“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: