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 pâté
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.