United States or Denmark ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
"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.
"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.
"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?"
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."
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?"
Word Of The Day