openly flagitious life, even though she had
+herself implied some knowledge of it in her assumption that a divorce
+could be procured. However, Io met his reticence with characteristic
+candor.
+
+"Of course I know about Del. We have a perfect understanding. He's
+agreed to maintain the outward decencies, from now on. I don't consider
+that I've the right to ask more. You see, I shouldn't have married him
+... even though he understood that I wasn't really in love with him.
+We're friends; and we're going to remain friends. Just that. Del's a
+good sort," she added with a hint of pleading the cause of a
+misunderstood person. "He'd give me my divorce in a minute; even though
+he still cares--in his way. But there's his mother. She's a sort of
+latter-day saint; one of those rare people that you respect and love in
+equal parts; the only other one I know is Cousin Willis Enderby. She's
+an invalid, hopeless, and a Roman Catholic, and for me to divorce Del
+would poison the rest of her life. So I won't. I can't."
+
+"She won't live forever," muttered Banneker.
+
+"No. Not long, perhaps." There was pain and resolution in Io's eyes as
+they were lifted to meet his again. "There's another reason. I can't
+tell even you, Ban. The secret isn't mine.... I'm sorry."
+
+"Haven't you any work to do to-day?" she asked after a pause, with a
+successful effect of lightness.
+
+He roused himself, settled the check, and took her to her car, parked
+near by.
+
+"Where do you go now?" he asked.
+
+"Back to the country."
+
+"When shall I see you again?"
+
+"I wonder," said Io.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Panem et Circenses; bread and the Big Show. The diagnosis of the
+satyr-like mathematician had been accurate. That same method whereby the
+tyrants of Rome had sought to beguile the restless and unthinking
+multitude, Banneker adopted to capture and lead the sensation-avid
+metropolitan public through his newspaper. As a facture, a creation made
+to the mind of the creator, The Patriot was Banneker's own. True,
+Marrineal reserved full control. But Marrineal, after a few months spent
+in anxious observation of his editor's headlong and revolutionary
+method, had taken the sales reports for his determinative guide and
+decided to give the new man full sway.
+
+Circulation had gone up as water rises in a tube under irresistible
+pressure from beneath. Nothing like it had ever been known in local
+journalism. Barring some set-back, within four years of the time when
+Banneker's introductory editorial appeared, the paper would have
+eclipsed all former records. In less than two years it had climbed to
+third place, and already Banneker's salary, under the percentage
+agreement, was, in the words of the alliterative Gardner, whose article
+describing The House With Three Eyes and its owner had gone forth on the
+wings of a far-spreading syndicate, "a stupendous stipend."
+
+Banneker's editorials pervaded and gave the keynote. With sublime
+self-confidence he had adopted the untried scheme of having no set and
+determined place for the editorial department. Sometimes, his page
+appeared in the middle of the paper; sometimes on the back; and once,
+when a most promising scheme of municipal looting was just about to be
+put through, he fired his blast from the front sheet in extra heavy,
+double-leaded type, displacing an international yacht race and a most
+titillating society scandal with no more explanation than was to be
+found in the opening sentence:
+
+"This is more important to YOU, Mr. New Yorker, than any other news in
+to-day's issue."
+
+"Where Banneker sits," Russell Edmonds was wont to remark between puffs,
+"is the head of the paper."
+
+"Let 'em look for the stuff," said Banneker confidently. "They'll think
+all the more of it when they find it."
+
+Often he used inset illustrations, not so much to give point to his
+preachments, as to render them easier of comprehension to the
+unthinking. And always he sought the utmost of sensationalism in caption
+and in type, employing italics, capitals, and even heavy-face letters
+with an effect of detonation.
+
+"Jollies you along until he can see the white of your mind, and then
+fires his slug into your head, point-blank," Edmonds said.
+
+With all this he had the high art to keep his style direct, unaffected,
+almost severe. No frills, no literary graces, no flashes of wit except
+an occasional restrained touch of sarcasm: the writing was in the purest
+style and of a classic simplicity. The typical reader of The Patriot had
+a friendly and rather patronizing feeling for the editorials: they were
+generally deemed quite ordinary, "common as an old shoe" (with an
+approving accent from the commentator), comfortably devoid of the
+intricate elegancies practiced by Banneker's editorial compeers. So they
+were read and absorbed, which was all that their writer hoped or wished
+for them. He was not seeking the bubble, reputation, but the solid
+satisfaction of implanting ideas in minds hitherto unaroused to mental
+processes, and training the resultant thought in his chosen way and to
+eventual though still vague purposes.
+
+"They're beginning to imitate you, Ban," commented Russell Edmonds in
+the days of The Patriot's first surprising upward leap. "Flattery of
+your peers."
+
+"Let 'em imitate," returned Banneker indifferently.
+
+"Yes; they don't come very near to the original. It's a fundamental
+difference in style."
+
+"It's a fundamental difference in aim."
+
+"Aim?"
+
+"They're writing at and for their owners; to make good with the boss.
+I'm writing at my public."
+
+"I believe you're right. It's more difficult, though, isn't it, to write
+for a hundred thousand people than at one?"
+
+"Not if you understand them from study at first hand, as I do. That's
+why the other fellows are five or ten-thousand-dollar men," said
+Banneker, quite without boastfulness "while I'm--"
+
+"A fifty-thousand-dollar a year man," supplied Edmonds.
+
+"Well, getting toward that figure. I'm on the target with the editorials
+and I'm going to hold on it. But our news policy is different. We still
+wobble there."
+
+"What do you want! Look at the circulation. Isn't that good enough?"
+
+"No. Every time I get into a street-car and see a passenger reading some
+other paper, I feel that we've missed fire," returned Banneker
+inexorably. "Pop, did you ever see an actress make up?"
+
+"I've a general notion of the process."
+
+"Find me a man who can make up news ready and rouged to go before the
+daily footlights as an actress makes up her face."
+
+The veteran grunted. "Not to be found on Park Row."
+
+"Probably not. Park Row is too deadly conventional."
+
+One might suppose that the environment of religious journalism would be
+equally conventional. Yet it was from this department that the "find"
+eventually came, conducted by Edmonds. Edgar Severance, ten years older
+than Banneker, impressed the guiding spirit of The Patriot at first
+sight with a sense of inner certitude and serenity not in the least
+impaired by his shabbiness which had the redeeming merit of being clean.
+
+"You're not a newspaper man?" said Banneker after the introduction.
+"What are you?"
+
+"I'm a prostitute," answered the other equably.
+
+Banneker smiled. "Where have you practiced your profession?"
+
+"As assistant editor of Guidance. I write the blasphemous editorials
+which are so highly regarded by the sweetly simple souls that make up
+our _clientele_; the ones which weekly give gratuitous advice to God."
+
+"Did Mr. Edmonds find you there?"
+
+"No," put in the veteran; "I traced him down through some popular
+scientific stuff in the Boston Sunday Star."
+
+"Fake, all of it," proffered Severance. "Otherwise it wouldn't be
+popular."
+
+"Is that your creed of journalism?" asked Banneker curiously.
+
+"Largely."
+
+"Why come to The Patriot, then? It isn't ours."
+
+Severance raised his fine eyebrows, but contented himself with saying:
+"Isn't it? However, I didn't come. I was brought." He indicated Edmonds.
+
+"He gave me more ideas on news-dressing," said the veteran, "than I'd
+pick up in a century on the Row."
+
+"Ideas are what we're after. Where do you get yours, Mr. Severance,
+since you are not a practical newspaper man?"
+
+"From talking with people, and seeing what the newspapers fail to do."
+
+"Where were you before you went on Guidance?"
+
+"Instructor at Harvard."
+
+"And you practiced your--er--specified profession there, too?"
+
+"Oh, no. I was partly respectable then.
+
+"Why did you leave?"
+
+"Drink."
+
+"Ah? You don't build up much of a character for yourself as prospective
+employee."
+
+"If I join The Patriot staff I shall probably disappear once a month or
+so on a spree."
+
+"Why should you join The Patriot staff? That is what you fail to make
+clear to me."
+
+"Reference, Mr. Russell Edmonds," returned the other negligently.
+
+"You two aren't getting anywhere with all this chatter," growled the
+reference. "Come, Severance; talk turkey, as you did to me."
+
+"I don't want to talk," objected the other in his gentle, scholarly
+accents. "I want to look about: to diagnose the trouble in the news
+department."
+
+"What do you suspect the trouble to be?" asked Banneker.
+
+"Oh, the universal difficulty. Lack of brains."
+
+Banneker laughed, but without relish. "We pay enough for what we've got.
+It ought to be good quality."
+
+"You pay not wisely but too well. My own princely emolument as a prop of
+piety is thirty-five dollars a week."
+
+"Would you come here at that figure?"
+
+"I should prefer forty. For a period of six weeks, on trial."
+
+"As Mr. Edmonds seems to think it worth the gamble, I'll take you on.
+From to-day, if you wish. Go out and look around."
+
+"Wait a minute," interposed Edmonds. "What's his title? How is his job
+to be defined?"
+
+"Call him my representative in the news department. I'll pay his salary
+myself. If he makes good, I'll more than get it back."
+
+Mr. Severance's first concern appeared to be to make himself popular. In
+the anomalous position which he occupied as representative between two
+mutually jealous departments, this was no easy matter. But his quiet,
+contained courtesy, his tentative, almost timid, way of offering
+suggestions or throwing out hints which subsequently proved to have
+definite and often surprising value, his retiring willingness to waive
+any credit in favor of whosoever might choose to claim it, soon gave him
+an assured if inconspicuous position. His advice was widely sought. As
+an immediate corollary a new impress made itself felt in the daily
+columns. With his quick sensitiveness Banneker apprehended the change.
+It seemed to him that the paper was becoming feminized in a curious
+manner.
+
+"Is it a play for the women?" he asked Severance in the early days of
+the development.
+
+"No."
+
+"You're certainly specializing on femaleness."
+
+"For the men. Not the women. It's an old lure."
+
+Banneker frowned. "And not a pretty one."
+
+"Effective, though. I bagged it from the Police Gazette. Have you ever
+had occasion to note the almost unvarying cover appeal of that justly
+popular weekly?"
+
+"Half-dressed women," said Banneker, whose early researches had extended
+even to those levels.
+
+"Exactly. With all they connote. Thereby attracting the crude and roving
+male eye. Of course, we must do the trick more artistically and less
+obviously. But the pictured effect is the thing. I'm satisfied of that.
+By the way, I am having a little difficulty with your art department.
+Your man doesn't adapt himself to new ideas."
+
+"I've thought him rather old-fashioned. What do you want to do?"
+
+"Bring in a young chap named Capron whom I've run upon. He used to be an
+itinerant photographer, and afterward had a try at the movies, but he's
+essentially a news man. Let him read the papers for pictures."
+
+Capron came on the staff as an insignificant member with an
+insignificant salary. Personally a man of blameless domesticity, he was
+intellectually and professionally a sex-monger. He conceived the
+business of a news art department to be to furnish pictured Susannahs
+for the delectation of the elders of the reading public. His _flair_ for
+femininity he transferred to The Patriot's pages, according to a simple
+and direct formula; the greater the display of woman, the surer the
+appeal and therefore the sale. Legs and bosoms he specialized for in
+illustrations. Bathing-suits and boudoir scenes were his particular aim,
+although any picture with a scandal attachment in the accompanying news
+would serve, the latter, however, to be handled in such manner as
+invariably to point a moral. Herein his team work with Severance was
+applied in high perfection.
+
+"Should Our Girls Become Artists' Models" was one of their early and
+inspired collaborations, a series begun with a line of "beauty pictures"
+and spun out by interviews with well or less known painters and
+illustrators, giving rich opportunity for displays of nudity, the moral
+being pointed by equally lavish interviews with sociologists and
+prominent Mothers in Israel. Although at least ninety-nine per cent of
+all professional posing is such as would not be out of place at a church
+sociable, the casual reader of the Capron-Severance presentation would
+have supposed that a lace veil was the extent of the protection allowed
+to a female model between sheer nakedness and the outer artistic world.
+Following this came a department devoted (ostensibly) to physical
+culture for women. It was conducted by the proprietress of a fashionable
+reducing gymnasium, who was allowed, as this was a comparatively
+unimportant feature, to supply the text subject to Severance's
+touching-up ingenuity; but the models were devised and posed by Capron.
+They were extremely shapely and increasingly expressive in posture and
+arrangement until they attained a point where the post-office
+authorities evinced symptoms of rising excitement--though not the type
+of excitement at which the Art Expert was aiming--when the series took a
+turn for the milder, and more purely athletic, and, by the same token,
+less appetizing; and presently faded away in a burst of semi-editorial
+self-laudation over The Patriot's altruistic endeavors to improve the
+physical status of the "future mothers of the nation."
+
+Failing any other excuse for their careful lubricities, the team could
+always conjure up an enticing special feature from an imaginary foreign
+correspondent, aimed direct at the family circle and warning against the
+"Moral Pitfalls of Paris," or the "Vampires of High Life in Vienna." The
+invariable rule was that all sex-stuff must have a moral and virtuous
+slant. Thus was afforded to the appreciative reader a double
+satisfaction, physical and ethical, pruriency and piety.
+
+It was Capron who devised the simple but effective legend which
+afterward became, in a thousand variants, a stock part of every news
+item interesting enough to merit graphic treatment, "The X Marks the
+Spot Where the Body Was Found." He, too, adapted, from a design in a
+drug-store window picturing a sponge fisherman in action, the
+cross-section illustration for news. Within a few weeks he had displaced
+the outdated art editor and was in receipt of a larger salary than the
+city editor, who dealt primarily in news, not sensations, _panem_ not
+_circenses_.
+
+Sensationalism of other kinds was spurred to keep pace with the sex
+appeal. The news columns became constantly more lurid. They shrieked,
+yelled, blared, shrilled, and boomed the scandals and horrors of the
+moment in multivocal, multigraphic clamor, tainting the peaceful air
+breathed by everyday people going about their everyday business, with
+incredible blatancies which would be forgotten on the morrow in the
+excitement of fresh percussions, though the cumulative effect upon the
+public mind and appetite might be ineradicable. "Murderer Dabbles Name
+in Bloody Print." "Wronged Wife Mars Rival's Beauty." "Society Woman
+Gives Hundred-Dollar-Plate Dinner." "Scientist Claims Life Flickers in
+Mummy." "Cocktails, Wine, Drug, Ruin for Lovely Girl of Sixteen."
+"Financier Resigns After Sprightly Scene at Long Beach." Severance
+developed a literary genius for excitant and provocative
+word-combinations in the headings; "Love-Slave," "Girl-Slasher,"
+"Passion-Victim," "Death-Hand," "Vengeance-Oath," "Lust-Fiend." The
+articles chosen for special display were such as lent themselves, first,
+to his formula for illustration, and next to captions which thrilled
+with the sensations of crime, mystery, envy of the rich and conspicuous,
+or lechery, half concealed or unconcealed. For facts as such he cared
+nothing. His conception of news was as a peg upon which to hang a
+sensation. "Love and luxury for the women: money and power for the men,"
+was his broad working scheme for the special interest of the paper,
+with, of course, crime and the allure of the flesh for general interest.
+A jungle man, perusing one day's issue (supposing him to have been
+competent to assimilate it), would have judged the civilization pictured
+therein too grisly for his unaccustomed nerves and fled in horror back
+to the direct, natural, and uncomplicated raids and homicides of the
+decent wilds.
+
+The Great Gaines, descending for once from the habitual classicism of
+his phraseology, described The Patriot of Severance's production in two
+terse and sufficient words.
+
+"It itches."
+
+That itch irked Banneker almost unendurably at times. He longed to be
+relieved of it; to scratch the irritant Severance clean off the skin of
+The Patriot. But Severance was too evidently valuable. Banneker did go
+so far as to protest.
+
+"Aren't you rather overdoing this thing, Severance?"
+
+"Which thing? We're overdoing everything; hence the growth of the
+paper."
+
+Banneker fell back upon banality. "Well, we've got to draw the line
+somewhere."
+
+Severance bestowed upon the other his well-bred and delicate smile.
+"Exactly my principle. I'm for drawing the line every issue and on every
+page, if there's room for it. '_Nulla dies sine linea_.' The line of
+appeal to the sensations, whether it's a pretty face or a caption that
+jumps out and grabs you by the eye. I want to make 'em gloat."
+
+"I see. You were in earnest more or less when in our first talk, you
+defined your profession."
+
+Severance waved a graceful hand. "Prostitution is the profession of all
+successful journalism which looks at itself honestly. Why not play the
+pander frankly?--among ourselves, of course. Perhaps I'm offending you,
+Mr. Banneker."
+
+"You're interesting me. But, 'among ourselves' you say. You're not a
+newspaper man; you haven't the traditions."
+
+"Therefore I haven't the blind spots. I'm not fooled by the
+sentimentalism of the profession or the sniveling claims of being an
+apostle of public enlightenment. If enlightenment pays, all very well.
+But it's circulation, not illumination, that's the prime desideratum.
+Frankly, I'd feed the public gut with all it can and will stand."
+
+"Even to the extent of keeping the Tallman divorce scandal on the front
+page for a week consecutively. You won't pretend that, as news, it's
+worth it."
+
+"Give me a definition of news," retorted the expert. "The Tallman story
+won't alter the history of the world. But it has its--well, its
+specialized value for our purposes."
+
+"You mean," said Banneker, deliberately stimulating his own growing
+nausea, "that it makes the public's mind itch."
+
+"It's a pretty filthy and scabby sort of animal, the public, Mr.
+Banneker. We're not trying to reform its morals in our news columns, I
+take it."
+
+"No. No; we're not. Still--"
+
+"That's the province of your editorials," went on the apostle of
+titillation smoothly. "You may in time even educate them up to a
+standard of decency where they won't demand the sort of thing we're
+giving them now. But our present business with the news columns is to
+catch them for you to educate."
+
+"Quite so! You lure them into the dive where I wait to preach them a
+sermon."
+
+After that conversation Banneker definitely decided that Severance's
+activities must be curbed. But when he set about it, he suffered an
+unpleasant surprise. Marrineal, thoroughly apprised of the new man's
+activities (as he was, by some occult means of his own, of everything
+going on in the office), stood fast by the successful method, and let
+Banneker know, tactfully but unmistakably, that Severance, who had been
+transferred to the regular payroll at a highly satisfactory figure, was
+to have a free hand. So the ex-religious editor continued to stroll
+leisurely through his unauthoritative and influential routine,
+contributing his commentary upon the news as it flowed in. He would
+saunter over to the make-up man's clotted desk, run his eye over the
+dummy of the morrow's issue, and inquire;
+
+"Wasn't there a shooting scrape over a woman in a big West-Side
+apartment?... Being kept by the chap that was shot, wasn't she?... Oh, a
+bank clerk?... Well, that's a pretty dull-looking seventh page. Why not
+lift this text of the new Suburban Railways Bill and spread the shooting
+across three columns? Get Sanderson to work out a diagram and do one of
+his filmy line drawings of the girl lying on the couch. And let's be
+sure to get the word 'Banker' into the top head."
+
+Or he would deliver a practical lecture from a text picked out of what
+to a less keen-scented news-hound might have appeared an unpromising
+subject.
+
+"Can't we round out that disappearance story a little; the suburban
+woman who hasn't been seen since she went to New York three days ago?
+Get Capron to fake up a picture of the home with the three children in
+it grouped around Bereaved Husband, and--here, how would something like
+this do for caption: '"Mamma, Mamma! Come Back!" Sob Tiny Tots.' The
+human touch. Nothing like a bit of slush to catch the women. And we've
+been going a little shy on sentiment lately."
+
+The "human touch," though it became an office joke, also took its place
+as an unwritten law. Severance's calm and impersonal cynicism was
+transmuted into a genuine enthusiasm among the copy-readers. Headlining
+took on a new interest, whetted by the establishment of a weekly prize
+for the most attractive caption. Maximum of sensationalism was the
+invariable test.
+
+Despite his growing distaste for the Severance cult, Banneker was honest
+enough to admit that the original stimulus dated from the day when he
+himself had injected his personality and ideas into the various
+departments of the daily. He had established the new policy; Severance
+had done no more than inform it with the heated imaginings and
+provocative pictorial quality inherent in a mind intensely if scornfully
+apprehensive of the unsatiated potential depravities of public taste. It
+was Banneker's hand that had set the strings vibrating to a new tune;
+Severance had only raised the pitch, to the _n_th degree of
+sensationalism. And, in so far as the editorial page gave him a lead,
+the disciple was faithful to the principles and policies of his chief.
+The practice of the news columns was always informed by a patently
+defensible principle. It paeaned the virtues of the poor and lowly; it
+howled for the blood of the wicked and the oppressor; it was strident
+for morality, the sanctity of the home, chastity, thrift, sobriety, the
+People, religion, American supremacy. As a corollary of these pious
+standards it invariably took sides against wealth and power,
+sentimentalized every woman who found her way into the public prints,
+whether she had perpetrated a murder or endowed a hospital, simpered and
+slavered over any "heart-interest story" of childhood ("blue-eyed tot
+stuff" was the technical office term), and licked reprehensive but
+gustful lips over divorce, adultery, and the sexual complications. It
+peeped through keyholes of print at the sanctified doings of Society and
+snarled while it groveled. All the shibboleths of a journalism which
+respected neither itself, its purpose, nor its readers echoed from every
+page. And this was the reflex of the work and thought of Errol Banneker,
+who intimately respected himself, and his profession as expressed in
+himself. There is much of the paradoxical in journalism--as, indeed, in
+the life which it distortedly mirrors.
+
+Every other newspaper in town caught the contagion; became by insensible
+degrees more sensational and pornographic. The Patriot had started a
+rag-time pace (based on the same fundamental instinct which the rhythm
+of rag-time expresses, if the psychologists are correct) and the rest
+must, perforce, adopt it. Such as lagged in this Harlot's Progress
+suffered a loss of circulation, journalism's most condign penalty. For
+there are certain appetites which, once stimulated, must be appeased.
+Otherwise business wanes!
+
+Out of conscious nothing, as represented by the now moribund News, there
+was provoked one evening a large, round, middle-aged, smiling,
+bespectacled apparition who named himself as Rudy Sheffer and invited
+himself to a job. Marrineal had sent him to Severance, and Severance,
+ever tactful, had brought him to Banneker. Russell Edmonds being called
+in, the three sat in judgment upon the Big Idea which Mr. Sheffer had
+brought with him and which was:
+
+"Give 'em a laugh."
+
+"The potentialities of humor as a circulation agency," opined Severance
+in his smoothest academic voice, "have never been properly exploited."
+
+"A laugh on every page where there ain't a thrill," pursued Sheffer
+confidently.
+
+"You find some of our pages dull?" asked Banneker, always interested in
+any new view.
+
+"Well, your market page ain't no scream. You gotta admit it."
+
+"People don't usually want to laugh when they're studying the stock
+market," growled Edmonds.
+
+"Surprise 'em, then. Give 'em a jab in the ribs and see how they like
+it. Pictures. Real comics. Anywhere in the paper that there's room for
+'em."
+
+"There's always a cartoon on the editorial page," pointed out Banneker.
+
+"Cartoon? What does that get you? A cartoon's an editorial, ain't it?"
+
+Russell Edmonds shot a side glance at Banneker, meaning: "This is no
+fool. Watch him."
+
+"Makes 'em think, don't it?" pursued the visitor. "If it tickles 'em,
+that's on the side. It gets after their minds, makes 'em work for what
+they get. That's an effort. See?"
+
+"All right. What's your aim?"
+
+"Not their brains. I leave that to Mr. Banneker's editorials. I'm after
+the laugh that starts down here." He laid hand upon his rotund
+waistcoat. "The belly-laugh."
+
+"The anatomy of anti-melancholy," murmured Severance. "Valuable."
+
+"You're right, it's valuable," declared its proponent. "It's money;
+that's what it is. Watch 'em at the movies. When their bellies begin to
+shake, the picture's got 'em."
+
+"How would you produce this desirable effect?" asked Severance.
+
+"No trouble to show goods. I'm dealing with gents, I know. This is all
+under your shirt for the present, if you don't take up the scheme."
+
+From a portfolio which he had set in a corner he produced a sheaf of
+drawings. They depicted the adventures, mischievous, predatory, or
+criminal, of a pair of young hopefuls whose physiognomies and postures
+were genuinely ludicrous.
+
+"Did you draw these?" asked Banneker in surprise, for the
+draughtsmanship was expert.
+
+"No. Hired a kid artist to do 'em. I furnished the idea."
+
+"Oh, you furnished the idea, did you?" queried Edmonds. "And where did
+you get it?"
+
+With an ineffably satisfied air, Mr. Sheffer tapped his bullet head.
+
+"You must be older than you look, then. Those figures of the kids are
+redrawn from a last-century German humorous classic, 'Max und Moritz.' I
+used to be crazy over it when I was a youngster. My grandfather brought
+it to me from Europe, and made a translation for us youngsters."
+
+"Sure! Those pictures'd make a reformer laugh. I picked up the book in
+German on an Ann Street sidewalk stand, caught the Big Idea right then
+and there; to Americanize the stuff and--"
+
+"For 'Americanize,' read 'steal,'" commented Edmonds.
+
+"There ain't no thin' crooked in this," protested the other with
+sincerity. "The stuff ain't copyrighted here. I looked that up
+particularly."
+
+"Quite true, I believe," confirmed Severance. "It's an open field."
+
+"I got ten series mapped out to start. Call 'em 'The Trouble-hunter
+Twins, Ruff and Reddy.' If they catch on, the artist and me can keep 'em
+goin' forever. And they'll catch."
+
+"I believe they will," said Severance.
+
+"Smeared across the top of a page it'll make a business man laugh as
+hard as a kid. I know business men. I was one, myself. Sold bar fixtures
+on the road for four years. And my best selling method was the laughs I
+got out of 'em. Used to take a bit of chalk and do sketches on the
+table-tops. So I know what makes 'em laugh. Belly-laughs. You make a
+business man laugh that way, and you get his business. It ain't
+circulation alone; it's advertising that the stuff will bring in. Eh?"
+
+"What do you think, Mr. Banneker?" asked Severance.
+
+"It's worth trying," decided Banneker after thought. "You don't think
+so, do you, Pop?"
+
+"Oh, go ahead!" returned Edmonds, spewing forth a mouthful of smoke as
+if to expel a bad taste. "What's larceny among friends?"
+
+"But we're not taking anything of value, since there's no copyright and
+any one can grab it," pointed out the smooth Severance.
+
+Thus there entered into the high-tension atmosphere of the
+sensationalized Patriot the relaxing quality of humor. Under the
+ingenuous and acquisitive Sheffer, whose twins achieved immediate
+popularity, it developed along other lines. Sheffer--who knew what makes
+business men laugh--pinned his simple faith to three main subjects,
+convulsive of the diaphragmatic muscles, building up each series upon
+the inherent humor to be extracted from physical violence as represented
+in the perpetrations and punishments of Ruff and Reddy, marital
+infidelity as mirrored in the stratagems and errancies of an amorous ape
+with an aged and jealous spouse, and the sure-fire familiarity of aged
+minstrel jokes (mother-in-law, country constable, young married cookery,
+and the like) refurbished in pictorial serials through the agency of two
+uproarious and imbecilic vulgarians, Bonehead and Buttinsky.
+
+Children cried for them, and laughed to exhaustion over them. Not less
+did the mentally exhausted business man writhe abdominally over their
+appeal. Spread across the top of three pages they wrung the profitable
+belly-laugh from growing thousands of new readers. If Banneker sometimes
+had misgivings that the educational influence of The Patriot was not
+notably improved by all this instigation of crime and immorality made
+subject for mirth in the mind of developing youth, he stifled them in
+the thought of increased reading public for his own columns.
+Furthermore, it was not his newspaper, anyway.
+
+But the editorial page was still peculiarly his own, and with that
+clarity of view which he never permitted personal considerations to
+prejudice, Banneker perceived that it was falling below pitch. Or,
+rather, that, while it remained static, the rest of the paper, under the
+stimulus of Severance, Capron, Sheffer, and, in the background but
+increasingly though subtly assertive, Marrineal, had raised its level of
+excitation. Change his editorials he would not. Nor was there need; the
+response to them was too widespread and fervent, their following too
+blindly fanatic, the opposition roused by them too furious to permit of
+any doubt as to their effectiveness. But that portion of the page not
+taken up by his writings and the cartoon (which was often based upon an
+idea supplied by him), was susceptible of alteration, of keying-up.
+Casting about him for the popular note, the circus appeal, he started a
+"signed-article" department of editorial contributions to which he
+invited any and all persons of prominence in whatever line. The lure of
+that universal egotism which loves to see itself in the public eye
+secured a surprising number of names. Propagandists were quick to
+appreciate the opportunity of The Patriot's wide circulation for
+furthering their designs, selfish or altruistic. To such desirables as
+could not be caught by other lures, Banneker offered generous payment.
+
+It was on this latter basis that he secured a prize, in the person of
+the Reverend George Bland, ex-revivalist, ex-author of pious stories for
+the young, skilled dealer in truisms, in wordy platitudes couched
+largely in plagiarized language from the poets and essayists, in all the
+pseudo-religious slickeries wherewith men's souls are so easily lulled
+into self-satisfaction. The Good, the True, the Beautiful; these were
+his texts, but the real god of his worship was Success. This, under the
+guise of Duty ("man's God-inspired ambition to be true to his best
+possibilities"), he preached day in and day out through his "Daily Help"
+in The Patriot: Be guided by me and you will be good: Be good and you
+will be prosperous: Be prosperous and you will be happy. On an adjoining
+page there were other and far more specific instructions as to how to be
+prosperous and happy, by backing Speedfoot at 10 to 1 in the first race,
+or Flashaway at 5 to 2 in the third. Sometimes the Reverend Bland
+inveighed convincingly against the evils of betting. Yet a cynic might
+guess that the tipsters' recipes for being prosperous and happy (and
+therefore, by a logical inversion, good) were perhaps as well based and
+practical as the reverend moralist's. His correspondence, surest
+indication of editorial following, grew to be almost as large as
+Banneker's. Severance nicknamed him "the Oracle of Boobs," and for short
+he became known as the "Booblewarbler," for there were times when he
+burst into verse, strongly reminiscent of the older hymnals. This he
+resented hotly and genuinely, for he was quite sincere; as sincere as
+Sheffer, in his belief in himself. But he despised Sheffer and feared
+Severance, not for what the latter represented, but for the cynical
+honesty of his attitude. In retort for Severance's stab, he dubbed the
+pair Mephistopheles and Falstaff, which was above his usual
+felicitousness of characterization. Sheffer (who read Shakespeare to
+improve his mind, and for ideas!) was rather flattered.
+
+Even the platitudinous Bland had his practical inspirations; if they had
+not been practical, they would not have been Bland's. One of these was
+an analysis of the national business character.
+
+"We Americans," he wrote, "are natural merchandisers. We care less for
+the making of a thing than for the selling of it. Salesmanship is the
+great American game. It calls forth all our native genius; it is the
+expression of our originality, our inventiveness, our ingenuity, our
+idealism," and so on, for a full column slathered with deadly and
+self-betraying encomiums. For the Reverend Bland believed heartily that
+the market was the highest test of humankind. _He_ would rather sell a
+thing than make it! In fact, anything made with any other purpose than
+to sell would probably not be successful, and would fail to make its
+author prosperous; therefore it must be wrong. Not the creator, but the
+salesman was the modern evangel.
+
+"The Booblewarbler has given away the game," commented Severance with
+his slight, ironic smile, the day when this naive effusion appeared.
+"He's right, of course. But he thinks he's praising when he's damning."
+
+Banneker was disturbed. But the flood of letters which came in promptly
+reassured him. The Reverend editorializer was hailed broadcast as the
+Messiah of the holy creed of Salesmanship, of the high cult of getting
+rid of something for more than it is worth. He was organized into a
+lecture tour; his department in the paper waxed ever greater. Banneker,
+with his swift appreciation of a hit, followed the lead with editorials;
+hired authors to write short stories glorifying the ennobled figure of
+the Salesman, his smartness, his strategy, his ruthless trickery, his
+success. And the salesmanhood of the nation, in trains, in hotel
+lobbies, at the breakfast table with its Patriot propped up flanking the
+egg and coffee, rose up to call him blessed and to add to his income.
+
+Personal experiences in achieving success were a logical sequence to
+this; success in any field, from running a city as set forth by His
+Honor the Mayor, to becoming a movie star, by all the movie stars or
+aspirants whom their press-agents could crowd into the paper. A
+distinguished novelist of notably high blood-pressure contributed a
+series of thoughtful essays on "How to be Irresistible in Love," and a
+sentimental pugilist indulged in reminiscences (per a hired pen from the
+cheap magazine field) upon "The Influence of my Mother on my Career." An
+imitator of Banneker developed a daily half-column of self-improvement
+and inspiration upon moral topics, achieving his effects by capitalizing
+all the words which otherwise would have been too feeble or banal to
+attract notice, thereby giving an air of sublimated importance to the
+mildly incomprehensible. Nine tenths of The Patriot's editorial readers
+believed that they were following a great philosopher along the path of
+the eternal profundities. To give a touch of science, an amateur
+astronomer wrote stirring imaginative articles on interstellar space,
+and there were occasional "authoritative" pronouncements by men of
+importance in the political, financial, or intellectual worlds, lifted
+from public speeches or old publications. The page, if it did not
+actually itch, buzzed and clanged. But above the composite clamor rose
+ever the voice of Banneker, clear, serene, compelling.
+
+And Banneker took his pay for it, deeming it well earned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Put to the direct question, as, for example, on the witness stand, Mr.
+Ely Ives would, before his connection with Tertius Marrineal, have
+probably identified himself as a press-agent. In that capacity he had
+acted, from time to time, for a railroad with many axes to grind, a
+widespread stock-gambling enterprise, a minor political ring, a liquor
+combination, and a millionaire widow from the West who innocently
+believed that publicity, as manipulated by Mr. Ives, could gain social
+prestige for her in the East.
+
+In every phase of his employment, the ex-medical student had gathered
+curious and valuable lore. In fact he was one of those acquisitive
+persons who collect and hoard scandals, a miser of private and furtive
+information. His was the zeal of the born collector; something of the
+genius, too: he boasted a keen instinct. In his earlier and more
+precarious days he had formed the habit of watching for and collating
+all possible advices concerning those whom he worked for or worked
+against and branching from them to others along radiating lines of
+business, social, or family relationships. To him New York was a huge
+web, of sinister and promising design, dim, involved, too often
+impenetrable in the corners where the big spiders spin. He had two
+guiding maxims: "It may come in handy some day," and "They'll all bear
+watching." Before the prosperous time, he had been, in his devotion to
+his guiding principles, a practitioner of the detective arts in some of
+their least savory phases; had haunted doorsteps, lurked upon corners,
+been rained upon, snowed upon, possibly spat upon, even arrested; all of
+which he accepted, mournful but uncomplaining. One cannot
+whole-heartedly serve an ideal and come off scatheless. He was adroit,
+well-spoken, smooth of surface, easy of purse, untiring, supple, and of
+an inexhaustible good-humor. It was from the ex-medical student that
+Marrineal had learned of Banneker's offer from the Syndicate, also of
+his over-prodigal hand in money matters.
+
+"He's got to have the cash," was the expert's opinion upon Banneker.
+"There's your hold on him.... Quit? No danger. New York's in his blood.
+He's in love with life, puppy-love; his clubs, his theater first-nights,
+his invitations to big houses which he seldom accepts, big people coming
+to his House with Three Eyes. And, of course, his sense of power in the
+paper. No; he won't quit. How could he? He'll compromise."
+
+"Do you figure him to be the compromising sort?" asked Marrineal
+doubtfully.
+
+"He isn't the journalistic Puritan that he lets on to be. Look at that
+Harvey Wheelwright editorial," pointed out the acute Ives. "He don't
+believe what he wrote about Wheelwright; just did it for his own
+purposes. Well, if the oracle can work himself for his own purposes,
+others can work him when the time comes, if it's properly managed."
+
+Marrineal shook his head. "If there's a weakness in him I haven't found
+it."
+
+Ives put on a look of confidential assurance. "Be sure it's there. Only
+it isn't of the ordinary kind. Banneker is pretty big in his way. No,"
+he pursued thoughtfully; "it isn't women, and it isn't Wall Street, and
+it isn't drink; it isn't even money, in the usual sense. But it's
+something. By the way, did I tell you that I'd found an acquaintance
+from the desert where Banneker hails from?"
+
+"No." Marrineal's tone subtly indicated that he should have been told at
+once. That sort of thing was, indeed, the basis on which Ives drew a
+considerable stipend from his patron's private purse, as "personal
+representative of Mr. Marrineal" for purposes unspecified.
+
+"A railroad man. From what he tells me there was some sort of
+love-affair there. A girl who materialized from nowhere and spent two
+weeks, mostly with the romantic station-agent. Might have been a
+princess in exile, by my informant, who saw her twice. More likely some
+cheap little skate of a movie actress on a bust."
+
+"A station-agent's taste in women friends--" began Marrineal, and
+forbore unnecessarily to finish.
+
+"Possibly it has improved. Or--well, at any rate, there was something
+there. My railroad man thinks the affair drove Banneker out of his job.
+The fact of his being woman-proof here points to its having been
+serious."
+
+"There was a girl out there about that time visiting Camilla Van
+Arsdale," remarked Marrineal carelessly; "a New York girl. One of the
+same general set. Miss Van Arsdale used to be a New Yorker and rather a
+distinguished one."
+
+Too much master of his devious craft to betray discomfiture over
+another's superior knowledge of a subject which he had tried to make his
+own, Ely Ives remarked:
+
+"Then she was probably the real thing. The princess on vacation. You
+don't know who she was, I suppose," he added tentatively.
+
+Marrineal did not answer, thereby giving his factotum uncomfortably to
+reflect that he really must not expect payment for information and the
+information also.
+
+"I guess he'll bear watching." Ives wound up with his favorite
+philosophy.
+
+It was a few days after this that, by a special interposition of kindly
+chance, Ives, having returned from a trip out of town, saw Banneker and
+Io breakfasting in the station restaurant. To Marrineal he said nothing
+of this at the time; nor, indeed, to any one else. But later he took it
+to a very private market of his own, the breakfast-room of a sunny and
+secluded house far uptown, where lived, in an aroma of the domestic
+virtues, a benevolent-looking old gentleman who combined the attributes
+of the ferret, the leech, and the vulture in his capacity as editor of
+that famous weekly publication, The Searchlight. Ives did not sell in
+that mart; he traded for other information. This time he wanted
+something about Judge Willis Enderby, for he was far enough on the
+inside politically to see in him a looming figure which might stand in
+the way of certain projects, unannounced as yet, but tenderly nurtured
+in the ambitious breast of Tertius C. Marrineal. From the gently smiling
+patriarch he received as much of the unwritten records as that authority
+deemed it expedient to give him, together with an admonition, thrown in
+for good measure.
+
+"Dangerous, my young friend! Dangerous!"
+
+The passionate and patient collector thought it highly probable that
+Willis Enderby would be dangerous game. Certainly he did not intend to
+hunt in those fields, unless he could contrive a weapon of overwhelming
+caliber.
+
+Ely Ives's analysis of Banneker's situation was in a measure responsible
+for Marrineal's proposition of the new deal to his editor.
+
+"He has accepted it," the owner told his purveyor of information. "But
+the real fight is to come."
+
+"Over the policy of the editorial page," opined Ives.
+
+"Yes. This is only a truce."
+
+As a truce Banneker also regarded it. He had no desire to break it. Nor,
+after it was established, did Marrineal make any overt attempt to
+interfere with his conduct of his column.
+
+After awaiting gage of battle from his employer, in vain, Banneker
+decided to leave the issue to chance. Surely he was not surrendering any
+principle, since he continued to write as he chose upon whatever topics
+he selected. Time enough to fight when there should be urged upon him
+either one of the cardinal sins of journalism, the _suppressio veri_ or
+the _suggestio falsi_, which he had more than once excoriated in other
+papers, to the pious horror of the hush-birds of the craft who had
+chattered and cheeped accusations of "fouling one's own nest."
+
+Opportunity was not lacking to Marrineal for objections to a policy
+which made powerful enemies for the paper; Banneker, once assured of his
+following, had hit out right and left. From being a weak-kneed and
+rather apologetic defender of the "common people," The Patriot had
+become, logically, under Banneker's vigorous and outspoken policy, a
+proponent of the side of labor against capital. It had hotly supported
+two important and righteous local strikes and been the chief agent in
+winning one. With equal fervor it had advocated a third strike whose
+justice was at best dubious and had made itself anathema, though the
+strike was lost, to an industrial group which was honestly striving to
+live up to honorable standards. It had offended a powerful ring of
+bankers and for a time embarrassed Marrineal in his loans. It had
+threatened editorial reprisals upon a combination of those feared and
+arrogant advertisers, the department stores, for endeavoring, with
+signal lack of success, to procure the suppression of certain market
+news. It became known as independent, honest, unafraid, radical (in Wall
+Street circles "socialistic" or even "anarchistic"), and, to the
+profession, as dangerous to provoke. Advertisers were, from time to
+time, alienated; public men, often of The Patriot's own trend of
+thought, opposed. Commercial associations even passed resolutions, until
+Banneker took to publishing them with such comment as seemed to him good
+and appropriate. Marrineal uttered no protest, though the unlucky Haring
+beat his elegantly waistcoated breast and uttered profane if subdued
+threats of resigning, which were for effect only; for The Patriot's
+circulation continued to grow and the fact to which every advertising
+expert clings as to the one solid hope in a vaporous calling, is that
+advertising follows circulation.
+
+Seldom did Banneker see his employer in the office, but Marrineal often
+came to the Saturday nights of The House With Three Eyes, which had
+already attained the fame of a local institution. As the numbers drawn
+to it increased, it closed its welcoming orbs earlier and earlier, and,
+once they were darkened, there was admittance only for the chosen few.
+
+It was a first Saturday in October, New York's homing month for its
+indigenous social birds and butterflies, when The House triply blinked
+itself into darkness at the untimely hour of eleven-forty-five. There
+was the usual heterogeneous crowd there, alike in one particular alone,
+that every guest represented, if not necessarily distinction, at least
+achievement in his own line. Judge Willis Enderby, many times invited,
+had for the first time come. At five minutes after midnight, the
+incorruptible doorkeeper sent an urgent message requesting Mr.
+Banneker's personal attention to a party who declined politely but
+firmly to be turned away. The host, answering the summons, found Io. She
+held out both hands to him.
+
+"Say you're glad to see me," she said imperatively.
+
+"Light up the three eyes," Banneker ordered the doorman. "Are you
+answered?" he said to Io.
+
+"Ah, that's very pretty," she approved. "It means 'welcome,' doesn't
+it?"
+
+"Welcome," he assented.
+
+"Then Herbert and Esther can come in, can't they? They're waiting in the
+car for me to be rejected in disgrace. They've even bet on it."
+
+"They lose," answered Banneker with finality.
+
+"And you forgive me for cajoling your big, black Cerberus, because it's
+my first visit this year, and if I'm not nicely treated I'll never come
+again."
+
+"Your welcome includes full amnesty."
+
+"Then if you'll let me have one of my hands back--it doesn't matter
+which one, really--I'll signal the others to come in."
+
+Which, accordingly, she did. Banneker greeted Esther Forbes and Cressey,
+and waited for the trio until they came down. There was a stir as they
+entered. There was usually a stir in any room which Io entered. She had
+that quality of sending waves across the most placid of social pools.
+Willis Enderby was one of the first to greet her, a quick irradiation of
+pleasure relieving the austere beauty of his face.
+
+"I thought the castle was closed," he wondered. "How did you cross the
+inviolable barriers?"
+
+"I had the magic password," smiled Io.
+
+"Youth? Beauty? Or just audacity?"
+
+"Your Honor is pleased to flatter," she returned, drooping her eyes at
+him with a purposefully artificial effect. From the time when she was a
+child of four she had carried on a violent and highly appreciated
+flirtation with "Cousin Billy," being the only person in the world who
+employed the diminutive of his name.
+
+"You knew Banneker before? But, of course. Everybody knows Banneker."
+
+"It's quite wonderful, isn't it! He never makes an effort, I'm told.
+People just come to him. Where did you meet him?"
+
+Enderby told her. "We're allies, in a way. Though sometimes he is
+against us. He's doing yeoman work in this reform mayoralty campaign. If
+we elect Robert Laird, as I think we shall, it will be chiefly due to
+The Patriot's editorials."
+
+"Then you have confidence in Mr. Banneker?" she asked quickly.
+
+"Well--in a way, I have," he returned hesitantly.
+
+"But with reservations," she interpreted. "What are they?"
+
+"One, only, but a big one. The Patriot itself. You see, Io, The Patriot
+is another matter."
+
+"Why is it another matter?"
+
+"Well, there's Marrineal, for example."
+
+"I don't know Mr. Marrineal. Evidently you don't trust him."
+
+"I trust nobody," disclosed the lawyer, a little sternly, "who is
+represented by what The Patriot is and does, whether it be Marrineal,
+Banneker, or another." His glance, wandering about the room, fell on
+Russell Edmonds, seated in a corner talking with the Great Gaines.
+"Unless it be Edmonds over there," he qualified. "All his life he has
+fought me as a corporation lawyer; yet I have the queer feeling that I
+could trust the inmost secret of my life to his honor. Probably I'm an
+old fool, eh?"
+
+Io devoted a moment's study to the lined and worn face of the veteran.
+"No. I think you're right," she pronounced.
+
+"In any case, he isn't responsible for The Patriot. He can't help it."
+
+"Don't be so cryptic, Cousin Billy. Can't help what? What is wrong with
+the paper?"
+
+"You wouldn't understand."
+
+"But I want to understand," said imperious Io.
+
+"As a basis to understanding, you'd have to read the paper."
+
+"I have. Everyday. All of it."
+
+He gave her a quick, reckoning look which she sustained with a slight
+deepening of color. "The advertisements, too?" She nodded. "What do you
+think of them?"
+
+"Some of them are too disgusting to discuss."
+
+"Did it occur to you to compare them with the lofty standards of our
+young friend's editorials?"
+
+"What has he to do with the advertisements?" she countered.
+
+"Assume, for the sake of the argument, that he has nothing to do with
+them. You may have noticed a recent editorial against race-track
+gambling, with the suicide of a young bank messenger who had robbed his
+employer to pay his losses as text."
+
+"Well? Surely that kind of editorial makes for good."
+
+"Being counsel for that bank, I happen to know the circumstances of the
+suicide. The boy had pinned his faith to one of the race-track tipsters
+who advertise in The Patriot to furnish a list of sure winners for so
+much a week."
+
+"Do you suppose that Mr. Banneker knew that?"
+
+"Probably not. But he knows that his paper takes money for publishing
+those vicious advertisements."
+
+"Suppose he couldn't help it?"
+
+"Probably he can't."
+
+"Well, what would you have him do? Stop writing the editorials? I think
+it is evidence of his courage that he should dare to attack the evils
+which his own paper fosters."
+
+"That's one view of it, certainly," replied Enderby dryly. "A convenient
+view. But there are other details. Banneker is an ardent advocate of
+abstinence, 'Down with the Demon Rum!' The columns of The Patriot reek
+with whiskey ads. The same with tobacco."
+
+"But, Cousin Billy, you don't believe that a newspaper should shut out
+liquor and tobacco advertisements, do you?"
+
+The lawyer smiled patiently. "Come back on the track, Io," he invited.
+"That isn't the point. If a newspaper preaches the harm in these habits,
+it shouldn't accept money for exploiting them. Look further. What of the
+loan-shark offers, and the blue-sky stock propositions, and the damnable
+promises of the consumption and cancer quacks? You can't turn a page of
+The Patriot without stumbling on them. There's a smell of death about
+that money."
+
+"Don't all the newspapers publish the same kind of advertisements?"
+argued the girl.
+
+"Certainly not. Some won't publish an advertisement without being
+satisfied of its good faith. Others discriminate less carefully. But
+there are few as bad as The Patriot."
+
+"If Mr. Banneker were your client, would you advise him to resign?" she
+asked shrewdly.
+
+Enderby winced and chuckled simultaneously. "Probably not. It is
+doubtful whether he could find another rostrum of equal influence. And
+his influence is mainly for good. But since you seem to be interested in
+newspapers, Io"--he gave her another of his keen glances--"from The
+Patriot you can make a diagnosis of the disease from which modern
+journalism is suffering. A deep-seated, pervasive insincerity. At its
+worst, it is open, shameless hypocrisy. The public feels it, but is too
+lacking in analytical sense to comprehend it. Hence the unformulated,
+instinctive, universal distrust of the press. 'I never believe anything
+I read in the papers.' Of course, that is both false and silly. But the
+feeling is there; and it has to be reckoned with one day. From this
+arises an injustice, that the few papers which are really upright,
+honest, and faithful to their own standards, are tainted in the public
+mind with the double-dealing of the others. Such as The Patriot."
+
+"You use The Patriot for your purposes," Io pointed out.
+
+"When it stands for what I believe right. I only wish I could trust it."
+
+"Then you _really_ feel that you can't trust Mr. Banneker?"
+
+"Ah; we're back to that!" thought Enderby with uneasiness. Aloud he
+said: "It's a very pretty problem whether a writer who shares the
+profits of a hypocritical and dishonest policy can maintain his own
+professional independence and virtue. I gravely doubt it."
+
+"I don't," said Io, and there was pride in her avowal.
+
+"My dear," said the Judge gravely, "what does it all mean? Are you
+letting yourself become interested in Errol Banneker?"
+
+Io raised clear and steady eyes to the concerned regard of her old
+friend. "If I ever marry again, I shall marry him."
+
+"You're not going to divorce poor Delavan?" asked the other quickly.
+
+"No. I shall play the game through," was the quiet reply.
+
+For a space Willis Enderby sat thinking. "Does Banneker know your--your
+intentions?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You mustn't let him, Io."
+
+"He won't know the intention. He may know the--the feeling back of it."
+A slow and glorious flush rose in her face, making her eyes starry. "I
+don't know that I can keep it from him, Cousin Billy. I don't even know
+that I want to. I'm an honest sort of idiot, you know."
+
+"God grant that he may prove as honest!" he half whispered.
+
+Presently Banneker, bearing a glass of champagne and some pate
+sandwiches for Io, supplanted the lawyer.
+
+"Are you the devotee of toil that common report believes, Ban?" she
+asked him lazily. "They say that you write editorials with one hand and
+welcome your guests with the other."
+
+"Not quite that," he answered. "To-night I'm not thinking of work. I'm
+not thinking of anything but you. It's very wonderful, your being here."
+
+"But I want you to think of work. I want to see you in the very act.
+Won't you write an editorial for me?"
+
+He shook his head. "This late? That would be cruelty to my secretary."
+
+"I'll take it down for you. I'm fairly fast on the typewriter."
+
+"Will you give me the subject, too?"
+
+"No more than fair," she admitted. "What shall it be? It ought to be
+something with memories in it. Books? Poetry?" she groped. "I've got it!
+Your oldest, favorite book. Have you forgotten?"
+
+"The Sears-Roebuck catalogue? I get a copy every season, to renew the
+old thrill."
+
+"What a romanticist you are!" said she softly. "Couldn't you write an
+editorial about it?"
+
+"Couldn't I? Try me. Come up to the den."
+
+He led the way to the remote austerities of the work-room. From a shelf
+he took down the fat, ornate pamphlet, now much increased in bulk over
+its prototype of the earlier years. With random finger he parted the
+leaves, here, there, again and still again, seeking auguries.
+
+"Ready?" he said. "Now, I shut my eyes--and we're in the shack
+again--the clean air of desert spaces--the click of the transmitter in
+the office that I won't answer, being more importantly engaged--the
+faint fragrance of _you_ permeating everything--youth--the unknown
+splendor of life--Now! Go!"
+
+Of that editorial, composed upon the unpromising theme of mail-order
+merchandising, the Great Gaines afterward said that it was a
+kaleidoscopic panorama set moving to the harmonic undertones of a song
+of winds and waters, of passion and the inner meanings of life, as if
+Shelley had rhapsodized a catalogue into poetic being and glorious
+significance. He said it was foolish to edit a magazine when one
+couldn't trust a cheap newspaper not to come flaming forth into
+literature which turned one's most conscientious and aspiring efforts
+into tinsel. He also said "Damn!"
+
+Io Welland (for it was Io Welland and not Io Eyre whom the soothsayer
+saw before him as he declaimed), instrument and inspiration of the
+achievement, said no word of direct praise. But as she wrote, her
+fingers felt as if they were dripping electric sparks. When, at the
+close, he asked, quite humbly, "Is that what you wanted?" she caught her
+breath on something like a sob.
+
+"I'll give you a title," she said, recovering herself. "Call it 'If
+there were Dreams to Sell.'"
+
+"Ah, that's good!" he cried. "My readers won't get it. Pinheads! They
+get nothing that isn't plain as the nose on their silly faces. Never
+mind. It's good for 'em to be puzzled once in a while. Teaches 'em their
+place.... I'll tell you who will understand it, though," he continued,
+and laughed queerly.
+
+"All the people who really matter will."
+
+"Some who matter a lot to The Patriot will. The local merchants who
+advertise with us. They'll be wild."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"They hate the mail-order houses with a deadly fear, because the
+cataloguers undersell them in a lot of lines. Won't Rome howl the day
+after this appears!"
+
+"Tell me about the relation between advertising and policy, Ban,"
+invited Io, and summarized Willis Enderby's views.
+
+Banneker had formulated for his own use and comfort the fallacy which
+has since become standard for all journalists unwilling or unable to
+face the issue of their own responsibility to the public. He now gave it
+forth confidently.
+
+"A newspaper, Io, is like a billboard. Any one has a right to hire it
+for purposes of exploiting and selling whatever he has to sell. In
+accepting the advertisement, provided it is legal and decent, the
+publisher accepts no more responsibility than the owner of the land on
+which a billboard stands. Advertising space is a free forum."
+
+"But when it affects the editorial attitude--"
+
+"That's the test," he put in quickly. "That's why I'm glad to print this
+editorial of ours. It's a declaration of independence."
+
+"Yes," she acquiesced eagerly.
+
+"If ever I use the power of my editorials for any cause that I don't
+believe in--yes, or for my own advantage or the advantage of my
+employer--that will be the beginning of surrender. But as long as I keep
+a free pen and speak as I believe for what I hold as right and against
+what I hold as wrong, I can afford to leave the advertising policy to
+those who control it. It isn't my responsibility.... It's an omen, Io; I
+was waiting for it. Marrineal and I are at a deadlock on the question of
+my control of the editorial page. This ought to furnish a fighting
+issue. I'm glad it came from you."
+
+"Oh, but if it's going to make trouble for you, I shall be sorry. And I
+was going to propose that we write one every Saturday."
+
+"Io!" he cried. "Does that mean--"
+
+"It means that I shall become a regular attendant at Mr. Errol
+Banneker's famous Saturday nights. Don't ask me what more it means." She
+rose and delivered the typed sheets into his hands. "I--I don't know,
+myself. Take me back to the others, Ban."
+
+To Banneker, wakened next morning to a life of new vigor and sweetness,
+the outcome of the mail-order editorial was worth not one troubled
+thought. All his mind was centered on Io.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Explosions of a powerful and resonant nature followed the publication of
+the fantastic, imaginative, and delightful mail-order catalogue
+editorial. In none of these senses, except the first, did it appeal to
+the advertising managers of the various department stores. They looked
+upon it as an outrage, an affront, a deliberate slap in the face for an
+established, vested, and prodigal support of the newspaper press. What
+the devil did The Patriot mean by it; The Patriot which sorely needed
+just their class of reputable patronage, and, after sundry contortions
+of rate-cutting, truckling, and offers of news items to back the
+advertising, was beginning to get it? They asked themselves, and,
+failing of any satisfactory answer, they asked The Patriot in no
+uncertain terms. Receiving vague and pained replies, they even went to
+the length of holding a meeting and sending a committee to wait upon the
+desperate Haring, passing over the advertising manager who was a mere
+figurehead in The Patriot office.
+
+Then began one of those scenes of bullying and browbeating to which
+every newspaper, not at once powerful and honest enough to command the
+fear and respect of its advertisers, is at some time subjected. Haring,
+the victim personifying the offending organ, was stretched upon the rack
+and put to the question. What explanation had he to offer of The
+Patriot's breach of faith?
+
+He had none, had the miserable business manager. No one could regret it
+more than he. But, really, gentlemen, to call it a breach of faith--
+
+What else was it? Wasn't the paper turning on its own advertisers?
+
+Well; in a sense. But not--
+
+But nothing! Wasn't it trying to undermine their legitimate business?
+
+Not intentionally, Mr. Haring was (piteously) sure.
+
+Intentionally be damned! Did he expect to carry their advertising on one
+page and ruin their business on another? Did he think they were putting
+money into The Patriot--a doubtful medium for their business, at
+best--to cut their own throats? They'd put it to him reasonably, now;
+who, after all, paid for the getting out of The Patriot? Wasn't it the
+advertisers?
+
+Certainly, certainly, gentlemen. Granted.
+
+Could the paper run a month, a fortnight, a week without advertising?
+
+No; no! It couldn't. No newspaper could.
+
+Then if the advertisers paid the paper's way, weren't they entitled to
+some say about it? Didn't it have a right to give 'em at least a fair
+show?
+
+Indeed, gentlemen, if he, Haring, were in control of the paper--
+
+Then, why; why the _hell_ was a cub of an editor allowed to cut loose
+and jump their game that way? They could find other places to spend
+their money; yes, and get a better return for it. They'd see The
+Patriot, and so on, and so forth.
+
+Mr. Haring understood their feelings, sympathized, even shared them.
+Unfortunately the editorial page was quite out of his province.
+
+Whose province was it, then? Mr. Banneker's, eh? And to whom was Mr.
+Banneker responsible? Mr. Marrineal, alone? All right! They would see
+Mr. Marrineal.
+
+Mr. Haring was sorry, but Mr. Marrineal was out of town. (Fiction.)
+
+Well, in that case, Banneker. They'd trust themselves to show him which
+foot he got off on. They'd teach (two of them, in their stress of
+emotion, said "learn"; they were performing this in chorus) Banneker--
+
+Oh, Mr. Banneker wasn't there, either. (Haring, very terrified, and
+having built up an early conception of the Wild West Banneker from the
+clean-up of the dock gang, beheld in his imagination dejected members of
+the committee issuing piecemeal from the doors and windows of the
+editorial office, the process being followed by an even more regrettable
+exodus of advertising from the pages of The Patriot.)
+
+Striving to be at once explanatory and propitiatory to all and sundry,
+Haring was reduced to inarticulate, choking interjections and paralytic
+motions of the hands, when a member of the delegation, hitherto silent,
+spoke up.
+
+He was the representative of McLean & Swazey, a college graduate of a
+type then new, though now much commoner, in the developing profession of
+advertising. He had read the peccant editorial with a genuine relish of
+its charm and skill, and had justly estimated it for what it was, an
+intellectual _jeu d'esprit_, the expression of a passing fancy for a
+tempting subject, not of a policy to be further pursued.
+
+"Enough has been said, I think, to define our position," said he. "All
+that we need is some assurance that Mr. Banneker's wit and skill will
+not be turned again to the profit of our competitors who, by the way, do
+_not_ advertise in The Patriot."
+
+Haring eagerly gave the assurance. He would have given assurance of
+Banneker's head on a salver to be rid of these persecuting autocrats.
+They withdrew, leaving behind an atmosphere of threat and disaster,
+dark, inglorious clouds of which Haring trailed behind him when he
+entered the office of the owner with his countenance of woe. His
+postulate was that Mr. Marrineal should go to his marplot editor and
+duly to him lay down the law; no more offending of the valuable
+department-store advertisers. No; nor of any others. Or he, Haring
+(greatly daring), would do it himself.
+
+Beside the sweating and agonizing business manager, Marrineal looked
+very cool and tolerant and mildly amused.
+
+"If you did that, Mr. Haring, do you appreciate what the result would
+be? We should have another editorial worse than the first, as soon as
+Mr. Banneker could think it out. No; you leave this to me. I'll manage
+it."
+
+His management took the negative form of a profound silence upon the
+explicit point. But on the following morning Banneker found upon his
+desk a complete analytical table showing the advertising revenue of the
+paper by classes, with a star over the department-store list, indicating
+a dated withdrawal of twenty-two thousand dollars a year. The date was
+of that day. Thus was Banneker enabled to figure out, by a simple
+process, the loss to himself of any class of advertising, or even small
+group in a class, dropping out of the paper. It was clever of Marrineal,
+he admitted to himself, and, in a way, disappointing. His proffered gage
+of battle had been refused, almost ignored. The issue was not to be
+joined when he was ready, but when Marrineal was ready, and on
+Marrineal's own ground. Very well, Banneker could be a good waiter.
+Meantime he had at least asserted his independence.
+
+Io called him up by 'phone, avid of news of the editorial, and he was
+permitted to take her to luncheon and tell her all about it. In her
+opinion he had won a victory; established a position. Banneker was far
+less sanguine; he had come to entertain a considerable respect for
+Marrineal's capacity. And he had another and more immediate complication
+on his mind, which fact his companion, by some occult exercise of
+divination, perceived.
+
+"What else is worrying you, Ban?" she asked.
+
+Banneker did not want to talk about that. He wanted to talk about Io,
+about themselves. He said so. She shook her head.
+
+"Tell me about the paper."
+
+"Oh, just the usual complications. There's nothing to interest you in
+them."
+
+"Everything," she maintained ardently.
+
+Banneker caught his breath. Had she given him her lips, it could hardly
+have meant more--perhaps not meant so much as this tranquil assumption
+of her right to share in the major concerns of his life.
+
+"If you've been reading the paper," he began, and waited for her silent
+nod before going on, "you know our attitude toward organized labor."
+
+"Yes. You are for it when it is right and not always against it when it
+is wrong."
+
+"One can't split hairs in a matter of editorial policy. I've made The
+Patriot practically the mouthpiece of labor in this city; much more so
+than the official organ, which has no influence and a small following.
+Just now I'm specially anxious to hold them in line for the mayoralty
+campaign. We've got to elect Robert Laird. Otherwise we'll have such an
+orgy of graft and rottenness as the city has never seen."
+
+"Isn't the labor element for Laird?"
+
+"It isn't against him, except that he is naturally regarded as a
+silk-stocking. The difficulty isn't politics. There's some new influence
+in local labor circles that is working against me; against The Patriot.
+I think it's a fellow named McClintick, a new man from the West."
+
+"Perhaps he wants to be bought off."
+
+"You're thinking of the old style of labor leader," returned Banneker.
+"It isn't as simple as that. No; from what I hear, he's a fanatic. And
+he has great influence."
+
+"Get hold of him and talk it out with him," advised Io.
+
+"I intend to." He brooded for a moment. "There isn't a man in New York,"
+he said fretfully, "that has stood for the interests of the masses and
+against the power of money as I have. Why, Io, before we cut loose in
+The Patriot, a banker or a railroad president was sacrosanct. His words
+were received with awe. Wall Street was the holy of holies, not to be
+profaned by the slightest hint of impiety. Well, we've changed all that!
+Not I, alone. Our cartoons have done more than the editorials. Every
+other paper in town has had to follow our lead. Even The Ledger."
+
+"I like The Ledger," declared Io.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I don't know. It has a sort of dignity; the dignity of self-respect."
+
+"Hasn't The Patriot?" demanded the jealous Banneker.
+
+"Not a bit," she answered frankly, "except for your editorials. They
+have the dignity of good workmanship, and honesty, and courage, even
+when you're wrong."
+
+"Are we so often wrong, Io?" he said wistfully.
+
+"Dear boy, you can't expect a girl, brought up as I have been, to
+believe that society is upside down, and would be better if it were
+tipped over the other way and run by a lot of hod-carriers and
+ditch-diggers and cooks. Can you, now?"
+
+"Of course not. Nor is that what I advocate. I'm for the under dog. For
+fair play. So are you, aren't you? I saw your name on the Committee List
+of the Consumers' League, dealing with conditions in the department
+stores."
+
+"That's different," she said. "Those girls haven't a chance in some of
+the shops. They're brutalized. The stores don't even pretend to obey the
+laws. We are trying to work out some sort of organization, now, for
+them."
+
+"Yet you're hostile to organized labor! Who shall ever understand the
+feminine mind! Some day you'll be coming to us for help."
+
+"Very likely. It must be a curious sensation, Ban, to have the
+consciousness of the power that you wield, and to be responsible to
+nobody on earth."
+
+"To the public that reads us," he corrected.
+
+"Not a real responsibility. There is no authority over you; no appeal
+from your judgments. Hasn't that something to do with people's dislike
+and distrust of the newspapers; the sense that so much irresponsible
+power is wrong?"
+
+"Yet," he said, "any kind of censorship is worse than the evil it
+remedies. I've never shown you my creed, have I?"
+
+His manner was half jocular; there was a smile on his lips, but his eyes
+seemed to look beyond the petty troubles and problems of his craft to a
+final and firm verity.
+
+"Tell me," she bade him.
+
+He drew his watch out and opened the back. For a moment she thought,
+with confused emotions, that she would see there a picture of herself of
+which he might have possessed himself somewhere. She closed her eyes
+momentarily against the fear of that anti-climax. When she opened them,
+it was to read, in a clear, fine print those high and sure words of
+Milton's noblest message:
+
+And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the
+earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and
+prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who
+ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter? Her
+confuting is the best and surest suppressing.
+
+Twice she read the pregnant message.
+
+"I have it," said she gravely. "To keep--for always."
+
+"Some day I'll put it at the head of The Patriot."
+
+"Why not now?"
+
+"Not ready. I want to be surer; absolutely sure."
+
+"I'm sure," she declared superbly; "of you."
+
+"You make me sure of myself, Io. But there's Marrineal."
+
+"Yes; there's Marrineal. You must have a paper of your own, mustn't you,
+Ban, eventually?"
+
+"Perhaps. If I ever get enough money to own it absolutely."
+
+"Only four years ago," she murmured, with apparent irrelevancy. "And
+now--"
+
+"When shall I see you again?" he asked anxiously as she rose. "Are you
+coming Saturday night?"
+
+"Of course," said Io.
+
+Through the agency of Russell Edmonds, McClintick, the labor leader,
+came to see Banneker. He was a stooping giant with a deep, melancholy
+voice, and his attitude toward The Patriot was one of distrustful
+reticence. Genuine ardor has, however, a warming influence. McClintick's
+silence melted by degrees, not into confidence but, surprisingly, into
+indignation, directed upon all the "capitalistic press" in general, but
+in particular against The Patriot. Why single out The Patriot,
+specially, Banneker asked.
+
+"Hypocrite," muttered the giant.
+
+At length the reason came out, under pressure: The Patriot had been (in
+the words of the labor man) making a big row over the arrest of certain
+labor organizers, in one of the recurrent outbreaks against the Steel
+Trust, opposed by that organization's systematic and tyrannous method of
+oppression. So far, so good. But why hadn't the paper said a word about
+the murder of strikers' wives and children out at the Veridian Lumber
+Company's mills in Oregon; an outrage far surpassing anything ever laid
+to the account of the Steel Trust? Simple reason, answered Banneker;
+there had been no news of it over the wires. No; of course there hadn't.
+The Amalgamated Wire Association (another tool of capitalism) had
+suppressed it; wouldn't let any strike stuff get on the wires that it
+could keep off. Then how, asked Banneker, could it be expected--?
+McClintick interrupted in his voice of controlled passion; had Mr.
+Banneker ever heard of the Chicago Transcript (naming the leading
+morning paper); had he ever read it? Well, The Transcript--which, he,
+McClintick, hated strongly as an organ of money--nevertheless did
+honestly gather and publish news, as he was constrained huskily to
+admit. It had the Veridian story; was still running it from time to
+time. Therefore, if Mr. Banneker was interested, on behalf of The
+Patriot--
+
+Certainly, The Patriot was interested; would obtain and publish the
+story in full, if it was as Mr. McClintick represented, with due
+editorial comment.
+
+"Will it?" grumbled McClintick, gave his hat a look of mingled hope and
+skepticism, put it on, and went away.
+
+"Now, what's wrong with that chap's mental digestion?" Banneker inquired
+of Edmonds, who had sat quiet throughout the interview. "What is he
+holding back?"
+
+"Plenty," returned the veteran in a tone which might have served for
+echo of the labor man's gloom.
+
+"Do you know the Veridian story?"
+
+"Yes. I've just checked it up."
+
+"What's the milk in that cocoanut?"
+
+"Sour!" said Edmonds with such energy that Banneker turned to look at
+him direct. "The principal owner of Veridian is named Marrineal....
+Where you going, Ban?"
+
+"To see the principal owner of the name," said Banneker grimly.
+
+The quest took him to the big house on upper Fifth Avenue. Marrineal
+heard his editorial writer with impassive face.
+
+"So the story has got here," he remarked.
+
+"Yes. Do you own Veridian?"
+
+"No."
+
+Hope rose within Banneker. "You don't?"
+
+"My mother does. She's in Europe. A rather innocent old person. The
+innocence of age, perhaps. Quite old." All of this in a perfectly
+tranquil voice.
+
+"Have you seen The Chicago Transcript? It's an ugly story."
+
+"Very. I've sent a man out to the camp. There won't be any more
+shootings."
+
+"It comes rather late. I've told McClintick, the labor man who comes
+from Wyoming, that we'll carry the story, if we verify it."
+
+Marrineal raised his eyes slowly to Banneker's stern face. "Have you?"
+he said coolly. "Now, as to the mayoralty campaign; what do you think of
+running a page feature of Laird's reforms, as President of the Board,
+tracing each one down to its effect and showing what any backward step
+would mean? By the way, Laird is going to be pretty heavily obligated to
+The Patriot if he's elected."
+
+For half an hour they talked politics, nothing else.
+
+At the office Edmonds was making a dossier of the Veridian reports. It
+was ready when Banneker returned.
+
+"Let it wait," said Banneker.
+
+Prudence ordained that he should throw the troublous stuff into the
+waste-basket. He wondered if he was becoming prudent, as another man
+might wonder whether he was becoming old. At any rate, he would make no
+decision until he had talked it over with Io. Not only did he feel
+instinctive confidence in her sense of fair play; but also this
+relationship of interest in his affairs, established by her, was the
+opportunity of his closest approach; an intimacy of spirit assured and
+subtle. He hoped that she would come early on Saturday evening.
+
+But she did not. Some dinner party had claimed her, and it was after
+eleven when she arrived with Archie Densmore. At once Banneker took her
+aside and laid before her the whole matter.
+
+"Poor Ban!" she said softly. "It isn't so simple, having power to play
+with, is it?"
+
+"But how am I to handle this?"
+
+"The mills belong to Mr. Marrineal's mother, you said?"
+
+"Practically they do."
+
+"And she is--?"
+
+"A silly and vain old fool."
+
+"Is that his opinion of her?"
+
+"Necessarily. But he's fond of her."
+
+"Will he really try to remedy conditions, do you think?"
+
+"Oh, yes. So far as that goes."
+
+"Then I'd drop it."
+
+"Print nothing at all?"
+
+"Not a word."
+
+"That isn't what I expected from you. Why do you advise it?"
+
+"Loyalty."
+
+"The paralytic virtue," said Banneker with such bitterness of conviction
+that Io answered:
+
+"I suppose you don't mean that to be simply clever."
+
+"It's true, isn't it?"
+
+"There's a measure of truth in it. But, Ban, you can't use Mr.
+Marrineal's own paper to expose conditions in Mr. Marrineal's mother's
+mills. If he'd even directed you to hold off--"
+
+"That's his infernal cleverness. I'd have told him to go to the devil."
+
+"And resigned?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"You can resign now," she pointed out. "But I think you'd be foolish.
+You can do such big things. You _are_ doing such big things with The
+Patriot. Cousin Billy Enderby says that if Laird is elected it will be
+your doing. Where else could you find such opportunity?"
+
+"Tell me this, Io," he said, after a moment of heavy-browed brooding
+very unlike his usual blithe certainty of bearing. "Suppose that lumber
+property were my own, and this thing had broken out."
+
+"Oh, I'd say to print it, every word," she answered promptly. "Or"--she
+spoke very slowly and with a tremor of color flickering in her
+cheeks--"if it were mine, I'd tell you to print it."
+
+He looked up with a transfigured face. His hand fell on hers, in the
+covert of the little shelter of plants behind which they sat. "Do you
+realize what that implies?" he questioned.
+
+"Perfectly," she answered in her clear undertone.
+
+He bent over to her hand, which turned, soft palm up, to meet his lips.
+She whispered a warning and he raised his head quickly. Ely Ives had
+passed near by.
+
+"Marrineal's familiar," said Banneker. "I wonder how he got here.
+Certainly I didn't ask him.... Very well, Io. I'll compromise. But ... I
+don't think I'll put that quotation from the Areopagitica at the head of
+my column. That will have to wait. Perhaps it will have to wait until
+I--we get a paper of our own."
+
+"Poor Ban!" whispered Io.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Once a month Marrineal gave a bachelor dinner of Lucullan repute. The
+company, though much smaller than the gatherings at The House With Three
+Eyes, covered a broader and looser social range. Having declined several
+of his employer's invitations in succession on the well-justified plea
+of work, Banneker felt it incumbent upon him to attend one of these
+events, and accordingly found himself in a private dining-room of the
+choicest of restaurants, tabled with a curiously assorted group of
+financiers, editors, actors, a small selection of the more raffish
+members of The Retreat including Delavan Eyre; Ely Ives; an elderly
+Jewish lawyer of unsavory reputation, enormous income, and real and
+delicate scholarship; Herbert Cressey, a pair of the season's
+racing-kings, an eminent art connoisseur, and a smattering of
+men-about-town. Seated between the lawyer and one of the racing-men,
+Banneker, as the dinner progressed, found himself watching Delavan Eyre,
+opposite, who was drinking with sustained intensity, but without
+apparent effect upon his debonair bearing. Banneker thought to read a
+haunting fear in his eyes, and was cogitating upon what it might
+portend, when his attention was distracted by Ely Ives, who had been
+requested (as he announced) to exhibit his small skill at some minor
+sleight-of-hand tricks. The skill, far from justifying its possessor's
+modest estimate, was so unusual as to provoke expressions of admiration
+from Mr. Stecklin, the lawyer on Banneker's right.
+
+"Oh, yes; hypnotism too," said Ely Ives briskly, after twenty minutes of
+legerdemain. "Child's play."
+
+"Now, who suggested hypnotism?" murmured Stecklin in his limpid and
+confidential undertone, close to Banneker's ear. "You? I? No! No one,
+_I_ think."
+
+So Banneker thought, and was the more interested in Ives's procedure.
+Though the drinking had been heavy at his end of the table, he seemed
+quite unaffected, was now tripping from man to man, peering into the
+eyes of each, "to find an appropriate subject," as he said. Delavan Eyre
+roused himself out of a semi-torpor as the wiry little prowler stared
+down at him.
+
+"What's the special idea?" he demanded.
+
+"Just a bit of mesmerism," explained the other. "I'll try you for a
+subject. If you'll stand up, feet apart, eyes closed, I'll hypnotize you
+so that you'll fall over at a movement."
+
+"You can't do it," retorted Eyre.
+
+"For a bet," Ives came back.
+
+"A hundred?"
+
+"Double it if you like."
+
+"You're on." Eyre, slowly swallowing the last of a brandy-and-soda,
+rose, reaching into his pocket.
+
+"Not necessary, between gentlemen," said Ely Ives with a gesture just a
+little too suave.
+
+"Ah, yes," muttered the lawyer at Banneker's side. "Between gentlemen.
+Eck-xactly."
+
+Pursuant to instructions, Eyre stood with his feet a few inches apart
+and his eyes closed. "At the word, you bring your heels together. Click!
+And you keep your balance. If you can. For the two hundred. Any one else
+want in?... No?... Ready, Mr. Eyre. Now! _Hep_!"
+
+The heels clicked, but with a stuttering, weak impact. Eyre, bulky and
+powerful, staggered, toppled to the left.
+
+"Hold up there!" His neighbor propped him, and was clutched in his
+grasp.
+
+"Hands off!" said Eyre thickly. "Sorry, Banks! Let me try that again.
+Oh, the bet's yours, Mr. Ives," he added, as that keen gambler began to
+enter a protest. "Send you a check in the morning--if that'll be all
+right."
+
+Herbert Cressey, hand in pocket, was at his side instantly. "Pay him
+now, Del," he said in a tone which did not conceal his contemptuous
+estimate of Ives. "Here's money, if you haven't it."
+
+"No; no! A check will be _quite_ all right," protested Ives. "At your
+convenience."
+
+Others gathered about, curious and interested. Banneker, puzzled by a
+vague suspicion which he sought to formulate, was aware of a low runnel
+of commentary at his ear.
+
+"Very curious. Shrewd; yes. A clever fellow.... Sad, too."
+
+"Sad?" He turned sharply on the lawyer of unsavory suits. "What is sad
+about it? A fool and his money! Is that tragedy?"
+
+"Comedy, my friend. Always comedy. This also, perhaps. But grim.... Our
+friend there who is so clever of hand and eye; he is not perhaps a
+medical man?"
+
+"Yes; he is. What connection--Good God!" he cried, as a flood of memory
+suddenly poured light upon a dark spot in some of his forgotten reading.
+
+"Ah? You know? Yes; I have had such a case in my legal practice. Died of
+an--an error. He made a mistake--in a bottle, which he purchased for
+that purpose. But this one--he elects to live and face it--"
+
+"Does he know it?"
+
+"Obviously. One can see the dread in his eyes. Some of his friends know
+it--and his family, I am told. But he does not know this interesting
+little experiment of our friend. Profitable, too, eh? One wonders how he
+came to suspect. A medical man, though; a keen eye. Of course."
+
+"Damn him," said Banneker quietly. "General paralysis?"
+
+"Eck-xactly. Twelve, maybe fifteen years ago, a little recklessness. A
+little overheating of the blood. Perhaps after a dinner like this. The
+poison lies dormant; a snake asleep. Harms no one. Not himself; not
+another. Until--something here"--he tapped the thick black curls over
+the base of his brain. "All that ruddy strength, that lusty good-humor
+passing on courageously--for he is a brave man, Eyre--to slow torture
+and--and the end. Grim, eh?"
+
+Banneker reached for a drink. "How long?" he asked.
+
+"As for that, he is very strong. It might be slow. One prays not."
+
+"At any rate, that little reptile, Ives, shan't have his profit of it."
+Banneker rose and, disdaining even the diplomacy of an excuse, drew Ely
+Ives aside.
+
+"That bet of yours was a joke, Ives," he prescribed.
+
+Ives studied him in silence, wishing that he had watched, through the
+dinner, how much drink he took.
+
+"A joke?" he asked coolly. "I don't understand you."
+
+"Try," advised Banneker with earnestness. "I happen to have read that
+luetic diagnosis, myself. A joke, Ives, so far as the two hundred goes."
+
+"What do you expect me to do?" asked the other.
+
+"Tear up the check, when it comes. Make what explanation your ingenuity
+can devise. That's your affair. But don't cash that check, Ives. For if
+you do--I dislike to threaten--"
+
+"You don't need to threaten me, Mr. Banneker," interrupted Ives eagerly.
+"If you think it wasn't a fair bet, your word is enough for me. That
+goes. It's off. I think just that of you. I'm a friend of yours, as I
+hope to prove to you some day. I don't lay this up against you; not for
+a minute."
+
+Not trusting himself to make answer to this proffer, Banneker turned
+away to find his host and make his adieus. As he left, he saw Delavan
+Eyre, flushed but composed, sipping a liqueur and listening with
+courteous appearance of appreciation to a vapid and slobbering story of
+one of the racing magnates. A debauchee, a cumberer of the earth,
+useless, selfish, scandalous of life--and Banneker, looking at him with
+pitiful eyes, paid his unstinted tribute to the calm and high courage of
+the man.
+
+Walking slowly home in the cool air, Banneker gave thanks for a
+drink-proof head. He had need of it; he wanted to think and think
+clearly. How did this shocking revelation about Eyre affect his own
+hopes of Io? That she would stand by her husband through his ordeal
+Banneker never doubted for an instant. Her pride of fair play would
+compel her to that. It came to his mind that this was her other and
+secret reason for not divorcing Eyre; for maintaining still the outward
+form of a marriage which had ceased to exist long before. For a lesser
+woman, he realized with a thrill, it would have been a reason for
+divorcing him.... Well, here was a barrier, indeed, against which he was
+helpless. Opposed by a loyalty such as Io's he could only be silent and
+wait.
+
+In the next few weeks she was very good to him. Not only did she lunch
+with him several times, but she came to the Saturday nights of The House
+With Three Eyes, sometimes with Archie Densmore alone, more often with a
+group of her own set, after a dinner or a theater party. Always she made
+opportunity for a little talk apart with her host; talks which any one
+might have heard, for they were concerned almost exclusively with the
+affairs of The Patriot, especially in its relation to the mayoralty
+campaign now coming to a close. Yet, impersonal though the discussions
+might be, Banneker took from them a sense of ever-increasing intimacy
+and communion, if it were only from a sudden, betraying quiver in her
+voice, an involuntary, unconscious look from the shadowed eyes. Whatever
+of resentment he had cherished for her earlier desertion was now
+dissipated; he was wholly hers, content, despite all his passionate
+longing for her, with what she chose to give. In her own time she would
+be generous, as she was brave and honorable....
+
+She was warmly interested in the election of Robert Laird to the
+mayoralty, partly because she knew him personally, partly because the
+younger element of society had rather "gone in for politics" that year,
+on the reform side. Banneker had to admit to her, as the day drew close,
+that the issue was doubtful. Though The Patriot's fervid support had
+been a great asset to the cause, it was now, for the moment, a liability
+to the extent that it was being fiercely denounced in the Socialist
+organ, The Summons, as treasonable to the interests of the
+working-classes. The Summons charged hypocrisy, citing the case of the
+Veridian strike.
+
+"That is McClintick?" asked Io.
+
+"He's back of it, naturally. But The Summons has been waiting its
+chance. Jealous of our influence in the field it's trying to cultivate."
+
+"McClintick is right," remarked Io thoughtfully.
+
+Banneker laughed. "Oh, Io! It's such a relief to get a clear view and an
+honest one from some one else. There's no one in the office except
+Russell Edmonds, and he's away now.... You think McClintick is right? So
+do I."
+
+"But so are you. You had to do as you did about the story. If any one is
+to blame, it is Mr. Marrineal. Yet how can one blame him? He had to
+protect his mother. It's a fearfully complicated phenomenon, a
+newspaper, isn't it, Ban?"
+
+"Io, the soul of man is simple and clear compared with the soul of a
+newspaper."
+
+"If it has a soul."
+
+"Of course it has. It's got to have. Otherwise what is it but a
+machine?"
+
+"Which is The Patriot's; yours or Mr. Marrineal's? I can't," said Io
+quaintly, "quite see them coalescing."
+
+"I wonder if Marrineal has a soul," mused Banneker.
+
+"If he hasn't one of his own, let him keep his hands off yours!" said Io
+in a flash of feminine jealousy. "He's done enough already with his
+wretched mills. What shall you do about the attack in The Summons?"
+
+"Ignore it. It would be difficult to answer. Besides, people easily
+forget."
+
+"A dangerous creed, Ban. And a cynical one. I don't want you to be
+cynical."
+
+"I never shall be again, unless--"
+
+"Unless?" she prompted.
+
+"It rests with you, Io," he said quietly.
+
+At once she took flight. "Am I to be keeper of your spirit?" she
+protested. "It's bad enough to be your professional adviser. Why don't
+you invite a crowd of us down to get the election returns?" she
+suggested.
+
+"Make up your party," assented Banneker. "Keep it small; say a dozen,
+and we can use my office."
+
+On the fateful evening there duly appeared Io with a group of a dozen
+friends. From the first, it was a time of triumph. Laird took the lead
+and kept it. By midnight, the result was a certainty. In a balcony
+speech from his headquarters the victor had given generous recognition
+for his success to The Patriot, mentioning Banneker by name. When the
+report reached them Esther Forbes solemnly crowned the host with a
+wreath composed of the "flimsy" on which the rescript of the speech had
+come in.
+
+"Skoal to Ban!" she cried. "Maker of kings and mayors and things. Skoal!
+As you're a viking or something of the sort, the Norse salutation is
+appropriate."
+
+"It ought to be Danish to be accurate," he smiled.
+
+"Well, that's a hardy, seafaring race," she chattered. "And that reminds
+me. Come on out to the South Seas with us."
+
+"Charmed," he returned. "When do we start? To-morrow?"
+
+"Oh, I'm not joking. You've certainly earned a vacation. And of course
+you needn't enlist for the whole six months if that is too long. Dad has
+let me have the yacht. There'll only be a dozen. Io's going along."
+
+Banneker shot one startled, incredulous look at Io Eyre, and instantly
+commanded himself, to the point of controlling his voice to gayety as he
+replied:
+
+"And who would tell the new mayor how he should run the city, if I
+deserted him? No, Esther, I'm afraid I'm chained to this desk. Ask me
+sometime when you're cruising as far as Coney Island."
+
+Io sat silent, and with a set smile, listening to Herbert Cressey's
+account of an election row in the district where he was volunteer
+watcher. When the party broke up, she went home with Densmore without
+giving Banneker the chance of a word with her. It seemed to him that
+there was a mute plea for pardon in her face as she bade him good-night.
+
+At noon next day she called him on the 'phone.
+
+"Just to tell you that I'm coming as usual Saturday evening," she said.
+
+"When do you leave on your cruise?" he asked.
+
+"Not until next week. I'll tell you when I see you. Good-bye."
+
+Never had Banneker seen Io in such difficult mood as she exhibited on
+the Saturday. She had come early to The House With Three Eyes,
+accompanied by Densmore who looked in just for one drink before going to
+a much-touted boxing-match in Jersey. Through the evening she
+deliberately avoided seeing Banneker alone for so much as the space of a
+query put and answered, dividing her attention between an enraptured
+master of the violin who had come after his concert, and an aged and
+bewildered inventor who, in a long career of secluded toil, had never
+beheld anything like this brilliant creature with her intelligent and
+quickening interest in what he had to tell her. Rivalry between the two
+geniuses inspired the musician to make an offer which he would hardly
+have granted to royalty itself.
+
+"After a time, when zese chatterers are gon-away, I shall play for you.
+Is zere some one here who can accompany properly?"
+
+Necessarily Io sent for Banneker to find out. Yes; young Mackey was
+coming a little later; he was a brilliant amateur and would be flattered
+at the opportunity. With a direct insistence difficult to deny, Banneker
+drew Io aside for a moment. Her eyes glinted dangerously as she faced
+him, alone for the moment, with the question that was the salute before
+the crossing of blades.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Are you really going, Io?"
+
+"Certainly. Why shouldn't I?"
+
+"Say that, for one reason"--he smiled faintly, but resolutely--"The
+Patriot needs your guiding inspiration."
+
+"All The Patriot's troubles are over. It's plain sailing now."
+
+"What of The Patriot's editor?"
+
+"Quite able to take care of himself."
+
+Into his voice there suffused the first ring of anger that she had ever
+heard from him; cold and formidable. "That won't do, Io. Why?"
+
+"Because I choose."
+
+"A child's answer. Why?"
+
+"Do you want to be flattered?" She raised to his, eyes that danced with
+an impish and perverse light. "Call it escape, if you wish."
+
+"From me?"
+
+"Or from myself. Wouldn't you like to think that I'm afraid of you?"
+
+"I shouldn't like to think that you're afraid of anything."
+
+"I'm not." But her tone was that of the defiance which seeks to
+encourage itself.
+
+"I'd call it a desertion," he said steadily.
+
+"Oh, no! You're secure. You need nothing but what you've got. Power,
+reputation, position, success. What more can heart desire?" she taunted.
+
+"You."
+
+She quivered under the blunt word, but rallied to say lightly: "Six
+months isn't long. Though I may stretch it to a year."
+
+"It's too long for endurance."
+
+"Oh, you'll do very well without me, Ban."
+
+"Shall I? When am I to see you again before you go?"
+
+Her raised eyebrows were like an affront. "Are we to see each other
+again? Of course, it would be polite of you to come to the train."
+
+There was a controlled and dangerous gravity in his next question. "Io,
+have we quarreled?"
+
+"How absurd! Of course not."
+
+"Then--"
+
+"If you knew how I dislike fruitless explanations!"
+
+He rose at once. Io's strong and beautiful hands, which had been lying
+in her lap, suddenly interlocked, clenching close together. But her face
+disclosed nothing. The virtuoso, who had been hopefully hovering in the
+offing, bore down to take the vacated chair. He would have found the
+lovely young Mrs. Eyre distrait and irresponsive had he not been too
+happy babbling of his own triumphs to notice.
+
+"Soon zey haf growed thin, zis crowd," said the violinist, who took
+pride in his mastery of idiom. "Zen, when zere remains but a small few,
+I play for you. You sit _zere_, in ze leetle garden of flowers." He
+indicated the secluded seat near the stairway, where she had sat with
+Ban on the occasion of her first visit to The House With Three Eyes.
+"Not too far; not too near. From zere you shall not see; but you shall
+think you hear ze stars make for you harmonies of ze high places."
+
+Young Mackey, having arrived, commended himself to the condescending
+master by a meekly worshipful attitude. Barely a score of people
+remained in the great room. The word went about that they were in for
+one of those occasional treats which made The House With Three Eyes
+unique. The fortunate lingerers disposed themselves about the room. Io
+slipped into the nook designated for her. Banneker was somewhere in the
+background; her veiled glance could not discover where. The music began.
+
+They played Tschaikowsky first, the tender and passionate "Melodie";
+then a lilting measure from Debussy's "Faun," followed by a solemnly
+lovely Brahms arrangement devised by the virtuoso himself. At the
+dying-out of the applause, the violinist addressed himself to the nook
+where Io was no more than a vague, faerie figure to his eyes, misty
+through interlaced bloom and leafage.
+
+"Now, Madame, I play you somezing of a American. Ver' beautiful, it is.
+Not for violin. For voice, contralto. I sing it to you--on ze G-string,
+which weep when it sing; weep for lost dreams. It is called 'Illusion,'
+ze song."
+
+He raised his bow, and at the first bar Io's heart gave a quick, thick
+sob within her breast. It was the music which Camilla Van Arsdale had
+played that night when winds and forest leaves murmured the overtones;
+when earth and heaven were hushed to hear.
+
+"Oh, Ban!" cried Io's spirit.
+
+Noiseless and swift, Banneker, answering the call, bent over her. She
+whispered, softly, passionately, her lips hardly stirring the
+melody-thrilled air.
+
+"How could I hurt you so! I'm going because I must; because I daren't
+stay. You can understand, Ban!"
+
+The music died. "Yes," said Banneker. Then, "Don't go, Io!"
+
+"I must. I'll--I'll see you before. When we're ourselves. We can't talk
+now. Not with this terrible music in our blood."
+
+She rose and went forward to thank the player with such a light in her
+eyes and such a fervor in her words that he mentally added another to
+his list of conquests.
+
+The party broke up. After that magic music, people wanted to be out of
+the light and the stir; to carry its pure passion forth into the dark
+places, to cherish and dream it over again.... Banneker sat before the
+broad fireplace in the laxity of a still grief. Io was going away from
+him. For a six-month. For a year. For an eternity. Going away from him,
+bearing his whole heart with her, as she had left him after the night on
+the river, left him to the searing memory of that mad, sweet cleavage of
+her lips to his, the passionate offer of her awakened womanhood in
+uttermost surrender of life at the roaring gates of death....
+
+Footsteps, light, firm, unhesitant, approached across the broad floor
+from the hallway. Banneker sat rigid, incredulous, afraid to stir, as
+the sleeper fears to break the spell of a tenuous and lovely dream,
+until Io's voice spoke his name. He would have jumped to his feet, but
+the strong pressure of her hands on his shoulders restrained him.
+
+"No. Stay as you are."
+
+"I thought you had gone," he said thickly.
+
+A great log toppled in the fireplace, showering its sparks in prodigal
+display.
+
+"Do you remember our fire, on the river-bank?" said the voice of the
+girl, Io, across the years.
+
+"While I live."
+
+"Just you and I. Man and woman. Alone in the world. Sometimes I think it
+has always been so with us."
+
+"We have no world of our own, Io," he said sadly.
+
+"Heresy, Ban; heresy! Of course we have. An inner world. If we could
+forget--everything outside."
+
+"I am not good at forgetting."
+
+He felt her fingers, languid and tremulous, at his throat, her heart's
+strong throb against his shoulder as she bent, the sweet breath of her
+whisper stirring the hair at his temple:
+
+"Try, Ban."
+
+Her mouth closed down upon his, flower-sweet, petal-light, and was
+withdrawn. She leaned back, gazing at him from half-closed, inscrutable
+eyes.
+
+"That's for good-bye, Io?" With all his self-control, he could not keep
+his voice steady.
+
+"There have been too many good-byes between us," she murmured.
+
+He lifted his head, attentive to a stir at the door, which immediately
+passed.
+
+"I thought that was Archie, come after you."
+
+"Archie isn't coming."
+
+"Then I'll send for the car and take you home."
+
+"Won't you understand, Ban? I'm not going home."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Io Eyre was one of those women before whom Scandal seems to lose its
+teeth if not its tongue. She had always assumed the superb attitude
+toward the world in which she moved. "They say?--What do they say?--Let
+them say!" might have been her device, too genuinely expressive of her
+to be consciously contemptuous. Where another might have suffered in
+reputation by constant companionship with a man as brilliant, as
+conspicuous, as phenomenal of career as Errol Banneker, Io passed on her
+chosen way, serene and scatheless.
+
+Tongues wagged, indeed; whispers spread; that was inevitable. But to
+this Io was impervious. When Banneker, troubled lest any breath should
+sully her reputation who was herself unsullied, in his mind, would have
+advocated caution, she refused to consent.
+
+"Why should I skulk?" she said. "I'm not ashamed."
+
+So they met and lunched or dined at the most conspicuous restaurants,
+defying Scandal, whereupon Scandal began to wonder whether, all things
+considered, there were anything more to it than one of those flirtations
+which, after a time of faithful adherence, become standardized into
+respectability and a sort of tolerant recognition. What, after all, is
+respectability but the brand of the formalist upon standardization?
+
+With the distaste and effort which Ban always felt in mentioning her
+husband's name to Io, he asked her one day about any possible danger
+from Eyre.
+
+"No," she said with assurance. "I owe Del nothing. That is understood
+between us."
+
+"But if the tittle-tattle that must be going the rounds should come to
+his ears--"
+
+"If the truth should come to his ears," she replied tranquilly, "it
+would make no difference."
+
+Ban looked at her, hesitant to be convinced.
+
+"Yes; it's so," she asseverated, nodding, "After his outbreak in
+Paris--it was on our wedding trip--I gave him a choice. I would either
+divorce him, or I would hold myself absolutely free of him so far as any
+claim, actual or moral, went. The one thing I undertook was that I would
+never involve his name in any open scandal."
+
+"He hasn't been so particular," said Ban gloomily.
+
+"Of late he has. Since I had Cousin Billy Enderby go to him about the
+dancer. I won't say he's run absolutely straight since. Poor Del! He
+can't, I suppose. But, at least, he's respected the bargain to the
+extent of being prudent. I shall respect mine to the same extent."
+
+"Io," he burst out passionately, "there's only one thing in the world I
+really want; for you to be free of him absolutely."
+
+She shook her head. "Oh, Ban' Can't you be content--with me? I've told
+you I am free of him. I'm not really his wife."
+
+"No; you're mine," he declared with jealous intensity.
+
+"Yes; I'm yours." Her voice trembled, thrilled. "You don't know yet how
+wholly I'm yours. Oh, it isn't _that_ alone, Ban. But in spirit and
+thought. In the world of shadowed and lovely things that we made for
+ourselves long ago."
+
+"But to have to endure this atmosphere of secrecy, of stealth, of danger
+to you," he fretted. "You could get your divorce."
+
+"No; I can't. You don't understand."
+
+"Perhaps I do understand," he said gently.
+
+"About Del?" She drew a quick breath. "How could you?"
+
+"Wholly through an accident. A medical man, a slimy little reptile,
+surprised his secret and inadvertently passed it on."
+
+She leaned forward to him from her corner of the settee, all courage and
+truth. "I'm glad that you know, though I couldn't tell you, myself.
+You'll see now that I couldn't leave him to face it alone."
+
+"No. You couldn't. If you did, it wouldn't be Io."
+
+"Ah, and I love you for that, too," she whispered, her voice and eyes
+one caress to him. "I wonder how I ever made myself believe that I could
+get over loving you! Now, I've got to pay for my mistake. Ban, do you
+remember the 'Babbling Babson'? The imbecile who saw me from the train
+that day?"
+
+"I remember every smallest thing in any way connected with you."
+
+"I love to hear you say that. It makes up for the bad times, in between.
+The Babbler has turned up. He's been living abroad for a few years. I
+saw him at a tea last week."
+
+"Did he say anything?"
+
+"Yes. He tried to be coy and facetious. I snubbed him soundly. Perhaps
+it wasn't wise."
+
+"Why shouldn't it be?"
+
+"Well he used to have the reputation of writing on the sly for The
+Searchlight."
+
+"That sewer-sheet! You don't think he'd dare do anything of the sort
+about us? Why, what would he have to go on?"
+
+"What does The Searchlight have to go on in most of its lies, and hints,
+and innuendoes?"
+
+"But, Io, even if it did publish--"
+
+"It mustn't," she said. "Ban, if it did--it would make it impossible for
+us to go on as we have been. Don't you see that it would?"
+
+He turned sallow under his ruddy skin. "Then I'll stop it, one way or
+another. I'll put the fear of God into that filthy old worm that runs
+the blackmail shop. The first thing is to find out, though, whether
+there's anything in it. I did hear a hint...." He lost himself in
+musings, trying to recall an occult remark which the obsequious Ely Ives
+had made to him sometime before. "And I know where I can do it," he
+ended.
+
+To go to Ives for anything was heartily distasteful to him. But this was
+a necessity. He cautiously questioned the unofficial factotum of his
+employer. Had Ives heard anything of a projected attack on him in The
+Searchlight? Why, yes; Ives had (naturally, since it was he and not
+Babson who had furnished the material). In fact, he had an underground
+wire into the office of that weekly of spice and scurrility which might
+be tapped to oblige a friend.
+
+Banneker winced at the characterization, but confessed that he would be
+appreciative of any information. In three days a galley proof of the
+paragraph was in his hands. It confirmed his angriest fears. Publication
+of it would smear Io's name with scandal, and, by consequence, direct
+the leering gaze of the world upon their love.
+
+"What is this; blackmail?" he asked Ives.
+
+"Might be."
+
+"Who wrote it?"
+
+"Reads like the old buzzard's own style."
+
+"I'll go and see him," said Banneker, half to himself.
+
+"You can go, but I don't think you'll see him." Ives set forth in detail
+the venerable editor's procedure as to troublesome callers. It was
+specific and curious. Foreseeing that he would probably have to fight
+with his opponent's weapons, Banneker sought out Russell Edmonds and
+asked for all the information regarding The Searchlight and its
+proprietor-editor in the veteran's possession. Edmonds had a fund of it.
+
+"But it won't smoke him out," he said. "That skunk lives in a deep
+hole."
+
+"If I can't smoke him out, I'll blast him out," declared Banneker, and
+set himself to the composition of an editorial which consumed the
+remainder of the working day.
+
+With a typed copy in his pocket, he called, a little before noon, at the
+office of The Searchlight and sent in his card to Major Bussey. The
+Major was not in. When was he expected? As for that, there was no
+telling; he was quite irregular. Very well, Mr. Banneker would wait. Oh,
+that was quite useless; was it about something in the magazine; wouldn't
+one of the other editors do? Without awaiting an answer, the anemic and
+shrewd-faced office girl who put the questions disappeared, and
+presently returned, followed by a tailor-made woman of thirty-odd, with
+a delicate, secret-keeping mouth and heavy-lidded, deep-hued eyes,
+altogether a seductive figure. She smiled confidently up at Banneker.
+
+"I've always wanted so much to meet you," she disclosed, giving him a
+quick, gentle hand pressure. "So has Major Bussey. Too bad he's out of
+town. Did you want to see him personally?"
+
+"Quite personally." Banneker returned her smile with one even more
+friendly and confiding.
+
+"Wouldn't I do? Come into my office, won't you? I represent him in some
+things."
+
+"Not in this one, I hope," he replied, following her to an inner room.
+"It is about a paragraph not yet published, which might be
+misconstrued."
+
+"Oh, I don't think any one could possibly misconstrue it," she retorted,
+with a flash of wicked mirth.
+
+"You know the paragraph to which I refer, then."
+
+"I wrote it."
+
+Banneker regarded her with grave and appreciative urbanity. All was
+going precisely as Ely Ives had prognosticated; the denial of the
+presence of the editor; the appearance of this alluring brunette as
+whipping-girl to assume the burden of his offenses with the calm
+impunity of her sex and charm.
+
+"Congratulations," he said. "It is very clever."
+
+"It's quite true, isn't it?" she returned innocently.
+
+"As authentic, let us say, as your authorship of the paragraph."
+
+"You don't think I wrote it? What object should I have in trying to
+deceive you?"
+
+"What, indeed! By the way, what is Major Bussey's price?"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Banneker!" Was it sheer delight in deviltry, or amusement at
+his direct and unstrategic method that sparkled in her face. "You surely
+don't credit the silly stories of--well, blackmail, about us!"
+
+"It might be money," he reflected. "But, on the whole, I think it's
+something else. Something he wants from The Patriot, perhaps. Immunity?
+Would that be it? Not that I mean, necessarily, to deal."
+
+"What is your proposition?" she asked confidentially.
+
+"How can I advance one when I don't know what your principal wants?"
+
+"The paragraph was written in good faith," she asserted.
+
+"And could be withdrawn in equal good faith?"
+
+Her laugh was silvery clear. "Very possibly. Under proper
+representations."
+
+"Then don't you think I'd better deal direct with the Major?"
+
+She studied his face. "Yes," she began, and instantly refuted herself.
+"No. I don't trust you. There's trouble under that smooth smile of
+yours."
+
+"But _you're_ not afraid of me, surely," said Banneker. He had found out
+one important point; her manner when she said "Yes" indicated that the
+proprietor was in the building. Now he continued: "Are you?"
+
+"I don't know. I think I am." There was a little catch in her breath. "I
+think you'd be dangerous to any woman."
+
+Banneker, his eyes fixed on hers, played for time and a further lead
+with a banality. "You're pleased to flatter me."
+
+"Aren't you pleased to be flattered?" she returned provocatively.
+
+He put his hand on her wrist. She swayed to him with a slow, facile
+yielding. He caught her other wrist, and the grip of his two hands
+seemed to bite into the bone.
+
+"So you're _that_ kind, too, are you!" he sneered, holding her eyes as
+cruelly as he had clutched her wrists. "Keep quiet! Now, you're to do as
+I tell you."
+
+(Ely Ives, in describing the watchwoman at the portals of scandal, had
+told him that she was susceptible to a properly timed bluff. "A woman
+she had slandered once stabbed her; since then you can get her nerve by
+a quick attack. Treat her rough.")
+
+She stared at him, fearfully, half-hypnotized.
+
+"Is that the door leading to Bussey's office? Don't speak! Nod."
+
+Dumb and stricken, she obeyed.
+
+"I'm going there. Don't you dare make a movement or a noise. If you
+do--I'll come back."
+
+Shifting his grasp, he caught her up and with easy power tossed her upon
+a broad divan. From its springy surface she shot up, as it seemed to
+him, halfway to the ceiling, rigid and staring, a ludicrous simulacrum
+of a glassy-eyed doll. He heard the protesting "ping!" and "berr-rr-rr"
+of a broken spring as she fell back. The traverse of a narrow hallway
+and a turn through a half-open door took him into the presence of
+bearded benevolence making notes at a desk.
+
+"How did you get here? And who the devil are you?" demanded the guiding
+genius of The Searchlight, looking up irritably. He raised his voice.
+"Con!" he called.
+
+From a side room appeared a thick, heavy-shouldered man with a feral
+countenance, who slouched aggressively forward, as the intruder
+announced himself.
+
+"My name is Banneker."
+
+"Cheest!" hissed the thick bouncer in tones of dismay, and stopped
+short.
+
+Turning, Banneker recognized him as one of the policemen whom his
+evidence had retired from the force in the wharf-gang investigation.
+
+"Oh! Banneker," muttered the editor. His right hand moved slowly,
+stealthily, toward a lower drawer.
+
+"Cut it, Major!" implored Con in acute anguish. "Canche' see he's
+gotche' covered through his pocket!"
+
+The stealthy hand returned to the sight of all men and fussed among some
+papers on the desk-top. Major Bussey said peevishly:
+
+"What do you want with me?"
+
+"Kill that paragraph."
+
+"What par--"
+
+"Don't fence with me," struck in Banneker sharply. "You know what one."
+
+Major Bussey swept his gaze around the room for help or inspiration. The
+sight of the burly ex-policeman, stricken and shifting his weight from
+one foot to the other, disconcerted him sadly; but he plucked up courage
+to say:
+
+"The facts are well authent--"
+
+Again Banneker cut him short. "Facts! There isn't the semblance of a
+fact in the whole thing. Hints, slurs, innuendoes."
+
+"Libel does not exist when--" feebly began the editor, and stopped
+because Banneker was laughing at him.
+
+"Suppose you read that," said the visitor, contemptuously tossing the
+typed script of his new-wrought editorial on the desk. "_That's_
+libellous, if you choose. But I don't think you would sue."
+
+Major Bussey read the caption, a typical Banneker eye-catcher, "The
+Rattlesnake Dies Out; But the Pen-Viper is Still With Us." "I don't care
+to indulge myself with your literary efforts at present, Mr. Banneker,"
+he said languidly. "Is this the answer to our paragraph?"
+
+"Only the beginning. I propose to drive you out of town and suppress
+'The Searchlight.'"
+
+"A fair challenge. I'll accept it."
+
+"I was prepared to have you take that attitude."
+
+"Really, Mr. Banneker; you could hardly expect to come here and
+blackmail me by threats--"
+
+"Now for my alternative," proceeded the visitor calmly. "You are
+proposing to publish a slur on the reputation of an innocent woman
+who--"
+
+"Innocent!" murmured the Major with malign relish.
+
+"Look out, Major!" implored Con, the body-guard. "He's a killer, he is."
+
+"I don't know that I'm particularly afraid of you, after all," declared
+the exponent of The Searchlight, and Banneker felt a twinge of dismay
+lest he might have derived, somewhence, an access of courage. "A Wild
+West shooting is one thing, and cold-blooded, premeditated murder is
+another. You'd go to the chair."
+
+"Cheerfully," assented Banneker.
+
+Bussey, lifting the typed sheets before him, began to read. Presently
+his face flushed.
+
+"Why, if you print this sort of thing, you'd have my office mobbed," he
+cried indignantly.
+
+"It's possible."
+
+"It's outrageous! And this--if this isn't an incitement to lynching--You
+wouldn't dare publish this!"
+
+"Try me."
+
+Major Bussey's wizened and philanthropic face took on the cast of
+careful thought. At length he spoke with the manner of an elder
+bestowing wisdom upon youth.
+
+"A controversy such as this would do nobody any good. I have always been
+opposed to journalistic backbitings. Therefore we will let this matter
+lie. I will kill the paragraph. Not that I'm afraid of your threats; nor
+of your pen, for that matter. But in the best interests of our common
+profession--"
+
+"Good-day," said Banneker, and walked out, leaving the Major stranded
+upon the ebb tide of his platitudes.
+
+Banneker retailed the episode to Edmonds, for his opinion.
+
+"He's afraid of your gun, a little," pronounced the expert; "and more of
+your pen. I think he'll keep faith in this."
+
+"As long as I hold over him the threat of The Patriot."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And no longer?"
+
+"No longer. It's a vengeful kind of vermin, Ban."
+
+"Pop, am I a common, ordinary blackmailer? Or am I not?"
+
+The other shook his head, grayed by a quarter-century of struggles and
+problems. "It's a strange game, the newspaper game," he opined.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+All had worked out, in the matter of The Searchlight, quite as much to
+Mr. Ely Ives's satisfaction as to that of Banneker. From his boasted and
+actual underground wire into that culture-bed of spiced sewage (at the
+farther end of which was the facile brunette whom the visiting editor
+had so harshly treated), he had learned the main details of the
+interview and reported them to Mr. Marrineal.
+
+"Will Banneker now be good?" rhetorically queried Ives, pursing up his
+small face into an expression of judicious appreciation. "He _will_ be
+good!"
+
+Marrineal gave the subject his habitual calm and impersonal
+consideration. "He hasn't been lately," he observed. "Several of his
+editorials have had quite the air of challenge."
+
+"That was before he turned blackmailer. Blackmail," philosophized the
+astute Ives, "is a gun that you've got to keep pointed all the time."
+
+"I see. So long as he has Bussey covered by the muzzle of The Patriot,
+The Searchlight behaves itself."
+
+"It does. But if ever he laid down his gun, Bussey would make hash of
+him and his lady-love."
+
+"What about her?" interrogated Marrineal. "Do you really think--" His
+uplifted brows, sparse on his broad and candid forehead, consummated the
+question.
+
+For reply the factotum gave him a succinct if distorted version of the
+romance in the desert.
+
+"She dished him for Eyre," he concluded, "and now she's dishing Eyre for
+him."
+
+"Bussey's got all this?" inquired Marrineal, and upon the other's
+careless "I suppose so," added, "It must grind his soul not to be able
+to use it."
+
+"Or not to get paid for suppressing it," grinned Ives.
+
+"But does Banneker understand that it's fear of his pen, and not of
+being killed, that binds Bussey?"
+
+Ives nodded. "I've taken care to rub that in. Told him of other cases
+where the old Major was threatened with all sorts of manhandling; scared
+out of his wits at first, but always got over it and came back in The
+Searchlight, taking his chance of being killed. The old vulture really
+isn't a coward, though he's a wary bird."
+
+"Would Banneker really kill him, do you think?"
+
+"I wouldn't insure his life for five cents," returned the other with
+conviction. "Your editor is crazy-mad over this Mrs. Eyre. So there you
+have him delivered, shorn and helpless, and Delilah doesn't even suspect
+that she's acting as our agent."
+
+Marrineal's eyes fixed themselves in a lifeless sort of stare upon a far
+corner of the ceiling. Recognizing this as a sign of inward cogitation,
+the vizier of his more private interests sat waiting. Without changing
+the direction of his gaze, the proprietor indicated a check in his
+ratiocination by saying incompletely:
+
+"Now, if she divorced Eyre and married Banneker--"
+
+Ives completed it for him. "That would spike The Searchlight's guns, you
+think? Perhaps. But if she were going to divorce Eyre, she'd have done
+it long ago, wouldn't she? I think she'll wait. He won't last long."
+
+"Then our hold on Banneker, through his ability to intimidate The
+Searchlight, depends on the life of a paretic."
+
+"Paretic is too strong a word--yet. But it comes to about that.
+Except--he'll want a lot of money to marry Io Eyre."
+
+"He wants a lot, anyway," smiled Marrineal.
+
+"He'll want more. She's an expensive luxury."
+
+"He can get more. Any time when he chooses to handle The Patriot so that
+it attracts instead of offends the big advertisers."
+
+"Why don't you put the screws on him now, Mr. Marrineal?" smirked Ives
+with thin-lipped malignancy.
+
+Marrineal frowned. His cold blood inclined him to be deliberate; the
+ophidian habit, slow-moving until ready to strike. He saw no reason for
+risking a venture which became safer the further it progressed.
+Furthermore, he disliked direct, unsolicited advice. Ignoring Ives's
+remark he asked:
+
+"How are his investments going?"
+
+Ives grinned again. "Down. Who put him into United Thread? Do you know,
+sir?"
+
+"Horace Vanney. He has been tipping it off quietly to the club lot.
+Wants to get out from under, himself."
+
+"There's one thing about it, though, that puzzles me. If he took old
+Vanney's tip to buy for a rise, why did he go after the Sippiac Mills
+with those savage editorials? They're mainly responsible for the
+legislative investigation that knocked eight points off of United
+Thread."
+
+"Probably to prove his editorial independence."
+
+"To whom? You?"
+
+"To himself," said Marrineal with an acumen quite above the shrewdness
+of an Ives to grasp.
+
+But the latter nodded intelligently, and remarked: "If he's money-crazy
+you've got him, anyway, sooner or later. And now that he's woman-crazy,
+too--"
+
+"You'll never understand just how sane Mr. Banneker is," broke in
+Marrineal coldly. He was a very sane man, himself.
+
+"Well, a lot of the sane ones get stung on the Street," moralized Ives.
+"I guess the only way to beat that game is to get crazy and take all the
+chances. Mr. Banneker stands to drop half a year's salary in U.T. alone
+unless there's a turn."
+
+Marrineal delivered another well-thought-out bit of wisdom. "If I'm any
+judge, he wants a paper of his own. Well ... give me three years more of
+him and he can have it. But I don't think it'll make much headway
+against The Patriot, then."
+
+"Three years? Bussey and The Searchlight ought to hold him that long.
+Unless, of course, he gets over his infatuation in the meantime."
+
+"In that case," surmised Marrineal, eyeing him with distaste, "I suppose
+you think that he would equally lose interest in protecting her from The
+Searchlight."
+
+"Well, what's a woman to expect!" said Ives blandly, and took his
+dismissal for the day.
+
+It was only recently that Ives had taken to coming to The Patriot
+office. No small interest and conjecture were aroused among the
+editorial staff as to his exact status, stimulus to gossip being
+afforded by the rumor that he had been, from Marrineal's privy purse,
+shifted to the office payroll. Russell Edmonds solved and imparted the
+secret to Banneker.
+
+"Ives? Oh, he's the office sandbag."
+
+"Translate, Pop. I don't understand."
+
+"It's an invention of Marrineal's. Very ingenious. It was devised as a
+weapon against libel suits. Suppose some local correspondent from
+Hohokus or Painted Post sends in a story on the Honorable Aminadab
+Quince that looks to be O.K., but is actually full of bad breaks. The
+Honorable Aminadab smells money in it and likes the smell. Starts a
+libel suit. On the facts, he's got us: the fellow that got pickled and
+broke up the Methodist revival wasn't Aminadab at all, but his tough
+brother. If it gets into court we're stung. Well, up goes little
+Weaselfoot Ives to Hohokus. Sniffs around and spooks around and is a
+good fellow at the hotel, and possibly spends a little money where it's
+most needed, and one day turns up at the Quince mansion. 'Senator, I
+represent The Patriot.' 'Don't want to see you at all. Talk to my
+lawyer.' 'But he might not understand my errand. It relates to an
+indictment handed down in 1884 for malversasion of school funds.' 'Young
+man, do you dare to intimate--' and so forth and so on; bluster and
+bluff and threat. Says Ives, very cool: 'Let me have your denial in
+writing and we'll print it opposite the certified copy of the
+indictment.' The old boy begins to whimper; 'That's outlawed. It was all
+wrong, anyway.' Ives is sympathetic, but stands pat. Drop the suit and
+The Patriot will be considerate and settle the legal fees. Aminadab
+drops, ten times out of ten. The sandbag has put him away."
+
+"But there must be an eleventh case where there's nothing on the man
+that's suing."
+
+"Say a ninety-ninth. One libel suit in a hundred may be brought in good
+faith. But we never settle until after Ives has done his little prowl."
+
+"It sounds bad, Pop. But is it so bad, after all? We've got to protect
+ourselves against a hold-up."
+
+"Dirty work, but somebody's got to do it: ay--yes? I agree with you. As
+a means of self-defense it is excusable. But the operations of the
+sandbag have gone far beyond libel in Ives's hands."
+
+"Have they? To what extent?"
+
+"Any. His little private detective agency--he's got a couple of our
+porch-climbing, keyhole reporters secretly assigned to him at call for
+'special work'--looks after any man we've got or are likely to have
+trouble with; advertisers who don't come across properly, city officials
+who play in with the other papers too much, politicians--"
+
+"But that's rank blackmail!" exclaimed Banneker.
+
+"Carried far enough it is. So far it's only private information for the
+private archives."
+
+"Marrineal's?"
+
+"Yes. He and his private counsel, old Mark Stecklin, are the keepers of
+them. Now, suppose Judge Enderby runs afoul of our interests, as he is
+bound to do sooner or later. Little Weaselfoot gets on his
+trail--probably is on it already--and he'll spend a year if necessary
+watching, waiting, sniffing out something that he can use as a threat or
+a bludgeon or a bargain."
+
+"What quarrel have we got with Enderby?" inquired Banneker with lively
+interest.
+
+"None, now. But we'll be after him hot and heavy within a year."
+
+"Not the editorial page," declared Banneker.
+
+"Well, I hope not. It would be rather a right-about, wouldn't it? But
+Marrineal isn't afraid of a right-about. You know his creed as to his
+readers: 'The public never remembers.' Of course, you realize what
+Marrineal is after, politically."
+
+"No. He's never said a word to me."
+
+"Nor to me. But others have. The mayoralty."
+
+"For himself?"
+
+"Of course. He's quietly building up his machine."
+
+"But Laird will run for reelection."
+
+"He'll knife Laird."
+
+"It's true Laird hasn't treated us very well, in the matter of backing
+our policies," admitted Banneker thoughtfully. "The Combined Street
+Railway franchise, for instance."
+
+"He was right in that and you were wrong, Ban. He had to follow the
+comptroller there."
+
+"Is that where our split with Enderby is going to come? Over the
+election?"
+
+"Yes. Enderby is the brains and character back of the Laird
+administration. He represents the clean government crowd, with its
+financial power."
+
+Banneker stirred fretfully in his chair. "Damn it!" he growled. "I wish
+we could run this paper _as_ a newspaper and not as a chestnut rake."
+
+"How sweet and simple life would be!" mocked the veteran. "Still, you
+know, if you're going to use The Patriot as a blunderbuss to point at
+the heads of your own enemies, you can't blame the owner if he--"
+
+"You think Marrineal knows?" interposed Banneker sharply.
+
+"About The Searchlight matter? You can bet on one thing, Ban. Everything
+that Ely Ives knows, Tertius Marrineal knows. So far as Ives thinks it
+advisable for him to know, that is. Over and above which Tertius is no
+fool, himself. You may have noticed that."
+
+"It's bothered me from time to time," admitted the other dryly.
+
+"It'll bother both of us more, presently," prophesied Edmonds.
+
+"Then I've been playing direct into Marrineal's hands in attacking Laird
+on the franchise matter."
+
+"Yes. Keep on."
+
+"Strange advice from you, Pop. You think my position on that is wrong."
+
+"What of that? You think it's right. Therefore, go ahead. Why quit a
+line of policy just because it obliges your employes? Don't be
+over-conscientious, son."
+
+"I've suspected for some time that the political news was being adroitly
+manipulated against the administration. Has Marrineal tried to ring you
+in on that?"
+
+"No; and he won't."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"He knows that, in the main, I'm a Laird man. Laird is giving us what we
+asked for, an honest administration."
+
+"Suppose, when Marrineal develops his plans, he comes to you, which
+would be his natural course, to handle the news end of the anti-Laird
+campaign. What would you do?"
+
+"Quit."
+
+Banneker sighed. "It's so easy for you."
+
+"Not so easy as you think, son. Even though there's a lot of stuff being
+put over in the news columns that makes me sore and sick. Marrineal's
+little theory of using news as a lever is being put into practice pretty
+widely. Also we're selling it."
+
+"Selling our news columns?"
+
+"Some of 'em. For advertising. You're well out of any responsibility for
+that department. I'd resign to-morrow if it weren't for the fact that
+Marrineal still wants to cocker up the labor crowd for his political
+purposes, and so gives me a free hand in my own special line. By the
+way, he's got the Veridian matter all nicely smoothed out. Oh, my, yes!
+Fired the general manager, put in all sorts of reforms, recognized the
+union, the whole programme! That's to spike McClintick's guns if he
+tries to trot out Veridian again as proof that Marrineal is, at heart,
+anti-labor."
+
+"Is he?"
+
+"He's anti-anything that's anti-Marrineal, and pro-anything that's
+pro-Marrineal. Haven't you measured him yet? All policy, no principle;
+there's Mr. Tertius Marrineal for you.... Ban, it's really you that
+holds me to this shop." Through convolutions of smoke from his tiny
+pipe, the old stager regarded the young star of journalism with a quaint
+and placid affection. "Whatever rotten stuff is going on in the business
+and news department, your page goes straight and speaks clear.... I
+wonder how long Marrineal will stand for it ... I wonder what he intends
+for the next campaign."
+
+"If my proprietor runs for office, I can't very well not support him,"
+said Banneker, troubled.
+
+"Not very well. The pinch will come as to what you're going to do about
+Laird. According to my private information, he's coming back at The
+Patriot."
+
+"For my editorials on the Combined franchise?"
+
+"Hardly. He's too straight to resent honest criticism. No; for some of
+the crooked stuff that we're running in our political news. Besides,
+some suspicious and informed soul in the administration has read between
+our political lines, and got a peep of the aspiring Tertius girding
+himself for contest. Result, the city advertising is to be taken from
+The Patriot."
+
+It needed no more than a mechanical reckoning of percentages to tell
+Banneker that this implied a serious diminution of his own income.
+Further, such a procedure would be in effect a repudiation of The
+Patriot and its editorial support.
+
+"That's a rotten deal!" he exclaimed.
+
+"No. Just politics. Justifiable, too, I should say, as politics go. I
+doubt whether Laird would do it of his own motion; he plays a higher
+game than that. But it isn't strictly within his province either to
+effect or prevent. Anyhow, it's going to be done."
+
+"If he wants to fight us--" began Banneker with gloom in his eyes.
+
+"He doesn't want to fight anybody," cut in the expert. "He wants to be
+mayor and run the city for what seems to him the city's best good. If he
+thought Marrineal would carry on his work as mayor, I doubt if he'd
+oppose him. But our shrewd old friend, Enderby, isn't of that mind.
+Enderby understands Marrineal. He'll fight to the finish."
+
+Edmonds left his friend in a glum perturbation of mind. Enderby
+understood Marrineal, did he? Banneker wished that he himself did. If he
+could have come to grips with his employer, he would at least have known
+now where to take his stand. But Marrineal was elusive. No, not even
+elusive; quiescent. He waited.
+
+As time passed, Banneker's editorial and personal involvements grew more
+complex. At what moment might a pressure from above close down on his
+pen, and with what demand? How should he act in the crisis thus forced,
+at Marrineal's slow pleasure? Take Edmonds's Gordian recourse; resign?
+But he was on the verge of debt. His investments had gone badly; he
+prided himself on the thought that it was partly through his own
+immovable uprightness. Now, this threat to his badly needed percentages!
+Surely The Patriot ought to be making a greater profit than it showed,
+on its steadily waxing circulation. Why had he ever let himself be
+wrenched from his first and impregnable system of a straight payment on
+increase of circulation? Would it be possible to force Marrineal back
+into that agreement? No income was too great, surely, to recompense for
+such trouble of soul as The Patriot inflicted upon its editorial
+mouthpiece.... Through the murk of thoughts shot, golden-rayed, the
+vision of Io.
+
+No world could be other than glorious in which she lived and loved him
+and was his.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Sheltered beneath the powerful pen of Banneker, his idyll, fulfilled,
+lengthened out over radiant months. Io was to him all that dreams had
+ever promised or portrayed. Their association, flowering to the full
+amidst the rush and turmoil of the city, was the antithesis to its
+budding in the desert peace. To see the more of his mistress, Banneker
+became an active participant in that class of social functions which get
+themselves chronicled in the papers. Wise in her day and her protective
+instinct of love, Io pointed out that the more he was identified with
+her set, the less occasion would there be for comment upon their being
+seen together. And they were seen together much.
+
+She lunched with him at his downtown club, dined with him at Sherry's,
+met him at The Retreat and was driven back home in his car, sometimes
+with Archie Densmore for a third, not infrequently alone. Considerate
+hostesses seated them next each other at dinners: it was deemed an
+evidence of being "in the know" thus to accommodate them. The openness
+of their intimacy went far to rob calumny of its sting. And Banneker's
+ingrained circumspection of the man trained in the open, applied to _les
+convenances_, was a protection in itself. Moreover, there was in his
+devotion, conspicuous though it was, an air of chivalry, a breath of
+fragrance from a world of higher romance, which rendered women in
+particular charitable of judgment toward the pair.
+
+Sometimes in the late afternoon Banneker's private numbered telephone
+rang, and an impersonal voice delivered a formal message. And that
+evening Banneker (called out of town, no matter how pressing an
+engagement he might have had) sat in The House With Three Eyes, now
+darkened of vision, thrilling and longing for her step in the dim side
+passage. There was risk of disaster. But Io willed to take it; was proud
+to take it for her lover.
+
+Immersed in a happiness and a hope which vivified every motion of his
+life, Banneker was nevertheless under a continuous strain of
+watchfulness; the _qui vive_ of the knight who guards his lady with
+leveled lance from a never-ceasing threat. At the point of his weapon
+cowered and crouched the dragon of The Searchlight, with envenomed fangs
+of scandal.
+
+As the months rounded out to a year, he grew, not less careful, indeed,
+but more confident. Eyre had quietly dropped out of the world. Hunting
+big game in some wild corner of Nowhere, said rumor.
+
+Io had revealed to Banneker the truth; her husband was in a sanitarium
+not far from Philadelphia. As she told him, her eyes were dim. Swift,
+with the apprehension of the lover to read the loved one's face, she saw
+a smothered jealousy in his.
+
+"Ah, but you must pity him, too! He has been so game."
+
+"Has been?"
+
+"Yes. This is nearly the end. I shall go down there to be near him."
+
+"It's a long way, Philadelphia," he said moodily.
+
+"What a child! Two hours in your car from The Retreat."
+
+"Then I may come down?"
+
+"May? You must!"
+
+He was still unappeased. "But you'll be very far away from me most of
+the time."
+
+She gleamed on him, her face all joyous for his incessant want of her.
+"Stupid! We shall see almost as much of each other as before. I'll be
+coming over to New York two or three times a week."
+
+Wherewith, and a promised daily telephone call, he must be content.
+
+Not at that meeting did he broach the subject nearest his heart. He felt
+that he must give Io time to adjust herself to the new-developed status
+of her husband, as of one already passed out of the world. A fortnight
+later he spoke out. He had gone down to The Retreat for the week-end and
+she had come up from Philadelphia to meet him, for dinner. He found her
+in a secluded alcove off the main dining-porch, alone. She rose and came
+to him, after that one swift, sweet, precautionary glance about her with
+which a woman in love assures herself of safety before she gives her
+lips; tender and passionate to the yearning need of her that sprang in
+his face.
+
+"Ban, I've been undergoing a solemn preachment."
+
+"From whom?"
+
+"Archie."
+
+"Is Densmore here?"
+
+"No; he came over to Philadelphia to deliver it."
+
+"About us?"
+
+She nodded. "Don't take it so gloomily. It was to be expected."
+
+He frowned. "It's on my mind all the time; the danger to you."
+
+"Would you end it?" she said softly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Too confident to misconstrue his reply, she let her hand fall on his,
+waiting.
+
+"Io, how long will it be, with Eyre? Before--"
+
+"Oh; that!" The brilliance faded from her eager loveliness. "I don't
+know. Perhaps a year. He suffers abominably, poor fellow."
+
+"And after--after _that_, how long before you can marry me?"
+
+She twinkled at him mischievously. "So, after all these years, my lover
+makes me an offer of marriage. Why didn't you ask me at Manzanita?"
+
+"Good God! Would it possibly--"
+
+"No; no! I shouldn't have said it. I was teasing."
+
+"You know that there's never been a moment when the one thing worth
+living and fighting and striving for wasn't you."
+
+"And success?" she taunted, but with tenderness.
+
+"Another name for you. I wanted it only as the reflex of your wish for
+me."
+
+"Even when I'd left you?"
+
+"Even when you'd left me."
+
+"Poor Ban!" she breathed, and for a moment her fingers fluttered at his
+cheek. "Have I made it up to you?"
+
+He bent over the long, low chair in which she half reclined. "A thousand
+times! Every day that I see you; every day that I think of you; with the
+lightest touch of your hand; the sound of your voice; the turn of your
+face toward me. I'm jealous of it and fearful of it. Can you wonder that
+I live in a torment of dread lest something happen to bring it all to
+ruin?"
+
+She shook her head. "Nothing could. Unless--No. I won't say it. I want
+you to want to marry me, Ban. But--I wonder."
+
+As they talked, the little light of late afternoon had dwindled, until
+in their nook they could see each other only as vague forms.
+
+"Isn't there a table-lamp there?" she asked. "Turn it on."
+
+He found and pulled the chain. The glow, softly shaded, irradiated Io's
+lineaments, showing her thoughtful, somber, even a little apprehensive.
+She lifted the shade and turned it to throw the direct rays upon
+Banneker. He blinked.
+
+"Do you mind?" she asked softly. Even more softly, she added, "Do you
+remember?"
+
+His mind veered back across the years, full of struggle, of triumph, of
+emptiness, of fulfillment, to a night in another world; a world of
+dreams, magic associations, high and peaceful ambitions, into which had
+broken a voice and an appeal from the darkness. He had turned the light
+upon himself then that she might see him for what he was and have no
+fear. So he held it now, lifting it above his forehead. Hypnotized by
+the compulsion of memory, she said, as she had said to the unknown
+helper in the desert shack:
+
+"I don't know you. Do I?"
+
+"Io!"
+
+"Ah! I didn't mean to say that. It came back to me, Ban. Perhaps it's
+true. _Do_ I know you?"
+
+As in the long ago he answered her: "Are you afraid of me?"
+
+"Of everything. Of the future. Of what I don't know in you."
+
+"There's nothing of me that you don't know," he averred.
+
+"Isn't there?" She was infinitely wistful; avid of reassurance. Before
+he could answer she continued: "That night in the rain when I first saw
+you, under the flash, as I see you now--Ban, dear, how little you've
+changed, how wonderfully little, to the eye!--the instant I saw you, I
+trusted you."
+
+"Do you trust me now?" he asked for the delight of hearing her declare
+it.
+
+Instead he heard, incredulously, the doubt in her tone. "Do I? I want
+to--so much! I did then. At first sight."
+
+He set down the lamp. She could hear him breathing quick and
+stressfully. He did not speak.
+
+"At first sight," she repeated. "And--I think--I loved you from that
+minute. Though of course I didn't know. Not for days. Then, when I'd
+gone, I found what I'd never dreamed of; how much I could love."
+
+"And now?" he whispered.
+
+"Ah, more than then!" The low cry leapt from her lips. "A thousand times
+more."
+
+"But you don't trust me?"
+
+"Why don't I, Ban?" she pleaded. "What have you done? How have you
+changed?"
+
+He shook his head. "Yet you've given me your love. Do you trust
+yourself?"
+
+"Yes," she answered with a startling quietude of certainty. "In that I
+do. Absolutely."
+
+"Then I'll chance the rest. You're upset to-night, aren't you, Io?
+You've let your imagination run away with you."
+
+"This isn't a new thing to me. It began--I don't know when it began.
+Yes; I do. Before I ever knew or thought of you. Oh, long before! When I
+was no more than a baby."
+
+"Rede me your riddle, love," he said lightly.
+
+"It's so silly. You mustn't laugh; no, you wouldn't laugh. But you
+mustn't be angry with me for being a fool. Childhood impressions are
+terribly lasting things, Ban.... Yes, I'm going to tell you. It was a
+nurse I had when I was only four, I think; such a pretty, dainty Irish
+creature, the pink-and-black type. She used to cry over me and say--I
+don't suppose she thought I would ever understand or remember--'Beware
+the brown-eyed boys, darlin'. False an' foul they are, the brown ones.
+They take a girl's poor heart an' witch it away an' twitch it away, an'
+toss it back all crushed an' spoilt.' Then she would hug me and sob. She
+left soon after; but the warning has haunted me like a superstition....
+Could you kiss it away, Ban? Tell me I'm a little fool!"
+
+Approaching footsteps broke in upon them. The square bulk of Jim
+Maitland appeared in the doorway.
+
+"What ho! you two. Ban, you're scampin' your polo practice shamefully.
+You'll be crabbin' the team if you don't look out. Dinin' here?"
+
+"Yes," said Io. "Is Marie down?"
+
+"Comin' presently. How about a couple of rubbers after dinner?"
+
+To assent seemed the part of tact. Io and Ban went to their corner
+table, reserved for three, the third, Archie Densmore, being a prudent
+fiction. People drifted over to them, chatted awhile, were carried on
+and away by uncharted but normal social currents. It was a tribute to
+the accepted status between them that no one settled into the third
+chair. The Retreat is the dwelling-place of tact. All the
+conversationalists having come and gone, Io reverted over the coffee to
+the talk of their hearts.
+
+"I can't expect you to understand me, can I? Especially as I don't
+understand myself. Don't sulk, Ban, dearest. You're so un-pretty when
+you pout."
+
+He refused to accept the change to a lighter tone. "I understand this,
+Io; that you have begun unaccountably to mistrust me. That hurts."
+
+"I don't want to hurt you. I'd rather hurt myself; a thousand times
+rather. Oh, I will marry you, of course, when the time comes! And yet--"
+
+"Yet?"
+
+"Isn't it strange, that deep-seated misgiving! I suppose it's my woman's
+dread of any change. It's been so perfect between us, Ban." Her speech
+dropped to its lowest breath of pure music:
+
+"'This test for love:--in every kiss, sealed fast
+To feel the first kiss and forebode the last'--
+
+So it has been with us; hasn't it, my lover?"
+
+"So it shall always be," he answered, low and deep.
+
+Her eyes dreamed. "How could any man feel what he put in those lines?"
+she murmured.
+
+"Some woman taught him," said Banneker.
+
+She threw him a fairy kiss. "Why haven't we 'The Voices' here! You
+should read to me.... Do you ever wish we were back in the desert?"
+
+"We shall be, some day."
+
+She shuddered a little, involuntarily. "There's a sense of recall, isn't
+there! Do you still love it?"
+
+"It's the beginning of the Road to Happiness," he said. "The place where
+I first saw you."
+
+"You don't care for many things, though, Ban."
+
+"Not many. Only two, vitally. You and the paper."
+
+She made a curious reply pregnant of meanings which were to come back
+upon him afterward. "I shan't be jealous of that. Not as long as you're
+true to it. But I don't think you care for The Patriot, for itself."
+
+"Oh, don't I!"
+
+"If you do, it's only because it's part of you; your voice; your power.
+Because it belongs to you. I wonder if you love me mostly for the same
+reason."
+
+"Say, the reverse reason. Because I belong so entirely to you that
+nothing outside really matters except as it contributes to you. Can't
+you realize and believe?"
+
+"No; I shouldn't be jealous of the paper," she mused, ignoring his
+appeal. Then, with a sudden transition: "I like your Russell Edmonds. Am
+I wrong or is there a kind of nobility of mind in him?"
+
+"Of mind and soul. You would be the one to see it.
+
+'.............the nobleness that lies
+Sleeping but never dead in other men,
+Will rise in majesty to meet thine own'"--
+
+he quoted, smiling into her eyes.
+
+"Do you ever talk over your editorials with him?"
+
+"Often. He's my main and only reliance, politically."
+
+"Only politically? Does he ever comment on other editorials? The one on
+Harvey Wheelwright, for instance?"
+
+Banneker was faintly surprised. "No. Why should he? Did you discuss that
+with him?"
+
+"Indeed not! I wouldn't discuss that particular editorial with any one
+but you."
+
+He moved uneasily. "Aren't you attaching undue importance to a very
+trivial subject? You know that was half a joke, anyway."
+
+"Was it?" she murmured. "Probably I take it too seriously. But--but
+Harvey Wheelwright came into one of our early talks, almost our first
+about real things. When I began to discover you; when 'The Voices' first
+sang to us. And he wasn't one of the Voices, exactly, was he?"
+
+"He? He's a bray! But neither was Sears-Roebuck one of the Voices. Yet
+you liked my editorial on that."
+
+"I adored it! You believed what you were writing. So you made it
+beautiful."
+
+"Nothing could make Harvey Wheelwright beautiful. But, at least, you'll
+admit I made him--well, appetizing." His face took on a shade. "Love's
+labor lost, too," he added. "We never did run the Wheelwright serial,
+you know."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because the infernal idiot had to go and divorce a perfectly
+respectable, if plain and middle-aged wife, in order to marry a quite
+scandalous Chicago society flapper."
+
+"What connection has that with the serial?"
+
+"Don't you see? Wheelwright is the arch-deacon of the eternal
+proprieties and pieties. Purity of morals. Hearth and home. Faithful
+unto death, and so on. Under that sign he conquers--a million pious and
+snuffy readers, per book. Well, when he gets himself spread in the
+Amalgamated Wire dispatches, by a quick divorce and a hair-trigger
+marriage, puff goes his piety--and his hold on his readers. We just
+quietly dropped him."
+
+"But his serial was just as good or as bad as before, wasn't it?"
+
+"Certainly not! Not for our purposes. He was a dead wolf with his
+sheep's wool all smeared and spotted. You'll never quite understand the
+newspaper game, I'm afraid, lady of my heart."
+
+"How brown your eyes are, Ban!" said Io.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Politics began to bubble in The Patriot office with promise of hotter
+upheavals to come. The Laird administration had shown its intention of
+diverting city advertising, and Marrineal had countered in the news
+columns by several minor but not ineffective exposures of weak spots in
+the city government. Banneker, who had on the whole continued to support
+the administration in its reform plans, decided that a talk with Willis
+Enderby might clarify the position and accordingly made an evening
+appointment with him at his house. Judge Enderby opened proceedings with
+typical directness of attack.
+
+"When are _you_ going to turn on us, Banneker?"
+
+"That's a cheerful question," retorted the young man good-humoredly,
+"considering that it is you people who have gone back on The Patriot."
+
+"Were any pledges made on our part?" queried Enderby.
+
+Banneker replied with some spirit: "Am I talking with counsel under
+retainer or with a personal friend?"
+
+"Quite right. I apologize," said the imperturbable Enderby. "Go on."
+
+"It isn't the money loss that counts, so much as the slap in the face to
+the paper. It's a direct repudiation. You must realize that."
+
+"I'm not wholly a novice in politics."
+
+"But I am, practically."
+
+"Not so much that you can't see what Marrineal would be at."
+
+"Mr. Marrineal has not confided in me."
+
+"Nor in me," stated the lawyer grimly. "I don't need his confidence to
+perceive his plans."
+
+"What do you believe them to be?"
+
+No glimmer of a smile appeared on the visage of Judge Enderby as he
+countered, "Am I talking with a representative of The Patriot or--"
+
+"All right," laughed Banneker. "_Touche!_ Assume that Marrineal has
+political ambitions. Surely that lies within the bounds of propriety."
+
+"Depends on how he pushes them. Do you read The Patriot, Banneker?"
+
+The editor of The Patriot smiled.
+
+"Do you approve its methods in, let us say, the political articles?"
+
+"I have no control over the news columns."
+
+"Don't answer my question," said the lawyer with a fine effect of
+patience, long-suffering and milky-mild, "if it in any way discommodes
+you."
+
+"It all comes to this," disclosed Banneker. "If the mayor turns on us,
+we can't lie down under the whip and we won't. We'll hit back."
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Editorially, I mean."
+
+"I understand. At least the editorials will be a direct method of
+attack, and an honest one. I may assume that much?"
+
+"Have you ever seen anything in the editorial columns of The Patriot
+that would lead you to assume otherwise?"
+
+"Answering categorically I would have to say 'No.'
+
+"Answer as you please."
+
+"Then I will say," observed the other, speaking with marked
+deliberation, "that on one occasion I have failed to see matter which I
+thought might logically appear there and the absence of which afforded
+me food for thought. Do you know Peter McClintick?"
+
+"Yes. Has he been talking to you about the Veridian killings?"
+
+Enderby nodded. "One could not but contrast your silence on that subject
+with your eloquence against the Steel Trust persecutions, consisting, if
+I recall, in putting agitators in jail for six months. Quite wrongly, I
+concede. But hardly as bad as shooting them down as they sleep, and
+their families with them."
+
+"Tell me what you would have done in my place, then." Banneker stated
+the case of the Veridian Mills strike simply and fairly. "Could I turn
+the columns of his own paper on Marrineal for what was not even his
+fault?"
+
+"Impossible. Absurd, as well," acknowledged the other
+
+"Can you even criticize Marrineal?"
+
+The jurist reared his gaunt, straight form up from his chair and walked
+across to the window, peering out into the darkness before he answered
+with a sort of restrained passion.
+
+"God o' mercies, Banneker! Do you ask me to judge other men's acts,
+outside the rules of law? Haven't I enough problems in reconciling my
+own conscience to conserving the interests of my clients, as I must, in
+honor, do? No; no! Don't expect me to judge, in any matter of greater
+responsibilities. I'm answerable to a small handful of people. You--your
+Patriot is answerable to a million. Everything you print, everything you
+withhold, may have incalculable influence on the minds of men. You can
+corrupt or enlighten them with a word. Think of it! Under such a weight
+Atlas would be crushed. There was a time long ago--about the time when
+you were born--when I thought that I might be a journalist; thought it
+lightly. To-day, knowing what I know, I should be terrified to attempt
+it for a week, a day! I tell you, Banneker, one who moulds the people's
+beliefs ought to have the wisdom of a sage and the inspiration of a
+prophet and the selflessness of a martyr."
+
+A somber depression veiled Banneker. "One must have the sense of
+authority, too," he said at length with an effort. "If that is
+undermined, you lose everything. I'll fight for that."
+
+With an abrupt motion his host reached up and drew the window shade, as
+it might be to shut out a darkness too deep for human penetration.
+
+"What does your public care about whether The Patriot loses the city
+advertising; or even know about it?"
+
+"Not the public. But the other newspapers. They'll know, and they'll use
+it against us.... Enderby, we can beat Bob Laird for reelection."
+
+"If that's a threat," returned the lawyer equably, "it is made to the
+wrong person. I couldn't control Laird in this matter if I wanted to.
+He's an obstinate young mule--for which Heaven be praised!"
+
+"No; it isn't a threat. It's a declaration of war, if you like."
+
+"You think you can beat us? With Marrineal?"
+
+"Mr. Marrineal isn't an avowed candidate, is he?" evaded Banneker.
+
+"I fancy that you'll see some rapidly evolving activity in that
+quarter."
+
+"Is it true that Laird has developed social tendencies, and is using the
+mayoralty to climb?"
+
+"A silly story of his enemies," answered Enderby contemptuously. "Just
+the sort of thing that Marrineal would naturally get hold of and use. In
+so far as Laird has any social relations, they are and always have been
+with that element which your society reporters call 'the most exclusive
+circles,' because that is where he belongs by birth and association."
+
+"Russell Edmonds says that social ambition is the only road on which one
+climbs painfully downhill."
+
+The other paid the tribute of a controlled smile to this. "Edmonds? A
+Socialist. He has a gnarled mind. Good, hard-grained wood, though. I
+suppose no man more thoroughly hates and despises what I represent--or
+what he thinks I represent, the conservative force of moneyed
+power--than he does. Yet in any question of professional principles, I
+would trust him far; yes, and of professional perceptions, too, I think;
+which is more difficult. A crack-brained sage; but wise. Have you talked
+over the Laird matter with him?"
+
+"Yes. He's for Laird."
+
+"Stick to Edmonds, Banneker. You can't find a better guide."
+
+There was desultory talk until the caller got up to go. As they shook
+hands, Enderby said:
+
+"Has any one been tracking you lately?"
+
+"No. Not that I've noticed."
+
+"There was a fellow lurking suspiciously outside; heavy-set, dark
+clothes, soft hat. I thought that he might be watching you."
+
+For a man of Banneker's experience of the open, to detect the cleverest
+of trailing was easy. Although this watcher was sly and careful in his
+pursuit, which took him all the way to Chelsea Village, his every move
+was clear to the quarry, until the door of The House With Three Eyes
+closed upon its owner. Banneker went to bed very uneasy. On whose behoof
+was he being shadowed? Should he warn Io?... In the morning there was no
+trace of the man, nor, though Banneker trained every sharpened faculty
+to watchfulness, did he see him again.... While he was mentally
+engrossed in wholly alien considerations, the solution materialized out
+of nothing to his inner vision. It was Willis Enderby who was being
+watched, and, as a side issue, any caller upon him. That evening a taxi,
+occupied by a leisurely young man in evening clothes, drove through East
+68th Street, where stood the Enderby house, dim, proud, and stiff. The
+taxi stopped before a mansion not far away, and the young man addressed
+a heavy-bodied individual who stood, with vacant face uplifted to the
+high moon, as if about to bay it. Said the young man:
+
+"Mr. Ives wishes you to report to him at once."
+
+"Huh?" ejaculated the other, lowering his gaze.
+
+"At the usual place," pursued the young man.
+
+"Oh! Aw-right."
+
+His suspicions fully confirmed, Banneker drove away. It was now Ives's
+move, he remarked to himself, smiling. Or perhaps Marrineal's. He would
+wait. Within a few days he had his opportunity. Returning to his office
+after luncheon, he found a penciled note from Ives on his desk,
+notifying him that Miss Raleigh had called him on the 'phone.
+
+Inquiring for the useful Ives, Banneker learned that he was closeted
+with Marrineal. Such conferences were regarded in the office as
+inviolable; but Banneker was in uncompromising mood. He entered with no
+more of preliminary than a knock. After giving his employer good-day he
+addressed Ives.
+
+"I found a note from you on my desk."
+
+"Yes. The message came half an hour ago."
+
+"Through the office?"
+
+"No. On your 'phone."
+
+"How did you get into my room?"
+
+"The door was open."
+
+Banneker reflected. This was possible, though usually he left his door
+locked. He decided to accept the explanation. Later he had occasion to
+revise it.
+
+"Much obliged. By the way, on whose authority did you put a shadow on
+Judge Enderby?"
+
+"On mine," interposed Marrineal. "Mr. Ives has full discretion in these
+matters."
+
+"But what is the idea?"
+
+Ives delivered himself of his pet theory. "They'll all bear watching. It
+may come in handy some day."
+
+"What may?"
+
+"Anything we can get."
+
+"What on earth could any but an insane man expect to get on Enderby?"
+contemptuously asked Banneker.
+
+Shooting a covert look at his principal, Ives either received or assumed
+a permission. "Well, there was some kind of an old scandal, you know."
+
+"Was there?" Banneker's voice was negligent. "That would be hard to
+believe."
+
+"Hard to get hold of in any detail. I've dug some of it out through my
+Searchlight connection. Very useful line, that."
+
+Ives ventured a direct look at Banneker, but diverted it from the cold
+stare it encountered.
+
+"Some woman scrape," he explicated with an effort at airiness.
+
+Banneker turned a humiliating back on him. "The Patriot is beginning to
+get a bad name on Park Row for this sort of thing," he informed
+Marrineal.
+
+"This isn't a Patriot matter. It is private."
+
+"Pshaw!" exclaimed Banneker in disgust. "After all, it doesn't matter.
+You'll have your trouble for your pains," he prophesied, and returned to
+'phone Betty Raleigh.
+
+What had become of Banneker, Betty's gay and pure-toned voice demanded
+over the wire. Had he eschewed the theater and all its works for good?
+Too busy? Was that a reason also for eschewing his friends? He'd never
+meant to do that? Let him prove it then by coming up to see her.... Yes;
+at once. Something special to be talked over.
+
+It was a genuine surprise to Banneker to find that he had not seen the
+actress for nearly two months. Certainly he had not specially missed
+her, yet it was keenly pleasurable to be brought into contact again with
+that restless, vital, outgiving personality. She looked tired and a
+little dispirited and--for she was of that rare type in which weariness
+does not dim, but rather qualifies and differentiates its beauty--quite
+as lovely as he had ever seen her. The query which gave him his clue to
+her special and immediate interest was:
+
+"Why is Haslett leaving The Patriot?" Haslett was the Chicago critic
+transplanted to take Gurney's place.
+
+"Is he? I didn't know. You ought not to mourn his loss, Betty."
+
+"But I do. At least, I'm afraid I'm going to. Do you know who the new
+critic is?"
+
+"No. Do you? And how do you? Oh, I suppose I ought to understand that,
+though," he added, annoyed that so important a change should have been
+kept secret from him.
+
+With characteristic directness she replied, "You mean Tertius
+Marrineal?"
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"That's all off."
+
+"Betty! Your engagement to him?"
+
+"So far as there ever was any."
+
+"Is it really off? Or have you only quarreled?"
+
+"Oh, no. I can't imagine myself quarreling with Tertius. He's too
+impersonal. For the same reason, and others, I can't see myself marrying
+him."
+
+"But you must have considered it, for a time."
+
+"Not very profoundly. I don't want to marry a newspaper. Particularly
+such a newspaper as The Patriot. For that matter, I don't want to marry
+anybody, and I won't!"
+
+"That being disposed of, what's the matter with The Patriot? It's been
+treating you with distinguished courtesy ever since Marrineal took over
+charge."
+
+"It has. That's part of his newspaperishness."
+
+"From our review of your new play I judge that it was written by the
+shade of Shakespeare in collaboration with the ghost of Moliere, and
+that your acting in it combines all the genius of Rachel, Kean, Booth,
+Mrs. Siddons, and the Divine Sarah."
+
+"This is no laughing matter," she protested. "Have you seen the play?"
+
+"No. I'll go to-night."
+
+"Don't. It's rotten."
+
+"Heavens!" he cried in mock dismay. "What does this mean? Our most
+brilliant young--"
+
+"And I'm as bad as the play--almost. The part doesn't fit me. It's a
+fool part."
+
+"Are you quarreling with The Patriot because it has tempered justice
+with mercy in your case?"
+
+"Mercy? With slush. Slathering slush."
+
+"Come to my aid, Memory! Was it not a certain Miss Raleigh who aforetime
+denounced the ruffian Gurney for that he vented his wit upon a play in
+which she appeared. And now, because--"
+
+"Yes; it was. I've no use for the smart-aleck school of criticism. But,
+at least, what Gurney wrote was his own. And Haslett, even if he is an
+old grouch, was honest. You couldn't buy their opinions over the
+counter."
+
+Banneker frowned. "I think you'd better explain, Betty."
+
+"Do you know Gene Zucker?"
+
+"Never heard of him."
+
+"He's a worm. A fat, wiggly, soft worm from Boston. But he's got an
+idea."
+
+"And that is?"
+
+"I'll tell you in a moment." She leaned forward fixing him with the
+honest clarity of her eyes. "Ban, if I tell you that I'm really devoted
+to my art, that I believe in it as--as a mission, that the theater is as
+big a thing to me as The Patriot is to you, you won't think me an
+affected little prig, will you?"
+
+"Of course not, Betty. I know you."
+
+"Yes. I think you do. But you don't know your own paper. Zucker's big
+idea, which he sold to Tertius Marrineal together with his precious
+self, is that the dramatic critic should be the same identical person as
+the assistant advertising manager in charge of theater advertising, and
+that Zucker should be both."
+
+"Hell!" snapped Banneker. "I beg your pardon, Betty."
+
+"Don't. I quite agree with you. Isn't it complete and perfect? Zucker
+gets his percentage of the advertising revenue which he brings in from
+the theaters. Therefore, will he be kind to those attractions which
+advertise liberally? And less kind to those which fail to appreciate The
+Patriot as a medium? I know that he will! Pay your dollar and get your
+puff. Dramatic criticism strictly up to date."
+
+Banneker looked at her searchingly. "Is that why you broke with
+Marrineal, Betty?"
+
+"Not exactly. No. This Zucker deal came afterward. But I think I had
+begun to see what sort of principles Tertius represented. You and I
+aren't children, Ban: I can talk straight talk to you. Well, there's
+prostitution on the stage, of course. Not so much of it as outsiders
+think, but more than enough. I've kept myself free of any contact with
+it. That being so, I'm certainly not going to associate myself with that
+sort of thing in another field. Ban, I've made the management refuse
+Zucker admittance to the theater. And he gave the play a wonderful
+send-off, as you know. Of course, Tertius would have him do that."
+
+Rising, Banneker walked over and soberly shook the girl's hand. "Betty,
+you're a fine and straight and big little person. I'm proud to know you.
+And I'm ashamed of myself that I can do nothing. Not now, anyway. Later,
+perhaps...."
+
+"No, I suppose you can't," she said listlessly. "But you'll be
+interested in seeing how the Zucker system works out; a half-page ad. in
+the Sunday edition gets a special signed and illustrated feature
+article, a quarter-page only a column of ordinary press stuff. A full
+page--I don't know what he'll offer for that. An editorial by E.B.
+perhaps."
+
+"Betty!"
+
+"Forgive me, Ban. I'm sick at heart over it all. Of course, I know you
+wouldn't."
+
+Going back in his car, Banneker reflected with profound distaste that
+the plan upon which he was hired was not essentially different from the
+Zucker scheme, in Marrineal's intent. He, too, was--if Marrineal's idea
+worked out--to draw down a percentage varying in direct ratio to his
+suppleness in accommodating his writings to "the best interests of the
+paper." He swore that he would see The Patriot and its proprietor
+eternally damned before he would again alter jot or tittle of his
+editorial expression with reference to any future benefit.
+
+It did not take long for Mr. Zucker to manifest his presence to Banneker
+through a line asking for an interview, written in a neat, small hand
+upon a card reading:
+
+_The Patriot--Special Theatrical Features E. Zucker, Representative_.
+
+Mr. Zucker, being sent for, materialized as a buoyant little person,
+richly ornamented with his own initials in such carefully chosen
+locations as his belt-buckle, his cane, and his cigarettes. He was, he
+explained, injecting some new and profitable novelties into the
+department of dramatic criticism.
+
+"Just a moment," quoth Banneker. "I thought that Allan Haslett had come
+on from Chicago to be our dramatic critic."
+
+"Oh, he and the business office didn't hit it off very well," said
+little Zucker carelessly.
+
+"Oh! And do you hit it off pretty well with the business office?"
+
+"Naturally. It was Mr. Haring brought me on here; I'm a special
+departmental manager in the advertising department."
+
+"Your card would hardly give the impression. It suggests the news rather
+than the advertising side."
+
+"I'm both," stated Mr. Zucker, brightly beaming. "I handle the criticism
+and the feature stuff on salary, and solicit the advertising, on a
+percentage. It works out fine."
+
+"So one might suppose." Banneker looked at him hard. "The idea being, if
+I get it correctly, that a manager who gives you a good, big line of
+advertising can rely on considerate treatment in the dramatic column of
+The Patriot."
+
+"Well, there's no bargain to that effect. That wouldn't be classy for a
+big paper like ours," replied the high-if somewhat naive-minded Mr.
+Zucker. "Of course, the managers understand that one good turn deserves
+another, and I ain't the man to roast a friend that helps me out. I
+started the scheme in Boston and doubled the theater revenue of my paper
+there in a year."
+
+"I'm immensely interested," confessed Banneker. "But what is your idea
+in coming to me about this?"
+
+"Big stuff, Mr. Banneker," answered the earnest Zucker. He laid a
+jeweled hand upon the other's knee, and removed it because some vestige
+of self-protective instinct warned him that that was not the proper
+place for it. "You may have noticed that we've been running a lot of
+special theater stuff in the Sunday." Banneker nodded. "That's all per
+schedule, as worked out by me. An eighth of a page ad. gets an article.
+A quarter page ad. gets a signed special by me. Haffa page wins a grand
+little send-off by Bess Breezely with her own illustrations. Now, I'm
+figuring on full pages. If I could go to a manager and say: 'Gimme a
+full-page ad. for next Sunday and I'll see if I can't get Mr. Banneker
+to do an editorial on the show'--if I could say that, why, nothin' to
+it! Nothin' at-tall! Of course," he added ruminatively, "I'd have to
+pick the shows pretty careful."
+
+"Perhaps you'd like to write the editorials, too," suggested Banneker
+with baleful mildness.
+
+"I thought of that," admitted the other. "But I don't know as I could
+get the swing of your style. You certainly got a style, Mr. Banneker."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"Well, what do you say?"
+
+"Why, this. I'll look over next Sunday's advertising, particularly the
+large ads., and if there is a good subject in any of the shows, I'll try
+to do something about it."
+
+"Fine!" enthused the unsuspecting pioneer of business-dramatic
+criticism. "It's a pleasure to work with a gentleman like you, Mr.
+Banneker."
+
+Withdrawing, even more pleased with himself than was his wont, Mr.
+Zucker confided to Haring that the latter was totally mistaken in
+attributing a stand-offish attitude to Banneker. Why, you couldn't ask
+for a more reasonable man. Saw the point at once.
+
+"Don't you go making any fool promises on the strength of what Banneker
+said to you," commented Haring.
+
+With malign relish, Banneker looked up in the Sunday advertising the
+leading theater display, went to the musical comedy there exploited, and
+presently devoted a column to giving it a terrific and only half-merited
+slashing for vapid and gratuitous indecency. The play, which had been
+going none too well, straightway sold out a fortnight in advance,
+thereby attesting the power of the press as well as the appeal of
+pruriency to an eager and jaded public. Zucker left a note on the
+editorial desk warmly thanking his confrere for this evidence of
+cooeperation.
+
+Life was practicing its lesser ironies upon Banneker whilst maturing its
+greater ones.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Ambition is the most conservative of influences upon a radical mind. No
+sooner had Tertius Marrineal formulated his political hopes than there
+were manifested in the conduct of The Patriot strange symptoms of a
+hankering after respectability. Essentially Marrineal was not
+respectable, any more than he was radical. He was simply and singly
+selfish. But, having mapped out for himself a career which did not stop
+short of a stately and deep-porticoed edifice in Washington's
+Pennsylvania Avenue (for his conception of the potential leverage of a
+great newspaper increased with The Patriot's circulation), he deemed it
+advisable to moderate some of the more blatant features, on the same
+principle which had induced him to reform the Veridian lumber mill
+abuses, lest they be brought up to his political detriment later. A
+long-distance thinker, Tertius Marrineal.
+
+Operating through invisible channels and by a method which neither
+Banneker nor Edmonds ever succeeded in fathoming, his influence now
+began to be felt for the better tone of the news columns. They became
+less glaringly sensational. Yet the quality of the news upon which the
+paper specialized was the same; it was the handling which was insensibly
+altered. That this was achieved without adversely affecting circulation
+was another proof, added to those already accumulated, of Marrineal's
+really eminent journalistic capacities. The change was the less obvious,
+because The Patriot's competitors in the Great Three-Ringed Circus of
+Sensation had found themselves being conducted, under that leadership,
+farther along the primrose path of stimulation and salaciousness than
+they had realized, and had already modified their policies.
+
+Even under the new policy, however, The Patriot would hardly have
+proven, upon careful analysis, more decent or self-respecting. But it
+was less obvious; cleverer in avoiding the openly offensive. Capron had
+been curbed in his pictorial orgies. The copy-readers had been supplied
+with a list of words and terms tabooed from the captions. But the
+influence of Severance was still potent in the make-up of the news.
+While Banneker was relieved at the change, he suspected its impermanency
+should it prove unsuccessful. To neither his chief editorial writer nor
+Russell Edmonds had the proprietor so much as hinted at the modification
+of scheme. His silence to these two was part of his developing policy of
+separating more widely the different departments of the paper in order
+that he might be the more quietly and directly authoritative over all.
+
+The three men were lunching late at Delmonico's, and talking politics,
+when Edmonds leaned forward in his seat to look toward the entrance.
+
+"There's Severance," said he. "What's the matter with him?"
+
+The professional infuser of excitements approached walking carefully
+among the tables. His eyes burned in a white face.
+
+"On one of his sprees," diagnosed Banneker. "Oh, Severance! Sit down
+here."
+
+"I beg your p-p-pardon." Severance spoke with marked deliberation and
+delicacy, but with a faint stammer. "These not b-being office hours, I
+have not the p-pleasure of your acquaintance."
+
+Marrineal smiled.
+
+"The p-pale rictus of the damned," observed Severance. "As one damned
+soul to another, I c-confess a longing for companionship of m-my own
+sort. Therefore I accept your invitation. Waiter, a Scotch h-highball."
+
+"We were talking of--" began Banneker, when the newcomer broke in:
+
+"Talk of m-me. Of me and m-my work. I exult in my w-work. L-like Mr.
+Whitman, I celebrate myself. I p-point with pride. What think you,
+gentlemen, of to-day's paper in honor of which I have t-taken my few
+drinks?"
+
+"If you mean the Territon story," growled Edmonds, "it's rotten."
+
+"Precisely. I thank you for your g-golden opinion. Rotten. Exactly as
+intended."
+
+"Put a woman's good name on trial and sentence it on hearsay without
+appeal or recourse."
+
+"There is always the danger of going too far along those lines," pointed
+out Marrineal judicially.
+
+"Pardon me, all-wise Proprietor. The d-danger lies in not going far
+enough. The frightful p-peril of being found dull."
+
+"The Territon story assays too thin in facts, as we've put it out. If
+Mrs. Territon doesn't leave her husband now for McLaurin," opined
+Marrineal, "we are in a difficult position. I happen to know her and I
+very much doubt--"
+
+"Doubt not at all, d-doubting Tertius. The very fact of our publishing
+the story will force her hand. It's an achievement, that story. No other
+p-paper has a line of it."
+
+"Not more than one other would touch it, in its present form," said
+Banneker. "It's too raw."
+
+"The more virtue to us. I r-regard that story as an inspiration. Nobody
+could have brought it off b-but me. 'A god, a god their Severance
+ruled,'" punned the owner of the name.
+
+"Beelzebub, god of filth and maggots," snarled Edmonds.
+
+"Bacchus, god of all true inspiration!" cried Severance. "Waiter, slave
+of B-Bacchus, where is my Scotch?"
+
+"Severance, you're going too far along your chosen line," declared
+Banneker bluntly.
+
+"Yes; we must tone down a little," agreed Marrineal.
+
+The sensationalist lifted calmly luminous eyes to his chief. "Why?" he
+queried softly. "Are you meditating a change? Does the journalistic
+l-lady of easy virtue begin to yearn f-for the paths of respectability?"
+
+"Steady, Severance," warned Edmonds.
+
+At the touch of the curb the other flamed into still, white wrath. "If
+you're going to be a whore," he said deliberately, "play the whore's
+game. I'm one and I know it. Banneker's one, but hasn't the courage to
+face it. You're one, Edmonds--no, you're not; not even that. You're the
+hallboy that f-fetches the drinks--"
+
+Marrineal had risen. Severance turned upon him.
+
+"I salute you, Madam of our high-class establishment. When you take your
+p-price, you at least look the business in the face. No illusions for
+M-Madam Marrineal.... By the w-way, I resign from the house."
+
+"Are you coming, Mr. Edmonds?" said Marrineal. "You'll sign the check
+for me, will you, Mr. Banneker?"
+
+Left alone with the disciple of Bacchus and Beelzebub, the editor said:
+
+"Better get home, Severance. Come in to-morrow, will you?"
+
+"No. I'm q-quite in earnest about resigning. No further use for the
+damned j-job now."
+
+"I never could see why you had any use for it in the first place. Was it
+money?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Oh, I see."
+
+"You d-don't see at all. I wanted the m-money for a purpose. The purpose
+was a woman. I w-wanted to keep pace with her and her s-set. It was the
+set to which I rightly belonged, but I'd dropped out. I thought I
+p-preferred drink. I didn't after she got hold of me. I d-don't know why
+the d-devil I'm telling you all this."
+
+"I'm sorry, Severance," said Banneker honestly.
+
+The other raised his glass. "Here's to her," he said. He drank. "I wish
+her nothing w-worse than she's got. Her name is--"
+
+"Wait a moment, Severance," cut in Banneker sharply. "Don't say anything
+that you'll regret. Naming of names--"
+
+"Oh, there's no harm in this, n-now," said Severance wearily. "Hers is
+smeared in filth all over our third page. It is Maud Territon. What do
+you think of P-Patriotic journalism, anyway, Banneker?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+With the accession to political control of Halloran and the old ring,
+the influence of Horace Vanney and those whom he represented, became as
+potent as it was secret. "Salutary measures" had been adopted toward the
+garment-workers; a "firm hand" on the part of the police had succeeded
+in holding down the strike through the fall and winter; but in the early
+spring it was revived and spread throughout the city, even to the doors
+of the shopping district. In another sense than the geographical it was
+nearing the great department stores, for quiet efforts were being made
+by some of the strike leaders to organize and unionize the underpaid
+salesmen and saleswomen of the shops. Inevitably this drew into active
+hostility to the strikers the whole power of the stores with their
+immense advertising influence.
+
+Very little news of the strike got into the papers except where some
+clash with the police was of too great magnitude to be ignored; then the
+trend of the articles was generally hostile to the strikers. The Sphere
+published the facts briefly, as a matter of journalistic principle; The
+Ledger published them with violent bias, as a matter of journalistic
+habit; the other papers, including The Patriot, suppressed or minimized
+to as great an extent as they deemed feasible.
+
+That the troubles of some thousands of sweated wage-earners, employed
+upon classes of machine-made clothing which would never come within the
+ken of the delicately clad women of her world, could in any manner
+affect Io Eyre, was most improbable. But the minor fate who manipulates
+improbabilities elected that she should be in a downtown store at the
+moment when a squad of mounted police charged a crowd of girl-strikers.
+Hearing the scream of panic, she ran out, saw ignorant, wild-eyed girls,
+hardly more than children, beaten down, trampled, hurried hither and
+thither, seized upon and thrown into patrol wagons, and when she reached
+her car, sick and furious, found an eighteen-year-old Lithuanian blonde
+flopping against the rear fender in a dead faint. Strong as a young
+panther, Io picked up the derelict in her arms, hoisted her into the
+tonneau, and bade the disgusted chauffeur, "Home." What she heard from
+the revived girl, in the talk which followed, sent her, hot-hearted, to
+the police court where the arrests would be brought up for primary
+judgment.
+
+The first person that she met there was Willis Enderby.
+
+"If you're on this strike case, Cousin Billy," she said, "I'm against
+you, and I'm ashamed of you."
+
+"You probably aren't the former, and you needn't be the latter," he
+replied.
+
+"Aren't you Mr. Vanney's lawyer? And isn't he interested in the strike?"
+
+"Not openly. It happens that I'm here for the strikers."
+
+Io stared, incredulous. "For the strikers? You mean that they've
+retained you?"
+
+"Oh, no. I'm really here in my capacity as President of the Law
+Enforcement Society; to see that these women get the full protection of
+the law, to which they are entitled. There is reason to believe that
+they haven't had it. And you?"
+
+Io told him.
+
+"Are you willing to go on the stand?"
+
+"Certainly; if it will do any good."
+
+"Not much, so far as the case goes. But it will force it into the
+newspapers. 'Society Leader Takes Part of Working-Girls,' and so-on. The
+publicity will be useful."
+
+The magistrate on the bench was lenient; dismissed most of the prisoners
+with a warning against picketing; fined a few; sent two to jail. He
+seemed surprised and not a little impressed by the distinguished Mrs.
+Delavan Eyre's appearance in the proceedings, and sent word out to the
+reporters' room, thereby breaking up a game of pinochle at its point of
+highest interest. There was a man there from The Patriot.
+
+With eager expectation Io, back in her Philadelphia apartment, sent out
+for a copy of the New York Patriot. Greatly to her disgust she found
+herself headlined, half-toned, described; but with very little about the
+occasion of her testimony, a mere mention of the strike and nothing
+whatsoever regarding the police brutalities which had so stirred her
+wrath. Io discovered that she had lost her taste for publicity, in a
+greater interest. Her first thought was to write Banneker indignantly;
+her second to ask explanations when he called her on the 'phone as he
+now did every noon; her third to let the matter stand until she went to
+New York and saw him. On her arrival, several days later, she went
+direct to his office. Banneker's chief interest, next to his
+ever-thrilling delight in seeing her, was in the part played by Willis
+Enderby.
+
+"What is he doing in that galley?" he wondered.
+
+To her explanation he shook his head. Something more than that, he was
+sure. Asking Io's permission he sent for Russell Edmonds.
+
+"Isn't this a new role for Enderby?" he asked.
+
+"Not at all. He's been doing this sort of thing always. Usually on the
+quiet."
+
+"The fact that this is far from being on the quiet suggests politics,
+doesn't it? Making up to the labor vote?"
+
+"What on earth should Cousin Billy care for the labor vote?" demanded
+Io. "Mr. Laird is dead politically, isn't he?"
+
+"But Judge Enderby isn't. Mr. Edmonds will tell you that much."
+
+"True enough. Enderby is a man to be reckoned with. Particularly if--"
+Edmonds paused, hesitant.
+
+"If--" prompted Banneker. "Fire ahead, Pop."
+
+"If Marrineal should declare in on the race for the governorship, next
+fall."
+
+"Without any state organization? Is that probable?" asked Banneker.
+
+"Only in case he should make a combination with the old ring crowd, who
+are, naturally, grateful for his aid in putting over Halloran for them.
+It's quite within the possibilities."
+
+"After the way The Patriot and Mr. Marrineal himself have flayed the
+ring?" exclaimed Io. "It isn't possible. How could he so go back on
+himself?"
+
+Edmonds turned his fine and serious smile upon her. "Mr. Marrineal's
+guiding principle of politics _and_ journalism is that the public never
+remembers. If he persuades the ring to nominate him, Enderby is the
+logical candidate against him. In my belief he's the only man who could
+beat him."
+
+"Do you really think, Mr. Edmonds, that Judge Enderby's help to the
+arrested women is a political move?"
+
+"That's the way it would be interpreted by all the politicians.
+Personally, I don't believe it."
+
+"His sympathies, professional and personal, are naturally on the other
+side," pointed out Banneker.
+
+"But not yours, surely Ban!" cried Io. "Yours ought to be with them. If
+you could have seen them as I did, helpless and panic-stricken, with the
+horses pressing in on them--"
+
+"Of course I'm with them," warmly retorted Banneker. "If I controlled
+the news columns of the paper, I'd make another Sippiac Mills story of
+this." No sooner had he said it than he foresaw to what reply he had
+inevitably laid himself open. It came from Io's lips.
+
+"You control the editorial column, Ban."
+
+"It's a subject to be handled in the news, not the editorials," he said
+hastily.
+
+The silence that fell was presently relieved by Edmonds. "It's also
+being handled in the advertising columns. Have you seen the series of
+announcements by the Garment Manufacturers' Association? There are four
+of 'em now in proof."
+
+"No. I haven't seen them," answered Banneker.
+
+"They're able. But on the whole they aren't as able as the strikers'
+declaration in rebuttal, offered us to-day, one-third of a page at
+regular advertising rates, same as the manufacturers'."
+
+"Enderby?" queried Banneker quickly.
+
+"I seem to detect his fine legal hand in it."
+
+Banneker's face became moody. "I suppose Haring refused to publish it."
+
+"No. Haring's for taking it."
+
+"How is that?" said the editor, astonished. "I thought Haring--"
+
+"You think of Haring as if Haring thought as you and I think. That isn't
+fair," declared Edmonds. "Haring's got a business mind, straight within
+its limitations. He accepts this strike stuff just as he accepts
+blue-sky mine fakes and cancer cures in which he has no belief, because
+he considers that a newspaper is justified in taking any ad. that is
+offered--and let the reader beware. Besides, it goes against his grain
+to turn down real money."
+
+"Will it appear in to-morrow's paper?" questioned Io.
+
+"Probably, if it appears at all."
+
+"Why the 'if'?" said Banneker. "Since Haring has passed it--"
+
+"There is also Marrineal."
+
+"Haring sent it to him?"
+
+"Not at all. The useful and ubiquitous Ives, snooping as usual, came
+upon it. Hence it is now in Marrineal's hands. Likely to remain there, I
+should think."
+
+"Mr. Marrineal won't let it be published?" asked Io.
+
+"That's my guess," returned the veteran.
+
+"And mine," added Banneker.
+
+He felt her eyes of mute appeal fixed on him and read her meaning.
+
+"All right, Io," he promised quietly. "If Mr. Marrineal won't print it
+in advertising, I'll print it as editorial."
+
+"When?" Io and Edmonds spoke in one breath.
+
+"Day after to-morrow."
+
+"That's war," said Edmonds.
+
+"In a good cause," declared Io proudly.
+
+"The cause of the independence of Errol Banneker," said the veteran. "It
+was bound to come. Go in and win, son. I'll get you a proof of the ad."
+
+"Ban!" said Io with brightened regard.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Will you put something at the head of your column for me, if that
+editorial appears?"
+
+"What? Wait! I know. The quotation from the Areopagitica. Is that it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Fine! I'll do it."
+
+On the following morning The Patriot appeared as usual. The first of the
+Manufacturers' Association arguments to the public was conspicuously
+displayed. Of the strikers' reply--not a syllable. Banneker went to
+Haring's office; found the business manager gloomy, but resigned.
+
+"Mr. Marrineal turned it down. He's got the right. That's all there is
+to it," was his version.
+
+"Not quite," remarked Banneker, and went home to prove it.
+
+Into the editorial which was to constitute the declaration of Errol
+Banneker's independence went much thinking, and little writing. The
+pronunciamento of the strikers, prefaced by a few words of explanation,
+and followed by some ringing sentences as to the universal right to a
+fair field, was enough. At the top of the column the words of Milton, in
+small, bold print. Across the completed copy he wrote "Thursday. Must."
+
+Never had Banneker felt in finer fettle for war than when he awoke that
+Thursday morning. Contrary to his usual custom, he did not even look at
+the copy of The Patriot brought to his breakfast table; he wanted to
+have that editorial fresh to eye and mind when Marrineal called him to
+account for it. For this was a challenge which Marrineal could not
+ignore. He breakfasted with a copy of "The Undying Voices" propped
+behind his coffee cup, refreshing himself before battle with the
+delights of allusive memory, bringing back the days when he and lo had
+read and discovered together. It was noon when he reached the office.
+
+From the boy at the entrance he learned that Mr. Marrineal had come in.
+Doubtless he would find a summons on his desk. None was there. Perhaps
+Marrineal would come to him. He waited. Nothing. Taking up the routine
+of the day, he turned to his proofs, with a view to laying out his
+schedule.
+
+The top one was his editorial on the strikers' cause.
+
+Across it was blue-penciled the word "Killed."
+
+Banneker snatched up the morning's issue. The editorial was not there.
+In its place he read, from the top of the column: "And though all the
+winds of doctrine blow"--and so on, to the close of Milton's proud
+challenge, followed by:
+
+"Would You Let Your Baby Drink Carbolic?"
+
+For the strike editorial had been substituted one of Banneker's typical
+"mother-fetchers," as he termed them, very useful in their way, and
+highly approved by the local health authorities. This one was on the
+subject of pure milk. Its association with the excerpt from the
+Areopagitica (which, having been set for a standing head, was not cut
+out by the "Killed") set the final touch of irony upon the matter. Even
+in his fury Banneker laughed.
+
+He next considered the handwriting of the blue-penciled monosyllable. It
+was not Marrineal's blunt, backhand script. Whose was it? Haring's?
+Trailing the proof in his hand he went to the business manager's room.
+
+"Did you kill this?"
+
+"Yes." Haring got to his feet, white and shaking. "For God's sake, Mr.
+Banneker--"
+
+"I'm not going to hurt you--yet. By what right did you do it?"
+
+"Orders."
+
+"Marrineal's?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+With no further word, Banneker strode to the owner's office, pushed open
+the door, and entered. Marrineal looked up, slightly frowning.
+
+"Did you kill this editorial?"
+
+Marrineal's frown changed to a smile. "Sit down, Mr. Banneker."
+
+"Marrineal, did you kill my editorial?"
+
+"Isn't your tone a trifle peremptory, for an employee?"
+
+"It won't take more than five seconds for me to cease to be an
+employee," said Banneker grimly.
+
+"Ah? I trust you're not thinking of resigning. By the way, some reporter
+called on me last week to confirm a rumor that you were about to resign.
+Let me see; what paper? Ah; yes; it wasn't a newspaper, at least, not
+exactly. The Searchlight. I told her--it happened to be a woman--that
+the story was quite absurd."
+
+Something in the nature of a cold trickle seemed to be flowing between
+Banneker's brain and his tongue. He said with effort, "Will you be good
+enough to answer my question?"
+
+"Certainly. Mr. Banneker, that was an ill-advised editorial. Or, rather,
+an ill-timed one. I didn't wish it published until we had time to talk
+it over."
+
+"We could have talked it over yesterday."
+
+"But I understood that you were busy with callers yesterday. That
+charming Mrs. Eyre, who, by the way, is interested in the strikers,
+isn't she? Or was it the day before yesterday that she was here?"
+
+The Searchlight! And now Io Eyre! No doubt of what Marrineal meant. The
+cold trickle had passed down Banneker's spine, and settled at his knees
+making them quite unreliable. Inexplicably it still remained to paralyze
+his tongue.
+
+"We're reasonable men, you and I, Mr. Banneker," pursued Marrineal in
+his quiet, detached tones. "This is the first time I have ever
+interfered. You must do me the justice to admit that. Probably it will
+be the last. But in this case it was really necessary. Shall we talk it
+over later?"
+
+"Yes," said Banneker listlessly.
+
+In the hallway he ran into somebody, who cursed him, and then said, oh,
+he hadn't noticed who it was; Pop Edmonds. Edmonds disappeared into
+Marrineal's office. Banneker regained his desk and sat staring at the
+killed proof. He thought vaguely that he could appreciate the sensation
+of a man caught by an octopus. Yet Marrineal didn't look like an
+octopus.... What did he look like? What was that subtle resemblance
+which had eluded him in the first days of their acquaintanceship? That
+emanation of chill quietude; those stagnant eyes?
+
+He had it now! It dated back to his boyhood days. A crawling
+terror which, having escaped from a menagerie, had taken refuge
+in a pool, and there fixed its grip upon an unfortunate calf, and
+dragged--dragged--dragged the shrieking creature, until it went under.
+A crocodile.
+
+His reverie was broken by the irruption of Russell Edmonds. An inch of
+the stem of the veteran's dainty little pipe was clenched firmly between
+his teeth; but there was no bowl.
+
+"Where's the rest of your pipe?" asked Banneker, stupefied by this
+phenomenon.
+
+"I've resigned," said Edmonds.
+
+"God! I wish I could," muttered Banneker.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Explanations were now due to two people, Io and Willis Enderby. As to
+Io, Banneker felt an inner conviction of strength. Hopeless though he
+was of making his course appear in any other light than that of
+surrender, nevertheless he could tell himself that it was really done
+for her, to protect her name. But he could not tell her this. He knew
+too well what the answer of that high and proud spirit of hers would be;
+that if their anomalous relationship was hampering his freedom, dividing
+his conscience, the only course of honor was for them to stop seeing
+each other at no matter what cost of suffering; let Banneker resign, if
+that were his rightful course, and tell The Searchlight to do its worst.
+Yes; such would be Io's idea of playing the game. He could not force it.
+He must argue with her, if at all, on the plea of expediency. And to her
+forthright and uncompromising fearlessness, expediency was in itself the
+poorest of expedients. At the last, there was her love for him to appeal
+to. But would Io love where she could not trust?... He turned from that
+thought.
+
+As an alternative subject for consideration, Willis Enderby was hardly
+more assuring and even more perplexing. True, Banneker owed no
+explanation to him; but for his own satisfaction of mind he must have it
+out with the lawyer. He had a profound admiration for Enderby and knew
+that this was in a measure reciprocated by a patent and almost wistful
+liking, curious in a person as reserved as Enderby. He cherished a vague
+impression that somehow Enderby would understand. Or, at least, that he
+would want to understand. Consequently he was not surprised when the
+lawyer called him up and asked him to come that evening to the Enderby
+house. He went at once to the point.
+
+"Banneker, do you know anything of an advertisement by the striking
+garment-workers, which The Patriot first accepted and afterward refused
+to print?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Are you at liberty to tell me why?"
+
+"In confidence."
+
+"That is implied."
+
+"Mr. Marrineal ordered it killed."
+
+"Ah! It was Marrineal himself. The advocate of the Common People! The
+friend of Labor!"
+
+"Admirable campaign material," observed Banneker composedly, "if it were
+possible to use it."
+
+"Which, of course, it isn't; being confidential," Enderby capped the
+thought. "I hear that Russell Edmonds has resigned."
+
+"That is true."
+
+"In consequence of the rejected advertisement?"
+
+Banneker sat silent so long that his host began: "Perhaps I shouldn't
+have asked that--"
+
+"I'm going to tell you exactly what occurred," said Banneker quietly,
+and outlined the episode of the editorial, suppressing, however,
+Marrineal's covert threat as to Io and The Searchlight. "And _I_ haven't
+resigned. So you see what manner of man I am," he concluded defiantly.
+
+"You mean a coward? I don't think it."
+
+"I wish I were sure!" burst out Banneker.
+
+"Ah? That's hard, when the soul doesn't know itself. Is it money?" The
+crisp, clear voice had softened to a great kindliness. "Are you in debt,
+my boy?"
+
+"No. Yes; I am. I'd forgotten. That doesn't matter."
+
+"Apparently not." The lawyer's heavy brows went up, "More serious than
+money," he commented.
+
+Banneker recognized the light of suspicion, comprehension, confirmation
+in the keen and fine visage turned upon him. Enderby continued:
+
+"Well, there are matters that can be talked of and other matters that
+can't be talked of. But if you ever feel that you want the advice of a
+man who has seen human nature on a good many sides, and has learned not
+to judge too harshly of it, come to me. The only counsel I ever give
+gratis to those who can pay for it"--he smiled faintly--"is the kind
+that may be too valuable to sell."
+
+"But I'd like to know," said Banneker slowly, "why you don't think me a
+yellow dog for not resigning."
+
+"Because, in your heart you don't think yourself one. Speaking of that
+interesting species, I suppose you know that your principal is working
+for the governorship."
+
+"Will he get the nomination?"
+
+"Quite possibly. Unless I can beat him for it. I'll tell you privately I
+may be the opposing candidate. Not that the party loves me any too much;
+but I'm at least respectable, fairly strong up-State, and they'll take
+what they have to in order to beat Marrineal, who is forcing himself
+down their throats."
+
+"A pleasant prospect for me," gloomed Banneker. "I'll have to fight
+you."
+
+"Go ahead and fight," returned the other heartily. "It won't be the
+first time."
+
+"At least, I want you to know that it'll be fair fight."
+
+"No 'Junior-called-me-Bob' trick this time?" smiled Enderby.
+
+Banneker flushed and winced. "No," he answered. "Next time I'll be sure
+of my facts. Good-night and good luck. I hope you beat us."
+
+As he turned the corner into Fifth Avenue a thought struck him. He made
+the round of the block, came up the side of the street opposite, and met
+a stroller having all the ear-marks of the private detective. To think
+of a man of Judge Enderby's character being continuously "spotted" for
+the mean design of an Ely Ives filled Banneker with a sick fury. His
+first thought was to return and tell Enderby. But to what purpose? After
+all, what possible harm could Ives's plotting and sneaking do to a man
+of the lawyer's rectitude? Banneker returned to The House With Three
+Eyes and his unceasing work.
+
+The interview with Enderby had lightened his spirit. The older man's
+candor, his tolerance, his clear charity of judgment, his sympathetic
+comprehension were soothing and reassuring. But there was another
+trouble yet to be faced. It was three days since the editorial appeared
+and he had heard no word from Io. Each noon when he called on the
+long-distance 'phone, she had been out, an unprecedented change from her
+eager waiting to hear the daily voice on the wire. Should he write? No;
+it was too difficult and dangerous for that. He must talk it out with
+her, face to face, when the time came.
+
+Meantime there was Russell Edmonds. He found the veteran cleaning out
+his desk preparatory to departure.
+
+"You can't know how it hurts to see you go, Pop," he said sadly. "What's
+your next step?"
+
+"The Sphere. They want me to do a special series, out around the
+country."
+
+"Aren't they pretty conservative for your ideas?"
+
+Edmonds, ruminating over a pipe even smaller and more fragile than the
+one sacrificed to his rage and disgust, the day of his resignation, gave
+utterance to a profound truth:
+
+"What's the difference whether a newspaper is radical or conservative,
+Ban, if it tells the truth? That's the whole test and touchstone; to
+give news honestly. The rest will take care of itself. Compared to us
+The Sphere crowd are conservative. But they're honest. And they're not
+afraid."
+
+"Yes. They're honest, and not afraid--because they don't have to be,"
+said Banneker, in a tone so somber that his friend said quickly:
+
+"I didn't mean that for you, son."
+
+"Well, if I've gone wrong, I've got my punishment before me," pursued
+the other with increased gloom. "Having to work for Marrineal and
+further his plans, after knowing him as I know him now--that's a refined
+species of retribution, Pop."
+
+"I know; I know. You've got to stick and wait your chance, and hold your
+following until you can get your own newspaper. Then," said Russell
+Edmonds with the glory of an inspired vision shining in his weary eyes,
+"you can tell 'em all to go to hell. Oh, for a paper of our own kind
+that's really independent; that don't care a hoot for anything except to
+get the news and get it straight, and interpret it straight; that don't
+have to be afraid of anything but not being honest!"
+
+"Pop," said Banneker, spiritlessly, "what's the use? How do we know we
+aren't chasing a rainbow? How do we know people _want_ an honest paper
+or would know one if they saw it?"
+
+"My God, son! Don't talk like that," implored the veteran. "That's the
+one heresy for which men in our game are eternally damned--and deserve
+it."
+
+"All right. I know it. I don't mean it, Pop. I'm not adopting
+Marrineal's creed. Not just yet."
+
+"By the way, Marrineal was asking for you this morning."
+
+"Was he? I'll look him up. Perhaps he's going to fire me. I wish he
+would."
+
+"Catch him!" grunted the other, reverting to his task. "More likely
+going to raise your salary."
+
+As between the two surmises, Edmonds's was the nearer the truth. Urbane
+as always, the proprietor of The Patriot waved his editor to a seat,
+remarking, "I hope you'll sit down this time," the slightly ironical
+tinge to the final words being, in the course of the interview, his only
+reference to their previous encounter. Wondering dully whether Marrineal
+could have any idea of the murderous hatred which he inspired, Banneker
+took the nearest chair and waited. After some discussion as to the
+policy of the paper in respect to the strike, which was on the point of
+settlement by compromise, Marrineal set his delicate fingers point to
+point and said:
+
+"I want to talk to you about the future."
+
+"I'm listening," returned Banneker uncompromisingly.
+
+"Your ultimate ambition is to own and control a newspaper of your own,
+isn't it?"
+
+"Why do you think that?"
+
+Marrineal's slow, sparse smile hardly moved his lips. "It's in character
+that you should. What else is there for you?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Have you ever thought of The Patriot?"
+
+Involuntarily Banneker straightened in his chair. "Is The Patriot in the
+market?"
+
+"Hardly. That isn't what I have in mind."
+
+"Will you kindly be more explicit?"
+
+"Mr. Banneker, I intend to be the next governor of this State."
+
+"I might quote a proverb on that point," returned the editor
+unpleasantly.
+
+"Yes; and I might cap your cup-and-lip proverb with another as to the
+effect of money as a stimulus in a horse-race."
+
+"I have no doubts as to your financial capacity."
+
+"My organization is building up through the State. I've got the country
+newspapers in a friendly, not to say expectant, mood. There's just one
+man I'm afraid of."
+
+"Judge Enderby?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"I should think he would be an admirable nominee."
+
+"As an individual you are at liberty to hold such opinions as you
+please. As editor of The Patriot--"
+
+"I am to support The Patriot candidate and owner. Did you send for me to
+tell me that, Mr. Marrineal? I'm not altogether an idiot, please
+remember."
+
+"You are a friend of Judge Enderby."
+
+"If I am, that is a personal, not a political matter. No matter how much
+I might prefer to see him the candidate of the party"--Banneker spoke
+with cold deliberation--"I should not stultify myself or the paper by
+supporting him against the paper's owner."
+
+"That is satisfactory." Marrineal swallowed the affront without a gulp.
+"To continue. If I am elected governor, nothing on earth can prevent my
+being the presidential nominee two years later."
+
+Equally appalled and amused by the enormous egotism of the man thus
+suddenly revealed, Banneker studied him in silence.
+
+"Nothing in the world," repeated the other. "I have the political game
+figured out to an exact science. I know how to shape my policies, how to
+get the money backing I need, how to handle the farmer and labor. It may
+be news to you to know that I now control eight of the leading farm
+journals of the country and half a dozen labor organs. However, this is
+beside the question. My point with you is this. With my election as
+governor, my chief interest in The Patriot ceases. The paper will have
+set me on the road; I'll do the rest. Reserving only the right to
+determine certain very broad policies, I purpose to turn over the
+control of The Patriot to you."
+
+"To me!" said Banneker, thunderstruck.
+
+"Provided I am elected governor," said Marrineal. "Which depends
+largely--yes, almost entirely--on the elimination of Judge Enderby."
+
+"What are you asking me to do?" demanded Banneker, genuinely puzzled.
+
+"Absolutely nothing. As my right-hand man on the paper, you are entitled
+to know my plans, particularly as they affect you. I can add that when I
+reach the White House"--this with sublime confidence--"the paper will be
+for sale and you may have the option on it."
+
+Banneker's brain seemed filled with flashes of light, as he returned to
+his desk. He sat there, deep-slumped in his chair, thinking, planning,
+suspecting, plumbing for the depths of Marrineal's design, and above all
+filled with an elate ambition. Not that he believed for a moment in
+Marrineal's absurd and megalomaniacal visions of the presidency. But the
+governorship; that indeed was possible enough; and that would mean a
+free hand for Banneker for the term. What might he not do with The
+Patriot in that time!... An insistent and obtrusive disturbance to his
+profound cogitation troubled him. What was it that seemed to be setting
+forth a claim to divide his attention? Ah, the telephone. He thrust it
+aside, but it would not be silenced. Well ... what.... The discreet
+voice of his man said that a telegram had come for him. All right (with
+impatience); read it over the wire. The message, thus delivered in
+mechanical tones, struck from his mind the lesser considerations which a
+moment before had glowed with such shifting and troublous glory.
+
+D. died this morning. Will write. I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Work, incessant and of savage ardor, now filled Banneker's life. Once
+more he immersed himself in it as assuagement to the emptiness of long
+days and the yearning of longer nights. For, in the three months since
+Delavan Eyre's death, Banneker had seen Io but once, and then very
+briefly. Instead of subduing her loveliness, the mourning garb enhanced
+and enriched it, like a jet setting to a glowing jewel. More
+irresistibly than ever she was
+
+"............ that Lady Beauty in whose praise
+The voice and hand shake still"--
+
+but there was something about her withdrawn, aloof of spirit, which he
+dared not override or even challenge. She spoke briefly of Eyre, without
+any pretense of great sorrow, dwelling with a kindled eye on that which
+she had found admirable in him; his high and steadfast courage through
+atrocious suffering until darkness settled down on his mind. Her own
+plans were definite; she was going away with the elder Mrs. Eyre to a
+rest resort. Of The Patriot and its progress she talked with interest,
+but her questions were general and did not touch upon the matter of the
+surrendered editorial. Was she purposely avoiding it or had it passed
+from her mind in the stress of more personal events? Banneker would have
+liked to know, but deemed it better not to ask. Once he tried to elicit
+from her some indication of when she would marry him; but from this
+decision she exhibited a covert and inexplicable shrinking. This he
+might attribute, if he chose, to that innate and sound formalism which
+would always lead her to observe the rules of the game; if from no
+special respect for them as such, then out of deference to the
+prejudices of others. Nevertheless, he experienced a gnawing
+uncertainty, amounting to a half-confessed dread.
+
+Yet, at the moment of parting, she came to his arms, clung to him, gave
+him her lips passionately, longingly; bade him write, for his letters
+would be all that there was to keep life radiant for her....
+
+Through some perverse kink in his mental processes, he found it
+difficult to write to Io, in the succeeding weeks and months, during
+which she devotedly accompanied the failing Mrs. Eyre from rest cure to
+sanitarium, about his work on The Patriot. That interplay of interest
+between them in his editorial plans and purposes, which had so
+stimulated and inspired him, was checked. The mutual current had ceased
+to flash; at least, so he felt. Had the wretched affair of his forfeited
+promise in the matter of the strike announcement destroyed one bond
+between them? Even were this true, there were other bonds, of the spirit
+and therefore irrefragable, to hold her to him; thus he comforted his
+anxious hopes.
+
+Because their community of interest in his work had lapsed, Banneker
+found the savor oozing out of his toil. Monotony sang its dispiriting
+drone in his ears. He flung himself into polo with reawakened vim, and
+roused the hopes of The Retreat for the coming season, until an unlucky
+spill broke two ribs and dislocated a shoulder. Restless in the physical
+idleness of his mending days, he took to drifting about in the whirls
+and ripples and backwaters of the city life, out of which wanderings
+grew a new series of the "Vagrancies," more quaint and delicate and
+trenchant than the originals because done with a pen under perfected
+mastery, without losing anything of the earlier simplicity and sympathy.
+In this work, Banneker found relief; and in Io's delight in it, a
+reflected joy that lent fresh impetus to his special genius. The Great
+Gaines enthusiastically accepted the new sketches for his magazine.
+
+Whatever ebbing of fervor from his daily task Banneker might feel, his
+public was conscious of no change for the worse. Letters of
+commendation, objection, denunciation, and hysteria, most convincing
+evidence of an editor's sway over the public mind, increased weekly. So,
+also, did the circulation of The Patriot, and its advertising revenue.
+Its course in the garment strike had satisfied the heavy local
+advertisers of its responsibility and repentance for sins past; they
+testified, by material support, to their appreciation. Banneker's
+strongly pro-labor editorials they read with the mental commentary that
+probably The Patriot had to do that kind of thing to hold its
+circulation; but it could be depended upon to be "right" when the pinch
+came. Marrineal would see to that.
+
+Since the episode of the killed proof, Marrineal had pursued a hands-off
+policy with regard to the editorial page. The labor editorials suited
+him admirably. They were daily winning back to the paper the support of
+Marrineal's pet "common people" who had been alienated by its course in
+the strike, for McClintick and other leaders had been sedulously
+spreading the story of the rejected strikers' advertisement. But, it
+appeared, Marrineal's estimate of the public's memory was correct: "They
+never remember." Banneker's skillful and vehement preachments against
+Wall Street, money domination of the masses, and the like, went far to
+wipe out the inherent anti-labor record of the paper and its owner.
+Hardly a day passed that some working-man's union or club did not pass
+resolutions of confidence and esteem for Tertius C. Marrineal and The
+Patriot. It amused Marrineal almost as much as it gratified him. As a
+political asset it was invaluable. His one cause of complaint against
+the editorial page was that it would not attack Judge Enderby, except on
+general political or economic principles. And the forte of The Patriot
+in attack did not consist in polite and amenable forensics. Its readers
+were accustomed to the methods of the prize-ring rather than the
+debating platform. However, Marrineal made up for his editorial writer's
+lukewarmness, by the vigor of his own attacks upon Enderby. For, by
+early summer, it became evident that the nomination (and probable
+election) lay between these two opponents. Enderby was organizing a
+strong campaign. So competent and unbiased an observer of political
+events as Russell Edmonds, now on The Sphere, believed that Marrineal
+would be beaten. Shrewd, notwithstanding his egotism, Marrineal
+entertained a growing dread of this outcome himself. Through roundabout
+channels, he let his chief editorial writer understand that, when the
+final onset was timed, The Patriot's editorial page would be expected to
+lead the charge with the "spear that knows no brother." Banneker would
+appreciate that his own interests, almost as much as his chief's, were
+committed to the overthrow of Willis Enderby.
+
+It was not a happy time for the Editor of The Patriot.
+
+Happiness promised for the near future, however. Wearied of chasing a
+phantom hope of health from spot to spot, the elder Mrs. Eyre had
+finally elected to settle down for the summer at her Westchester place.
+For obvious reasons, Io did not wish Banneker to come there. But she
+would plan to see him in town. Only, they must be very discreet; perhaps
+even to the extent of having a third person dine with them, her
+half-brother Archie, or Esther Forbes. Any one, any time, anywhere,
+Banneker wrote back, provided only he could see her again!
+
+The day that she came to town, having arranged to meet Banneker for
+dinner with Esther, fate struck from another and unexpected quarter.
+Such was Banneker's appearance when he came forward to greet her that Io
+cried out involuntarily, asking if he were ill.
+
+"_I_'m not," he answered briefly. Then, with a forced smile of appeal to
+the third member, "Do you mind, Esther, if I talk to Io on a private
+matter?"
+
+"Go as near as you like," returned that understanding young person
+promptly. "I'm consumed with a desire to converse with Elsie Maitland,
+who is dining in that very farthest corner. Back in an hour."
+
+"It's Camilla Van Arsdale," said Banneker as the girl left.
+
+"You've heard from her?"
+
+"From Mindle who looks after my shack there. He says she's very ill.
+I've got to go out there at once."
+
+"Oh, Ban!"
+
+"I know, dearest, and after all these endless weeks of separation. But
+you wouldn't have me do otherwise. Would you?"
+
+"Of course not," she said indignantly. "When do you start?"
+
+"At midnight."
+
+"And your work?"
+
+"I'll send my stuff in by wire."
+
+"How long?"
+
+"I can't tell until I get there."
+
+"Ban, you mustn't go," she said with a changed tone.
+
+"Not go? To Miss Camilla? There's nothing--"
+
+"I'll go."
+
+"You!"
+
+"Why not? If she's seriously ill, she needs a woman, not a man with
+her."
+
+"But--but, Io, you don't even like her."
+
+"Heaven give you understanding, Ban," she retorted with a bewitching
+pretext of enforced patience. "She's a woman, and she was good to me in
+my trouble. And if that weren't enough, she's your friend whom you
+love."
+
+"I oughtn't to let you," he hesitated.
+
+"You've got to let me. I'd go, anyway. Get Esther back. She must help me
+pack. Get me a drawing-room if you can. If not, I'll take your berth."
+
+"You're going to leave to-night?"
+
+"Of course. What would you suppose?" She gave him her lustrous smile.
+"I'll love it," she said softly, "because it's partly for you."
+
+The rest of the evening was consumed for Banneker in writing and wiring,
+arranging reservations through his influence with a local railroad
+official whom he pried loose from a rubber of bridge at his club; while
+Io and Esther, dinnerless except for a hasty box of sandwiches, were
+back in Westchester packing and explaining to Mrs. Eyre. When the three
+reconvened in Io's drawing-room the traveler was prepared for an
+indefinite stay.
+
+"If her condition is critical I'll wire for you," promised lo.
+"Otherwise you mustn't come."
+
+With that he must make shift to be content; that and a swift clasp of
+her arms, a clinging pressure of her lips, and her soft "Good-bye. Oh,
+good-bye! Love me every minute while I'm gone," before the tactful
+Esther Forbes, somewhat miscast in the temporary role of Propriety,
+returned from a conversation with the porter to say that they really
+must get off that very instant or be carried westward to the eternal
+scandal of society which would not understand a triangular elopement.
+
+Loneliness no longer beset Banneker, even though Io was farther
+separated from him than before in the unimportant reckoning of
+geographical miles; for now she was on his errand. He held her by the
+continuous thought of a vital common interest. In place of the former
+bereavement of spirit was a new and consuming anxiety for Camilla Van
+Arsdale. Io's first telegram from Manzanita went far to appease that.
+Miss Van Arsdale had suffered a severe shock, but was now on the road to
+recovery: Io would stay indefinitely: there was no reason for Banneker's
+coming out for the present: in fact, the patient definitely prohibited
+it: letter followed.
+
+The letter, when it came, forced a cry, as of physical pain, from
+Banneker's throat. Camilla Van Arsdale was going blind. Some obscure
+reflex of the heart trouble had affected the blood supply of the eyes,
+and the shock of discovering this had reacted upon the heart. There was
+no immediate danger; but neither was there ultimate hope of restored
+vision. So much the eminent oculist whom Io had brought from Angelica
+City told her.
+
+Your first thought (wrote Io) will be to come out here at once.
+Don't. It will be much better for you to wait until she needs you more;
+until you can spend two or three weeks or a month with her. Now I
+can help her through the days by reading to her and walking with her.
+You don't know how happy it makes me to be here where I first knew
+you, to live over every event of those days. Your movable shack is
+almost as it used to be, though there is no absurd steel boat outside
+for me to stumble into.
+
+Would you believe it; the new station-agent has a Sears-Roebuck
+catalogue! I borrowed it of him to read. What, oh, what should a
+sensible person--yes, I am a sensible person, Ban, outside of my love
+for you--and I'd scorn to be sensible about that--Where was I?
+Oh, yes; what should a sensible person find in these simple words
+"Two horse-power, reliable and smooth-running, economical of gasoline,"
+and so on, to make her want to cry? Ban, send me a copy of
+"The Voices."
+
+He sent her "The Undying Voices" and other books to read, and long,
+impassioned letters, and other letters to be read to Camilla Van Arsdale
+whose waning vision must be spared in every possible way.
+
+Hour after hour (wrote Io) she sits at the piano and makes her wonderful
+music, and tries to write it down. There I can be of very little help to
+her. Then she will go back into her room and lie on the big couch near
+the window where the young, low pines brush the wall, with Cousin Billy's
+photograph in her hands, and be so deathly quiet that I sometimes get
+frightened and creep up to the door to peer in and be sure that she is
+all right. To-day when I looked in at the door I heard her say, quite
+softly to herself: "I shall die without seeing his face again." I had to
+hold my breath and run out into the forest. Ban, I didn't know that it
+was in me to cry so--not since that night on the train when I left
+you.... This all seems so wicked and wrong and--yes--wasteful. Think of
+what these two splendid people could be to each other! She craves him so,
+Ban; just the sound of his voice, a word from him; but she won't break
+her own word. Sometimes I think I shall do it. Write me all you can about
+him, Ban, and send papers: all the political matter. You can't imagine
+what it is to her only to hear about him.
+
+So Banneker had clippings collected, wrote a little daily political
+bulletin for Io; even went out of his way editorially to pay an
+occasional handsome tribute to Judge Enderby's personal character,
+whilst adducing cogent reasons why, as the "Wall Street and traction
+candidate," he should be defeated. But his personal opinion, expressed
+for the behoof of his correspondents in Manzanita, was that he probably
+could not be defeated; that his brilliant and aggressive campaign was
+forcing Marrineal to a defensive and losing fight.
+
+"It is a great asset in politics," wrote Banneker to Miss Camilla, "to
+have nothing to hide or explain. If we're going to be licked, there is
+no man in the world whom I'd as gladly have win as Judge Enderby."
+
+All this, of course, in the manner of one having interesting political
+news of no special import to the receiver of the news, to deliver; and
+quite without suggestion of any knowledge regarding her personal concern
+in the matter.
+
+But between the lines of Io's letters, full of womanly pity for Camilla
+Van Arsdale, of resentment for her thwarted and hopeless longing,
+Banneker thought to discern a crystallizing resolution. It would be so
+like Io's imperious temper to take the decision into her own hands, to
+bring about a meeting between the long-sundered lovers, to cast into the
+lonely and valiant woman's darkening life one brief and splendid glow of
+warmth and radiance. For to Io, a summons for Willis Enderby to come
+would be no more than a defiance of the conventions. She knew nothing of
+the ruinous vengeance awaiting any breach of faith on his part, at the
+hands of a virulent and embittered wife; she did not even know that his
+coming would be a specific breach of faith, for Banneker, withheld by
+his promise of secrecy to Russell Edmonds, had never told her. Nor had
+he betrayed to her the espionage under which Enderby constantly moved;
+he shrank, naturally, from adding so ignoble an item to the weight of
+disrepute under which The Patriot already lay, in her mind. Sooner or
+later he must face the question from her of why he had not resigned
+rather than put his honor in pawn to the baser uses of the newspaper and
+its owner's ambitions. To that question there could be no answer. He
+could not throw the onus of it upon her, by revealing to her that the
+necessity of protecting her name against the befoulment of The
+Searchlight was the compelling motive of his passivity. That was not
+within Banneker's code.
+
+What, meantime, should be his course? Should he write and warn Io about
+Enderby? Could he make himself explicable without explaining too much?
+After all, what right had he to assume that she would gratuitously
+intermeddle in the disastrous fates of others? A rigorous respect for
+the rights of privacy was written into the rules of the game as she
+played it. He argued, with logic irrefutable as it was unconvincing,
+that this alone ought to stay her hand; yet he knew, by the power of
+their own yearning, one for the other, that in the great cause of love,
+whether for themselves or for Camilla Van Arsdale and Willis Enderby,
+she would resistlessly follow the impulse born and matured of her own
+passion. Had she not once before denied love ... and to what end of
+suffering and bitter enlightenment and long waiting not yet ended! Yes;
+she would send for Willis Enderby.
+
+Thus, with the insight of love, he read the heart of the loved one.
+Self-interest lifted its specious voice now, in contravention. If she
+did send, and if Judge Enderby went to Camilla Van Arsdale, as Banneker
+knew surely that he would, and if Ely Ives's spies discovered it, the
+way was made plain and peaceful for Banneker. For, in that case, the
+blunderbuss of blackmail would be held to Enderby's head: he must,
+perforce, retire from the race on whatever pretext he might devise,
+under threat of a scandal which, in any case, would drive him out of
+public life. Marrineal would be nominated, probably elected; control of
+The Patriot would pass into Banneker's hands; The Searchlight would thus
+be held at bay until he and Io were married, for he could not really
+doubt that she would marry him, even though there lay between them an
+unexplained doubt and a seeming betrayal; and he could remould the
+distorted and debased policies of The Patriot to his heart's desire of
+an honest newspaper fearlessly presenting and supporting truth as he saw
+it.
+
+All this at no price of treachery; merely by leaving matters which were,
+in fact, no concern of his, to the arbitrament of whatever fates might
+concern themselves with such troublous matters; it was just a matter of
+minding his own business and assuming that Io Eyre would do likewise. So
+argued self-interest, plausible, persuasive. He went to bed with the
+argument still unsettled, and, because it seethed in his mind, reached
+out to his reading-stand to cool his brain with the limpid philosophies
+of Stevenson's "Virginibus Puerisque."
+
+"The cruellest lies are often told in silence," he read--the very
+letters of the words seemed to scorch his eyes with prophetic fires. "A
+man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth and yet
+come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how
+many loves have perished, because from--"
+
+Banneker sprang from his bed, shaking. He dressed himself, consulted his
+watch, wrote a brief, urgent line to Io, after 'phoning for a taxi;
+carried it to the station himself, assured, though only by a few
+minutes' margin, of getting it into the latest Western mail, returned to
+bed and slept heavily and dreamlessly.... Not over the bodies of a loved
+friend and an honored foe would Errol Banneker climb to a place of
+safety for Io and triumph for himself.
+
+Mail takes four days to reach Manzanita from New York.
+
+Through the hot months The House With Three Eyes had kept its hospitable
+orbs darkened of Saturday nights. Therefore, Banneker was free to spend
+his week-ends at The Retreat, and his Friday and Saturday mail were
+forwarded to the nearest country post-office, whither he sent for it, or
+picked it up on his way back to town. It was on Saturday evening that he
+received the letter from Io, saying that she had written to Willis
+Enderby to come on to Manzanita and let the eyes, for which he had
+filled life's whole horizon since first they met his, look on him once
+more before darkness shut down on them forever. Her letter had crossed
+Banneker's.
+
+"I know that he will come," she wrote. "He must come. It would be too
+cruel ... and I know his heart."
+
+Eight-thirty-six in the evening! And Io's letter to Enderby must have
+reached him in New York that morning. He would be taking the fast train
+for the West leaving at eleven. Banneker sent in a call on the
+long-distance 'phone for Judge Enderby's house. The twelve-minute wait
+was interminable to his grilling impatience. At length the placid tones
+of Judge Enderby's man responded. Yes; the Judge was there. No; he
+couldn't be disturbed on any account; very much occupied.
+
+"This is Mr. Banneker. I must speak to him for just a moment. It's
+vital."
+
+"Very sorry, sir," responded the unmoved voice. "But Judge Enderby's
+orders was absloot. Not to be disturbed on any account."
+
+"Tell him that Mr. Banneker has something of the utmost importance to
+say to him before he leaves."
+
+"Sorry, sir. It'd be as much as my place is worth."
+
+Raging, Banneker nevertheless managed to control himself. "He is leaving
+on a trip to-night, is he not?"
+
+After some hesitation the voice replied austerely: "I believe he is,
+sir. Good-bye."
+
+Banneker cursed Judge Enderby for a fool of rigid methods. It would be
+his own fault. Let him go to his destruction, then. He, Banneker, had
+done all that was possible. He sank into a sort of lethargy, brooding
+over the fateful obstacles which had obstructed him in his
+self-sacrificing pursuit of the right, as against his own dearest
+interests. He might telegraph Io; but to what purpose? An idea flashed
+upon him; why not telegraph Enderby at his home? He composed message
+after message; tore them up as saying too much or too little; ultimately
+devised one that seemed to be sufficient, and hurried to his car, to
+take it in to the local operator. When he reached the village office it
+was closed. He hurried to the home of the operator. Out. After two false
+trails, he located the man at a church sociable, and got the message
+off. It was then nearly ten o'clock. He had wasted precious moments in
+brooding. Well, he had done all and more than could have been asked of
+him, let the event be what it would.
+
+His night was a succession of forebodings, dreamed or half-wakeful.
+Spent and dispirited, he rose at an hour quite out of accord with the
+habits of The Retreat, sped his car to New York, and put his inquiry to
+Judge Enderby's man.
+
+Yes; the telegram had arrived. In time? No; it was delivered twenty
+minutes after the Judge had left for his train.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Sun-lulled into immobility, the desert around the lonely little station
+of Manzanita smouldered and slumbered. Nothing was visibly changed from
+five years before, when Banneker left, except that another agent, a
+disillusioned-appearing young man with a corn-colored mustache, came
+forth to meet the slow noon local, chuffing pantingly in under a bad
+head of alkali-water steam. A lone passenger, obviously Eastern in mien
+and garb, disembarked, and was welcomed by a dark, beautiful,
+harassed-looking girl who had just ridden in on a lathered pony. The
+agent, a hopeful soul, ambled within earshot.
+
+"How is she?" he heard the man say, with the intensity of a single
+thought, as the girl took his hand. Her reply came, encouragingly.
+
+"As brave as ever. Stronger, a little, I think."
+
+"And she--the eyes?"
+
+"She will be able to see you; but not clearly."
+
+"How long--" began the man, but his voice broke. He shook in the bitter
+heat as if from some inner and deadly chill.
+
+"Nobody can tell. She hoards her sight."
+
+"To see me?" he cried eagerly. "Have you told her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Is that wise?" he questioned. "The shock--"
+
+"I think that she suspects; she senses your coming. Her face has the
+rapt expression that I have seen only when she plays. Has had since you
+started. Yet there is no possible way in which she could have learned."
+
+"That is very wonderful," said the stranger, in a hushed voice. Then,
+hesitantly, "What shall I do, Io?"
+
+"Nothing," came the girl's clear answer. "Go to her, that is all."
+
+Another horse was led forward and the pair rode away through the
+glimmering heat.
+
+It was a silent ride for Willis Enderby and Io. The girl was still a
+little daunted at her own temerity in playing at fate with destinies as
+big as these. As for Enderby, there was no room within his consciousness
+for any other thought than that he was going to see Camilla Van Arsdale
+again.
+
+He heard her before he saw her. The rhythms of a song, a tender and gay
+little lyric which she had sung to crowded drawing-rooms, but for him
+alone, long years past, floated out to him, clear and pure, through the
+clear, pure balm of the forest. He slipped quietly from his horse and
+saw her, through the window, seated at her piano.
+
+Unchanged! To his vision the years had left no impress on her. And Io,
+at his side, saw too and marveled at the miracle. For the waiting woman
+looked out of eyes as clear and untroubled as those of a child, softened
+only with the questioning wistfulness of darkening vision. Suffering and
+fortitude had etherealized the face back to youth, and that mysterious
+expectancy which had possessed her for days had touched the curves of
+her mouth to a wonderful tenderness, the softness of her cheek to a
+quickening bloom. She turned her head slowly toward the door. Her lips
+parted with the pressure of swift, small breaths.
+
+Io felt the man's tense body, pressed against her as if for support,
+convulsed with a tremor which left him powerless.
+
+"I have brought some one to you, Miss Camilla," she said clearly: and in
+the same instant of speaking, her word was crossed by the other's call:
+
+"Willis!"
+
+Sightless though she was, as Io knew, for anything not close before her
+eyes, she came to him, as inevitably, as unerringly as steel to the
+magnet, and was folded in his arms. Io heard his deep voice, vibrant
+between desolation and passion:
+
+"Fifteen years! My God, fifteen years!"
+
+Io ran away into the forest, utterly glad with the joy of which she had
+been minister.
+
+Willis Enderby stayed five days at Manzanita; five days of ecstasy, of
+perfect communion, bought from the rapacious years at the price of his
+broken word. For that he was willing to pay any price exacted, asking
+only that he might pay it alone, that the woman of his long and
+self-denying love might not be called upon to meet any smallest part of
+the debt. She walked with him under the pines: he read to her: and there
+were long hours together over the piano. It was then that there was
+born, out of Camilla Van Arsdale's love and faith and coming abnegation,
+her holy and deathless song for the dead, to the noble words of the
+"Dominus Illuminatio Mea," which to-day, chanted over the coffins of
+thousands, brings comfort and hope to stricken hearts.
+
+"In the hour of death, after this life's whim,
+When the heart beats low, and the eyes grow dim,
+And pain has exhausted every limb--
+The lover of the Lord shall trust in Him."
+
+On the last day she told him that they would not meet again. Life had
+given to her all and more than all she had dared ask for. He must go
+back to his work in the world, to the high endeavor that was laid upon
+him as an obligation of his power, and now of their love. He must write
+her; she could not do without that, now; but guardedly, for other eyes
+than hers must read his words to her.
+
+"Think what it is going to be to me," she said, "to follow your course;
+to be able to pray for you, fighting. I shall take all the papers. And
+any which haven't your name in shall be burned at once! How I shall be
+jealous even of your public who love and admire you! But you have left
+me no room for any other jealousy...."
+
+"I am coming back to you," he said doggedly, at the final moment of
+parting. "Sometime, Camilla."
+
+"You will be here always, in the darkness, with me. And I shall love my
+blindness because it shuts out anything but you," she said.
+
+Io rode with him to the station. On the way they discussed ways and
+means, the household arrangements when Io should have to leave, the
+finding of a companion, who should be at once nurse, secretary, and
+amanuensis for Royce Melvin's music.
+
+"How she will sing now!" said Io.
+
+As they drew near to the station, she put her hand on his horse's
+bridle.
+
+"Did I do wrong to send for you, Cousin Billy?" she asked.
+
+He turned to her a visage transfigured.
+
+"You needn't answer," she said quickly. "I should know, anyway. It's her
+happiness I'm thinking of. It can't have been wrong to give so much
+happiness, for the rest of her life."
+
+"The rest of her life," he echoed, in a hushed accent of dread.
+
+While Enderby was getting his ticket, Io waited on the front platform. A
+small, wiry man came around the corner of the station, glanced at her,
+and withdrew. Io had an uneasy notion of having seen him before
+somewhere. But where, and when? Certainly the man was not a local
+habitant. Had his presence, then, any significance for her or hers?
+Enderby returned, and the two stood in the hard morning sunlight beneath
+the broad sign inscribed with the station's name.
+
+The stranger appeared from behind a freight-car on a siding, and hurried
+up to within a few yards of them. From beneath his coat he slipped a
+blackish oblong. It gave forth a click, and, after swift manipulation, a
+second click. Enderby started toward the snap-shotter who turned and
+ran.
+
+"Do you know that man?" he asked, whirling upon Io.
+
+A gray veil seemed to her drawn down over his features. Or was it a mist
+of dread upon Io's own vision?
+
+"I have seen him before," she answered, groping.
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+Memory flashed one of its sudden and sure illuminations upon her: a
+Saturday night at The House With Three Eyes; this little man coming in
+with Tertius Marrineal; later, peering into the flowerful corner where
+she sat with Banneker.
+
+"He has something to do with The Patriot," she answered steadily.
+
+"How could The Patriot know of my coming here?'
+
+"I don't know," said Io. She was deadly pale with a surmise too
+monstrous for utterance.
+
+He put it into words for her.
+
+"Io, did you tell Errol Banneker that you were sending for me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Even in the midst of the ruin which he saw closing in upon his
+career--that career upon which Camilla Van Arsdale had newly built her
+last pride and hope and happiness--he could feel for the agony of the
+girl before him.
+
+"He couldn't have betrayed me!" cried Io: but, as she spoke, the memory
+of other treacheries overwhelmed her.
+
+The train rumbled in. Enderby stooped and kissed her forehead.
+
+"My dear," he said gently, "I'm afraid you've trusted him once too
+often."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+A dun pony ambled along the pine-needle-carpeted trail leading through
+the forest toward Camilla Van Arsdale's camp, comfortably shaded against
+the ardent power of the January sun. Behind sounded a soft, rapid
+padding of hooves. The pony shied to the left with a violence which
+might have unseated a less practiced rider, as, with a wild whoop, Dutch
+Pete came by at full gallop. Pete had been to a dance at the Sick Coyote
+on the previous night which had imperceptibly merged itself into the
+present morning, and had there imbibed enough of the spirit of the
+occasion to last him his fifteen miles home to his ranch. Now he pulled
+up and waited for the slower rider to overtake him.
+
+"Howdy, Ban!"
+
+"Hello, Pete."
+
+"How's the lady gettin' on?"
+
+"Not too well."
+
+"Can't see much of anythin', huh?"
+
+"No: and never will again."
+
+"Sho! Well, I don't figger out as I'd want to live long in that fix. How
+long does the doc give her, Ban?"
+
+"Perhaps six months; perhaps a year. She isn't afraid to die; but she's
+hanging to life just as long as she can. She's a game one, Pete."
+
+"And how long will you be with us, Ban?"
+
+"Oh, I'm likely to be around quite a while yet."
+
+Dutch Pete, thoroughly understanding, reflected that here was another
+game one. But he remarked only that he'd like to drop in on Miss
+K'miller next time he rode over, with a bit of sage honey that he'd
+saved out for her.
+
+"She'll be glad to see you," returned the other. "Only, don't forget,
+Pete; not a word about anything except local stuff."
+
+"Sure!" agreed Pete with that unquestioning acceptance of another's
+reasons for secrecy which marks the frontiersman. "Say, Ban," he added,
+"you ain't much of an advertisement for Manzanita as a health resort,
+yourself. Better have that doc stick his head in your mouth and look at
+your insides."
+
+Banneker raised tired eyes and smiled. "Oh, I'm all right," he replied
+listlessly.
+
+"Come to next Saturday's dance at the Coyote; that'll put dynamite in
+your blood," prescribed the other as he spurred his horse on.
+
+Banneker had no need to turn the dun pony aside to the branch trail that
+curved to the door of his guest; the knowing animal took it by habitude,
+having traversed it daily for a long time. It was six months since
+Banneker had bought him: six months and a week since Willis Enderby had
+been buried. And the pony's rider had in his pocket a letter, of date
+only four days old, from Willis Enderby to Camilla Van Arsdale. It was
+dated from the Governor's Mansion, Albany, New York. Banneker had
+written it himself, the night before. He had also composed nearly a
+column of supposed Amalgamated Wire report, regarding the fight for and
+against Governor Enderby's reform measures, which he would read
+presently to Miss Van Arsdale from the dailies just received. As he
+dismounted, the clear music of her voice called:
+
+"Any mail, Ban?"
+
+"Yes. Letter from Albany."
+
+"Let me open it myself," she cried jealously.
+
+He delivered it into her hands: this was part of the ritual. She ran her
+fingers caressingly over it, as if to draw from it the hidden sweetness
+of her lover's strength, which must still be only half-expressed,
+because the words were to be translated through another's reading; then
+returned it to its real author.
+
+"Read it slowly, Ban," she commanded softly.
+
+Having completed the letter, his next process was to run through the
+papers, giving in full any news or editorials on State politics. This
+was a task demanding the greatest mental concentration and alertness,
+for he had built up a contemporary history out of his imagination, and
+must keep all the details congruous and logical. Several times, with
+that uncanny retentiveness of memory developed in the blind, she had all
+but caught him; but each time his adroitness saved the day. Later, while
+he was at work in the room which she had set aside for his daily
+writing, she would answer the letter on the typewriter, having taught
+herself to write by position and touch, and he would take her reply for
+posting. Her nurse and companion, an elderly woman with a natural
+aptitude for silence and discretion, was Banneker's partner in the
+secret. The third member of the conspiracy was the physician who came
+once a week from Angelica City because he himself was a musician and
+this slowly and courageously dying woman was Royce Melvin. Between them
+they hedged her about with the fiction that victoriously defied grief
+and defeated death.
+
+Camilla Van Arsdale got up from her couch and walked with confident
+footsteps to the piano.
+
+"Ban," she said, seating herself and letting her fingers run over the
+keys, "can't you substitute another word for 'muffled' in the third
+line? It comes on a high note--upper g--and I want a long, not a short
+vowel sound."
+
+"How would 'silenced' do?" he offered, after studying the line.
+
+"Beautifully. You're a most amiable poet! Ban, I think your verses are
+going to be more famous than my music."
+
+"Never that," he denied. "It's the music that makes them."
+
+"Have you heard from Mr. Gaines yet about the essays?"
+
+"Yes. He's taking them. He wants to print two in each issue and call
+them 'Far Perspectives.'"
+
+"Oh, good!" she cried. "But, Ban, fine as your work is, it seems a
+terrible waste of your powers to be out here. You ought to be in New
+York, helping the governor put through his projects."
+
+"Well, you know, the doctor won't give me my release."
+
+(Presently he must remember to have a coughing spell. He coughed
+hollowly and well, thanks to assiduous practice. This was part of the
+grim and loving comedy of deception: that he had been peremptorily
+ordered back to Manzanita on account of "weak lungs," with orders to
+live in his open shack until he had gained twenty pounds. He was
+gaining, but with well-considered slowness.)
+
+"But when you can, you'll go back and help him, even if I'm not here to
+know about it, won't you?"
+
+"Oh, yes: I'll go back to help him when I can," he promised, as heartily
+as if he had not made the same promise each time that the subject came
+up. There was still a good deal of the wistful child about the dying
+woman.
+
+Out from that forest hermitage where the two worked, one in serene
+though longing happiness, the other under the stern discipline of loss
+and self-abnegation, had poured, in six short months, a living current
+of song which had lifted the fame of Royce Melvin to new heights: her
+fame only, for Banneker would not use his name to the words that rang
+with a pure and vivid melody of their own. Herein, too, he was paying
+his debt to Willis Enderby, through the genius of the woman who loved
+him; preserving that genius with the thin, lustrous, impregnable fiction
+of his own making against threatening and impotent truth.
+
+Once, when Banneker had brought her a lyric, alive with the sweetness of
+youth and love in the great open spaces, she had said:
+
+"Ban, shall we call it 'Io?'"
+
+"I don't think it would do," he said with an effort.
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"Traveling in the tropics."
+
+"You try so hard to keep the sadness out of your voice when you speak of
+her," said Camilla sorrowfully. "But it's always there. Isn't there
+anything I can do?"
+
+"Nothing. There's nothing anybody can do."
+
+The blind woman hesitated. "But you care for her still, don't you, Ban?"
+
+"Care! Oh, my God!" whispered Banneker.
+
+"And she cares. I know she cared when she was here. Io isn't the kind of
+woman to forget easily. She tried once, you know." Miss Van Arsdale
+smiled wanly. "Why doesn't she ever say anything of you in her letters?"
+
+"She does."
+
+"Very little." (Io's letters, passing through Banneker's hands were
+carefully censored, of necessity, to forefend any allusion to the
+tragedy of Willis Enderby, often to the extent of being rewritten
+complete. It now occurred to Banneker that he had perhaps overdone the
+matter of keeping his own name out of them.) "Ban," she continued
+wistfully, "you haven't quarreled, have you?"
+
+"No, Miss Camilla. We haven't quarreled."
+
+"Then _what_ is it, Ban? I don't want to pry; you know me well enough to
+be sure of that. But if I could only know before the end comes that you
+two--I wish I could read your face. It's a helpless thing, being blind."
+This was as near a complaint as he had ever heard her utter.
+
+"Io's a rich woman, Miss Camilla," he said desperately.
+
+"What of it?"
+
+"How could I ask her to marry a jobless, half-lunged derelict?"
+
+"_Have_ you asked her?"
+
+He was silent.
+
+"Ban, does she know why you're here?"
+
+"Oh, yes; she knows."
+
+"How bitter and desolate your voice sounds when you say that! And you
+want me to believe that she knows and still doesn't come to you?"
+
+"She doesn't know that I'm--ill," he said, hating himself for the
+necessity of pretense with Camilla Van Arsdale.
+
+"Then I shall tell her."
+
+"No," he controverted with finality, "I won't allow it."
+
+"Suppose it turned out that this were really the right path for you to
+travel," she said after a pause; "that you were going to do bigger
+things here than you ever could do with The Patriot? I believe it's
+going to be so, Ban; that what you are doing now is going to be your
+true success."
+
+"Success!" he cried. "Are you going to preach success to me? If ever
+there was a word coined in hell--I'm sorry, Miss Camilla," he broke off,
+mastering himself.
+
+She groped her way to the piano, and ran her fingers over the keys.
+"There is work, anyway," she said with sure serenity.
+
+"Yes; there's work, thank God!"
+
+Work enough there was for him, not only in his writing, for which he had
+recovered the capacity after a long period of stunned inaction, but in
+the constant and unwearied labor of love in building and rebuilding,
+fortifying and extending, that precarious but still impregnable bulwark
+of falsehood beneath whose protection Camilla Van Arsdale lived and was
+happy and made the magic of her song. Illusion! Banneker wondered
+whether any happiness were other than illusion, whether the illusion of
+happiness were not better than any reality. But in the world of grim
+fact which he had accepted for himself was no palliating mirage. Upon
+him "the illusive eyes of hope" were closed.
+
+While Banneker was practicing his elaborate deceptions, Miss Van Arsdale
+had perpetrated a lesser one of her own, which she had not deemed it
+wise to reveal to him in their conversation about Io. Some time before
+that she had written to her former guest a letter tactfully designed to
+lay a foundation for resolving the difficulty or misunderstanding
+between the lovers. In the normal course of events this would have been
+committed for mailing to Banneker, who would, of course, have
+confiscated it. But, as it chanced, it was hardly off the typewriter
+when Dutch Pete dropped in for a friendly call while Banneker was at the
+village, and took the missive with him for mailing. It traveled widely,
+amassed postmarks and forwarding addresses, and eventually came to its
+final port.
+
+Worn out with the hopeless quest of forgetfulness in far lands, Io Eyre
+came back to New York. It was there that the long pursuit of her by
+Camilla Van Arsdale's letter ended. Bewilderment darkened Io's mind as
+she read, to be succeeded by an appalled conjecture; Camilla Van
+Arsdale's mind had broken down under her griefs. What other hypothesis
+could account for her writing of Willis Enderby as being still alive?
+And of her having letters from him? To the appeal for Banneker which,
+concealed though it was, underlay the whole purport of the writing, Io
+closed her heart, seared by the very sight of his name. She would have
+torn the letter up, but something impelled her to read it again; some
+hint of a pregnant secret to be gleaned from it, if one but held the
+clue. Hers was a keen and thoughtful mind. She sent it exploring through
+the devious tangle of the maze wherein she and Banneker, Camilla Van
+Arsdale and Willis Enderby had been so tragically involved, and as she
+patiently studied the letter as possible guide there dawned within her a
+glint of the truth. It began with the suspicion, soon growing to
+conviction, that the writer of those inexplicable words was not, could
+not be insane; the letter breathed a clarity of mind, an untroubled
+simplicity of heart, a quiet undertone of happiness, impossible to
+reconcile with the picture of a shattered and grief-stricken victim. Yet
+Io had, herself, written to Miss Van Arsdale as soon as she knew of
+Judge Enderby's death, pouring out her heart for the sorrow of the woman
+who as a stranger had stood her friend, whom, as she learned to know her
+in the close companionship of her affliction, she had come to love;
+offering to return at once to Manzanita. To that offer had come no
+answer; later she had had a letter curiously reticent as to Willis
+Enderby. (Banneker, in his epistolary personification of Miss Van
+Arsdale had been perhaps overcautious on this point.) Io began to piece
+together hints and clues, as in a disjected puzzle:--Banneker's presence
+in Manzanita--Camilla's blindness.--Her inability to know, except
+through the medium of others, the course of events.--The bewildering
+reticence and hiatuses in the infrequent letters from Manzanita,
+particularly in regard to Willis Enderby.--This calm, sane, cheerful
+view of him as a living being, a present figure in his old field of
+action.--The casual mention in an early letter that all of Miss Van
+Arsdale's reading and most of her writing was done through the nurse or
+Banneker, mainly the latter, though she was mastering the art of
+touch-writing on the typewriter. The very style of the earlier letters,
+as she remembered them, was different. And just here flashed the thought
+which set her feverishly ransacking the portfolio in which she kept her
+old correspondence. There she found an envelope with a Manzanita
+postmark dated four months earlier. The typing of the two letters was
+not the same.
+
+Groping for some aid in the murk, Io went to the telephone and called up
+the editorial office of The Sphere, asking for Russell Edmonds. Within
+two hours the veteran had come to her.
+
+"I have been wanting to see you," he said at once.
+
+"About Mr. Banneker?" she queried eagerly.
+
+"No. About The Searchlight."
+
+"The Searchlight? I don't understand, Mr. Edmonds."
+
+"Can't we be open with each other, Mrs. Eyre?"
+
+"Absolutely, so far as I am concerned."
+
+"Then I want to tell you that you need have no fear as to what The
+Searchlight may do."
+
+"Still I don't understand. Why should I fear it?"
+
+"The scandal--manufactured, of course--which The Searchlight had cooked
+up about you and Mr. Banneker before Mr. Eyre's death."
+
+"Surely there was never anything published. I should have heard of it."
+
+"No; there wasn't. Banneker stopped it."
+
+"Ban?"
+
+"Do you mean to say that you knew nothing of this, Mrs. Eyre?" he said,
+the wonder in his face answering the bewilderment in hers. "Didn't
+Banneker tell you?"
+
+"Never a word."
+
+"No; I suppose he wouldn't," ruminated the veteran. "That would be like
+Ban--the old Ban," he added sadly. "Mrs. Eyre, I loved that boy," he
+broke out, his stern and somber face working. "There are times even now
+when I can scarcely make myself believe that he did what he did."
+
+"Wait," pleaded Io. "How did he stop The Searchlight?"
+
+"By threatening Bussey with an expose that would have blown him out of
+the water. Blackmail, if you like, Mrs. Eyre, and not of the most polite
+kind."
+
+"For me," whispered Io.
+
+"He held that old carrion-buzzard, Bussey, up at the muzzle of The
+Patriot as if it were a blunderbuss. It was loaded to kill, too. And
+then," pursued Edmonds, "he paid the price. Marrineal got out his little
+gun and held him up."
+
+"Held Ban up? What for? How could he do that? All this is a riddle to
+me, Mr. Edmonds."
+
+"Do you think you really want to know?" asked the other with a touch of
+grimness. "It won't be pleasant hearing."
+
+"I've got to know. Everything!"
+
+"Very well. Here's the situation. Banneker points his gun, The Patriot,
+at Bussey. 'Be good or I'll shoot,' he says. Marrineal learns of it,
+never mind how. He points _his_ gun at Ban. 'Be good, or I'll shoot,'
+says he. And there you are!"
+
+"But what was his gun? And why need he threaten Ban?"
+
+"Why, you see, Mrs. Eyre, about that time things were coming to an issue
+between Ban and Marrineal. Ban was having a hard fight for the
+independence of his editorial page. His strongest hold on Marrineal was
+Marrineal's fear of losing him. There were plenty of opportunities open
+to a Banneker. Well, when Marrineal got Ban where he couldn't resign,
+Ban's hold was gone. That was Marrineal's gun."
+
+"Why couldn't he resign?" asked Io, white-lipped.
+
+"If he quit The Patriot he could no longer hold Bussey, and The
+Searchlight could print what it chose. You see?"
+
+"I see," said Io, very low. "Oh, why couldn't I have seen before!"
+
+"How could you, if Ban told you nothing?" reasoned Edmonds. "The blame
+of the miserable business isn't yours. Sometimes I wonder if it's
+anybody's; if the newspaper game isn't just too strong for us who try to
+play it. As for The Searchlight, I've since got another hold on Bussey
+which will keep him from making any trouble. That's what I wanted to
+tell you."
+
+"Oh, what does it matter! What does it matter!" she moaned. She crossed
+to the window, laid her hot and white face against the cool glass,
+pressed her hands in upon her temples, striving to think connectedly.
+"Then whatever he did on The Patriot, whatever compromises he yielded to
+or--or cowardices--" she winced at the words--"were done to save his
+place; to save me."
+
+"I'm afraid so," returned the other gently.
+
+"Do you know what he's doing now?" she demanded.
+
+"I understand he's back at Manzanita."
+
+"He is. And from what I can make out," she added fiercely, "he is giving
+up his life to guarding Miss Van Arsdale from breaking her heart, as she
+will do, if she learns of Judge Enderby's death--Oh!" she cried, "I
+didn't mean to say that! You must forget that there was anything said."
+
+"No need. I know all that story," he said gravely. "That is what I
+couldn't forgive in Ban. That he should have betrayed Miss Van Arsdale,
+his oldest friend. That is the unpardonable treachery."
+
+"To save me," said Io.
+
+"Not even for that. He owed more to her than to you."
+
+"I can't believe that he did it!" she wailed. "To use my letter to set
+spies on Cousin Billy and ruin him--it isn't Ban. It isn't!"
+
+"He did it, and, when it was too late, he tried to stop it."
+
+"To stop it?" She looked her startled query at him. "How do you know
+that?"
+
+"Last week," explained Edmonds, "Judge Enderby's partner sent for me. He
+had been going over some papers and had come upon a telegram from
+Banneker urging Enderby not to leave without seeing him. The telegram
+must have been delivered very shortly after the Judge left for the
+train."
+
+"Telegram? Why a telegram? Wasn't Ban in town?"
+
+"No. He was down in Jersey. At The Retreat."
+
+"Wait!" gasped Io. "At The Retreat! Then my letter would have been
+forwarded to him there. He couldn't have got it at the same time that
+Cousin Billy got the one I sent him." She gripped Russell Edmonds's
+wrists in fierce, strong hands. "What if he hadn't known in time? What
+if, the moment he did know, he did his best to stop Cousin Billy from
+starting, with that telegram?" Suddenly the light died out of her face.
+"But then how would that loathsome Mr. Ives have known that he was
+going, unless Ban betrayed him?"
+
+"Easily enough," returned the veteran. "He had a report from his
+detectives, who had been watching Enderby for months.... Mrs. Eyre, I
+wish you'd give me a drink. I feel shaky."
+
+She left him to give the order. When she returned, they had both
+steadied down. Carefully, and with growing conviction, they gathered the
+evidence into something like a coherent whole. At the end, Io moaned:
+
+"The one thing I can't bear is that Cousin Billy died, believing that of
+Ban."
+
+She threw herself upon the broad lounge, prone, her face buried in her
+arms. The veteran of hundreds of fights, brave and blind, righteous and
+mistaken, crowned with fleeting victories, tainted with irremediable
+errors, stood silent, perplexed, mournful. He walked slowly over to
+where the girl was stretched, and laid a clumsy, comforting hand on her
+shoulder.
+
+"I wish you'd cry for me, too," he said huskily. "I'm too old."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Every Saturday the distinguished physician from Angelica City came to
+Manzanita on the afternoon train, spent two or three hours at Camilla
+Van Arsdale's camp, and returned in time to catch Number Seven back. No
+imaginable fee would have induced him to abstract one whole day from his
+enormous practice for any other patient. But he was himself an ardent
+vocal amateur, and to keep Royce Melvin alive and able to give forth her
+songs to the world was a special satisfaction to his soul. Moreover, he
+knew enough of Banneker's story to take pride in being partner in his
+plan of deception and self-sacrifice. He pretended that it was a needed
+holiday for him: his bills hardly defrayed the traveling expense.
+
+Now, riding back with Banneker, he meditated a final opinion, and out of
+that opinion came speech.
+
+"Mr. Banneker, they ought to give you and me a special niche in the Hall
+of Fame," he said.
+
+A rather wan smile touched briefly Banneker's lips. "I believe that my
+ambitions once reached even that far," he said.
+
+The other reflected upon the implied tragedy of a life, so young, for
+which ambition was already in the past tense, as he added:
+
+"In the musical section. We've got our share in the nearest thing to
+great music that has been produced in the America of our time. You and
+I. Principally you."
+
+Banneker made a quick gesture of denial.
+
+"I don't know what you owe to Camilla Van Arsdale, but you've paid the
+debt. There won't be much more to pay, Banneker."
+
+Banneker looked up sharply.
+
+"No." The visitor shook his graying head. "We've performed as near a
+miracle as it is given to poor human power to perform. It can't last
+much longer."
+
+"How long?"
+
+"A matter of weeks. Not more. Banneker, do you believe in a personal
+immortality?"
+
+"I don't know. Do you?"
+
+"I don't know, either. I was thinking.... If it were so; when she gets
+across, what she will feel when she finds her man waiting for her. God!"
+He lifted his face to the great trees that moved and murmured overhead.
+"How that heart of hers has sung to him all these years!"
+
+He lifted his voice and sent it rolling through the cathedral aisles of
+the forest, in the superb finale of the last hymn.
+
+"For even the purest delight may pall,
+And power must fail, and the pride must fall
+And the love of the dearest friends grow small--
+But the glory of the Lord is all in all."
+
+The great voice was lost in the sighing of the winds. They rode on,
+thoughtful and speechless. When the physician turned to his companion
+again, it was with a brisk change of manner.
+
+"And now we'll consider you."
+
+"Nothing to consider," declared Banneker.
+
+"Is your professional judgment better than mine?" retorted the other.
+"How much weight have you lost since you've been out here?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Find out. Don't sleep very well, do you?"
+
+"Not specially."
+
+"What do you do at night when you can't sleep? Work?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Think."
+
+The doctor uttered a non-professional monosyllable. "What will you do,"
+he propounded, waving his arm back along the trail toward the Van
+Arsdale camp, "when this little game of yours is played out?"
+
+"God knows!" said Banneker. It suddenly struck him that life would be
+blank, empty of interest or purpose, when Camilla Van Arsdale died, when
+there was no longer the absorbing necessity to preserve, intact and
+impregnable, the fortress of love and lies wherewith he had surrounded
+her.
+
+"When this chapter is finished," said the other, "you come down to
+Angelica City with me. Perhaps we'll go on a little camping trip
+together. I want to talk to you."
+
+The train carried him away. Oppressed and thoughtful, Banneker walked
+slowly across the blazing, cactus-set open toward his shack. There was
+still the simple housekeeping work to be done, for he had left early
+that morning. He felt suddenly spiritless, flaccid, too inert even for
+the little tasks before him. The physician's pronouncement had taken the
+strength from him. Of course he had known that it couldn't be very
+long--but only a few weeks!
+
+He was almost at the shack when he noticed that the door stood half
+ajar.
+
+But here, where everything had been disorder, was now order. The bed was
+made, the few utensils washed, polished, and hung up; on the table a
+handful of the alamo's bright leaves in a vase gave a touch of color.
+
+In the long chair (7 T 4031 of the Sears-Roebuck catalogue) sat Io. A
+book lay on her lap, the book of "The Undying Voices." Her eyes were
+closed. Banneker reached out a hand to the door lintel for support.
+
+A light tremor ran through Io's body. She opened her eyes, and fixed
+them on Banneker. She rose slowly. The book fell to the floor and lay
+open between them. Io stood, her arms hanging straitly at her side, her
+whole face a lovely and loving plea.
+
+"Please, Ban!" she said, in a voice so little that it hardly came to his
+ears.
+
+Speech and motion were denied him, in the great, the incredible surprise
+of her presence.
+
+"Please, Ban, forgive me." She was like a child, beseeching. Her firm
+little chin quivered. Two great, soft, lustrous tears welled up from the
+shadowy depths of the eyes and hung, gleaming, above the lashes. "Oh,
+aren't you going to speak to me!" she cried.
+
+At that the bonds of his languor were rent. He leapt to her, heard the
+broken music of her sob, felt her arms close about him, her lips seek
+his and cling, loath to relinquish them even for the passionate murmurs
+of her love and longing for him.
+
+"Hold me close, Ban! Don't ever let me go again! Don't ever let me doubt
+again!"
+
+When, at length, she gently released herself, her foot brushed the
+fallen book. She picked it up tenderly, and caressed its leaves as she
+adjusted them.
+
+"Didn't the Voices tell you that I'd come back, Ban?" she asked.
+
+He shook his head. "If they did, I couldn't hear them."
+
+"But they sang to you," she insisted gently. "They never stopped
+singing, did they?"
+
+"No. No. They never stopped singing."
+
+"Ah; then you ought to have known, Ban. And I ought to have known that
+you couldn't have done what I believed you had. Are you sure you forgive
+me, Ban?"
+
+She told him of what she had discovered, of the talk with Russell
+Edmonds ("I've a letter from him for you, dearest one; he loves you,
+too. But not as I do. Nobody could!" interjected Io jealously), of the
+clue of the telegram. And he told her of Camilla Van Arsdale and the
+long deception; and at that, for the first time since he knew her, she
+broke down and gave herself up utterly to tears, as much for him as for
+the friend whom he had so loyally loved and served. When it was over and
+she had regained command of herself, she said:
+
+"Now you must take me to her."
+
+So once more they rode together into the murmurous peace of the forest.
+Io leaned in her saddle as they drew near the cabin, to lay a hand on
+her lover's shoulder.
+
+"Once, a thousand years ago, Ban," she said, "when love came to me, I
+was a wicked little infidel and would not believe. Not in the Enchanted
+Canyon, nor in the Mountains of Fulfillment, nor in the Fadeless Gardens
+where the Undying Voices sing. Do you remember?"
+
+"Do I not!" whispered Ban, turning to kiss the fingers that tightened on
+his shoulder.
+
+"And--and I blasphemed and said there was always a serpent in every
+Paradise, and that Experience was a horrid hag, with a bony finger
+pointing to the snake.... This is my recantation, Ban. I know now that
+you were the true Prophet; that Experience has shining wings and eyes
+that can lock to the future as well as the past, and immortal Hope for a
+lover. And that only they two can guide to the Mountains of Fulfillment.
+Is it enough, Ban?"
+
+"It is enough," he answered with grave happiness.
+
+"Listen!" exclaimed Io.
+
+The sound of song, tender and passionate and triumphant, came pulsing
+through the silence to meet them as they rode on.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Success, by Samuel Hopkins Adams
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUCCESS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 15431.txt or 15431.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/4/3/15431/
+
+Produced by Robert Shimmin, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.