“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’?”