_ PART II. THE VISION 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. _