Kitobni o'qish: «Juggernaut: A Veiled Record», sahifa 3

VII

This was the situation of affairs with Edgar Braine when he graciously spared the cigarette-smoking apprentice, and passed into his editorial sanctum on the morning of his suicide.

He was putting the sunshine of his own hopefulness into an article on the practical means of promoting Thebes's prosperity, when Abner Hildreth entered.

"You're a worry to me, Braine, when I think of you," said the banker, after a greeting.

"Why, how's that? I'm sure – "

"Oh, don't let it trouble you. It's this way. As a banker, I pride myself on knowing how to size a man up. The man who can't do that, to a hair, had better let banking alone and devote himself to some quiet business, like preaching the gospel, or running a sawmill. I thought I'd sized you up to a fraction when I put you in here, and as to the paper I had. I knew you'd make it the livest sheet in the Mississippi Valley, and you've done it; I knew you'd make it push Thebes with a forty horse-power, and you've done that too. But I missed badly on one point, and it bothers me. It undermines my confidence in my judgment."

"In what particular have I disappointed you, Mr. Hildreth?"

"Well, that's hardly what I mean. I'm not disappointed. But I missed badly as to your business capacity. I knew you were smart at writing, and all that, but I didn't know you had such a head for business on your shoulders. I expected to have to lift you out of money holes every six months or so, and was ready to do it, but bless me, if you haven't made a business go of the thing from the start. You're not in debt much, are you – for the office I mean?"

"Not a cent, for the office or myself. I get enough to live on out of the paper, and have bought new type, a new steam press, a ruling-machine, and other things besides. The paper will pay me a good income now."

"That's splendid!" said the banker, in admiration; "that means you've put the shop ten thousand dollars to the fore. Good! You've been worth a hundred thousand to me, and the laws only knows what, to Thebes. Now, such a business head as you've got oughtn't to be wasted on a single little business like this, and I've made up my mind to take you into bigger things. That's what I'm here for to-day."

Edgar expressed his gratitude for the banker's appreciation and good will, and declared his willingness to take hold of larger things whenever opportunity should offer.

"Well now, there's this special election. The Common Council will order it, you know, for the twenty-fifth. There's only one thing to be voted on, and that is the proposition to give the Central Railroad the right to run down the levee to the Point, and take the Point for a depot and wharf."

"Yes, I know. I have an article ready on the subject. I haven't discussed it yet, because I want to kill it at one blow and see that it stays dead."

"But I think you don't understand it just right, Braine, and I want to talk to you about it."

"Certainly I understand it. You and I talked it over three days ago, you remember. I understand perfectly that the thing is a trick to rob Thebes of her most fruitful source of revenue, by giving the levee, and with it the exclusive right to collect wharfage, to this railroad crowd. I know the resolution to be voted on has been drawn so as to make it seem nothing more than a grant of right of way, but that it really authorizes the Common Council to give away the levee and the wharfage rights absolutely. I have found out that our rascally aldermen intend to do just that, and I mean to find out how much they have been paid for doing it and who has paid them. But in the mean time, I intend to defeat the whole rascally scheme at the polls, by exposing it."

"Now, wait a minute, Braine, and don't go off half-cocked. Really, that's your one fault, and you must cure it. Let me tell you about this thing. I felt as you do about it, but since we talked it over, I've had more light. I've been in correspondence with the railroad people, you know, and I understand their plans better now. I have a letter from Duncan this morning, in which he says, – let me see," glancing over the letter, and finding out the part he wanted to read. "Oh, yes, here it is: 'You quite understand me now. You're one of us' – no, that isn't it – that refers to another matter. Ah! I have it: 'We depend upon you to see the thing through in that charter election. Young Braine will certainly kill it if he isn't gagged. Why not let him in on the ground floor a little? He may be of great use to us in carrying out the other matter, and if we don't control him, he's sure to do us a great deal of damage. Can't you explain the thing to him, and make him see it in its right light?' There, I oughtn't to have read the letter to you because I can't read it all. Some of it's confidential, and hearing only a scrap that way, the expressions seem blind and misleading to you."

"I think I understand better than you suppose, Mr. Hildreth. This man Duncan has bought your favor for his scheme; you have been fighting the ring, not to break it, but to break into it, and you've succeeded. Now the fellow wants to buy me. He can't do it, that's all."

"Very well, only don't think Abner Hildreth a fool. I didn't blunder into reading that part of the letter to you. I did it on purpose. I wanted you to understand the lay of the land; and decide for yourself. What are you going to do about it?"

"I'm going to expose the whole criminal conspiracy. I'm going to fight this greedy gang of speculators, and I'm going to beat them at the polls."

"How will you go about all that?"

"In the Enterprise."

"But I own the Enterprise, you remember Braine, and naturally you can't do it in my paper. I've never asked you to help me in any of my enterprises, but I shan't let you use the paper to hurt the biggest one I ever engaged in. You can't do this in any other paper, because you've driven the Argus out of town, and I took pains to buy the Item this morning early, on the chance of its being turned against me. I've got a bill of sale of the whole concern, stock, lock, and barrel, in my pocket now!"

"My God!" exclaimed Braine, for the first time realizing his helplessness, and the consequences it involved with respect to his marriage and his future.

"Don't swear, Edgar. It's immoral. I'm a religious man myself, and might put the matter in a stronger way; but you're not a professor of religion, and so I only say its immoral."

Edgar sat thinking for ten minutes, during which neither man spoke. Then Hildreth said:

"You mustn't take an unbusiness-like view of this thing, Edgar – "

"Call me by my last name, please – somehow I like it better," interrupted the young man.

"Oh, all right. As I was saying, you oughtn't to look at this thing in your high and mighty way. It's unbusiness-like. It isn't practical. Let me explain a little. This is a great business enterprise, far-reaching, and sure to make Thebes great. The men who are engineering it and putting their money into it, naturally want some return. They ask this right of way – "

"And intend to steal the whole levee under cover of a swindling document," broke in Braine.

"Now don't get excited, and use harsh terms. These men want certain privileges in return for making Thebes a great railroad centre, and the Common Council is willing to make the grant as soon as the people, by a vote, give them authority under the law. You have thought it would be your duty to oppose the thing, but I have shown you its nature, and asked you to change your opinion. You can carry this election by the influence of the Enterprise. We ask you to do it, and tell you that if you do you shall be let in on the ground floor. I'll make that more definite. If you help us, on the day after the election the Enterprise– good-will, business, presses, type, and everything, shall be Edgar Braine's, absolutely, to do what he pleases with, and in any political, or other aspirations he may have, he will enjoy the support of the moneyed interest of the State. If you refuse to help, why, naturally, I must put a man in charge of the Enterprise who will. He is at my office now."

Braine said nothing for a long time. He was taking account of his situation. He had thought himself prosperous. In fact, if he broke with Hildreth, he had scarcely more than the fifty dollars with which he had come to Thebes several years before. He might have saved a few thousands from the earnings of the Enterprise, but he had preferred, in his eagerness to make the paper successful, to spend the money in improvements. All his plans had been laid with reference to his continuance in his present position, with the certain income it secured. But Abner Hildreth held all his prospects and all his plans in the hollow of his hand, to do what he would with them.

It was a choice between certain ruin on the one hand, and practically limitless success on the other, for he saw more clearly than Hildreth did, how potent a lever the influence of the "moneyed interest" might be made, and how much more perfectly he could command its aid than Abner Hildreth dreamed.

The temptation was frightful. The horror of such iniquity in his soul was not less so.

"This craze of speculation, which seems to dominate everything of late years in our money-cursed country, is a very Juggernaut," he said at last, in bitterness of spirit, and less to Hildreth than to himself.

"Juggernaut?" responded the banker, "that's the Hindoo car that runs over people and crushes 'em, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Yes. Well now, let me call your attention to an interesting fact about that car. Did you ever observe that it never runs over the people that ride on it?"

"Yes. I've observed that. I'm not so sure that the analogy will hold, however. One might get jostled off, and fall under the wheels. But I seem to be almost under now." He hesitated a moment more, and then – "For safety I'll get on, and trust to my grip to hold on. I'll favor the proposal, Mr. Hildreth, and I'll carry it through at the polls."

Then changing his tone to one a little less grim and more cheerful, he went on: "But our contract has been rather indefinite in the past. Would you mind signing an agreement now as to the transfer of the Enterprise to me on the day after the election?"

"No, certainly not. I'll write it."

He wrote hurriedly and signed. Braine looked over the paper and tore it up.

"That's worthless," he said. "A contract without consideration can't be enforced. I want a legally binding agreement this time. I'll draw it."

He did so, and then read it to the banker, who assented to its terms, and was about to sign it when Braine stopped him.

"Wait a moment" he said; then raising his voice he called: "Mikey!"

The apprentice appeared, trembling lest judgment day had come for the sin of smoking cigarettes.

"I want you to see Mr. Hildreth and me sign this paper. Never mind reading it," he said, laying a blotting pad over the lines, as he saw the boy's eyes wandering curiously over the document. When the two had signed, he turned to Mikey and said:

"Now, write the word 'witness' in that corner, and sign your own name under it."

When the lad had finished, Braine turned to Hildreth, who was beamingly about to shake hands with him, and said in a strangely cold and haughty tone:

"I believe that finishes our business, Mr. Hildreth, and as I have some matters to discuss with Mikey, I beg you will excuse me. Good morning, sir."

Hildreth passed out of the office, astonishment, vexation, and triumph struggling for mastery in his mind.

"He's a cool hand, sure," he muttered, "to bow me out in that fashion, just when I'd bought him, body and breeches! Somehow I can't feel quite easy about this thing yet. He didn't act as though he thought he belonged to me. Wonder if he's going to burst the whole thing up after all! By – George! I haven't got a scrap of writing to hold him by! I haven't got a line binding him to anything!"

With that he stopped short in the street, and after a moment's reflection, muttered again:

"Abner Hildreth, you're a fool! You have sized that fellow up, and you know he is too honorable to go back on his promise. Well, of course, there ain't so much to be said about his honor now – but he won't lie, that's certain. He'll keep his part of this bargain."

Braine when left alone with Mikey, said to the lad:

"Mikey, how far did you go in arithmetic at school?"

"Clear troo, sir."

"What did you get on examination?"

"Eighty-six, sir."

"Well, here's a sum I want you to work out for me. If a boy, fourteen years old, smokes a dozen cigarettes a day at five cents a dozen, allowing compound interest on the money, how much will the smoking cost him by the time he's twenty-one? It will be a long sum to do. If you get tired while working at it, here's a good Havana cigar to smoke for a rest. Do the sum to-night, and bring me the answer in the morning. Go along to your work now."

Then Edgar Braine sat down to write, for the first time in his life, in advocacy of what he believed to be iniquity. The article was the most difficult one he had ever tried to write, but when done, it was almost startling in its vigor and persuasiveness.

When he had read it over, he thought:

"It almost convinces me that the thing is right, and I know better. It will surely convince men who don't know better. It's a strange experience for a man who has conscientiously written for the public instruction, to turn about and write with a deliberate purpose to deceive the public and wrong it. But the Edgar Braine who worked for the good of his fellow-men is dead. He committed suicide to-day. By the way, he ought to have a good obituary. I'll write it."

And he did. The article began:

"There died in this town to-day, a young man much esteemed by his fellow-citizens. The young man was known to all our readers as Edgar Braine, the editor. He died by his own hand, and no cause for the deed is known to the public."

It went on to give a sketch of the suicide's life, and an analysis of his character, and the purposes which had animated him in his work.

When the foreman got the obituary with "must" written upon it, he was thrown into a panic, and rushed into the editorial room to remonstrate.

"I can't believe you mean to kill yourself, Mr. Braine – "

"Be perfectly easy in your mind, Snedeker," replied Braine, with a smile, "I'm not going to do myself any further harm."

The foreman wanted to ask what the thing meant, but was not encouraged by the look on Braine's face to indulge his curiosity. He "set" the article himself, thinking that should the editor change his mind about it, it would be just as well not to give the journeymen a chance to talk. But Braine did not recall it. He corrected the proof slip, and went on with his work.

When the Enterprise came out with the obituary of its editor staring at its readers between turned rules, the little city was thrown into something like a convulsion. It was soon learned at the newspaper office that Braine was not dead – Abner Hildreth was the first to make the inquiry – and the good news spread rapidly through the excited community. But what did the obituary mean?

Conjecture busied itself with an effort to find a solution for the mystery; for wildly, personal and audacious as journalism was in small western towns at that time, the effrontery of this stroke startled the community. One wise one suggested that Mose Harbell must have done the thing for a joke, as he had manifestly done the mackerel story in the same issue of the paper; but that theory was unanimously rejected as soon as it was observed that the article did not once call Braine "genial."

Finally the community settled down to the conviction that this was only another of Braine's devices – a trifle more startling than the others – for exciting interest in the paper, and making it a subject of universal talk.

Abner Hildreth alone understood, and he was satisfied to be silent.

VIII

As the sun rose after his night of tramping and troubled reminiscence, Edgar Braine resolutely put the past out of his mind, and turned to the future.

"The old Edgar is dead," he said; "let us see what we can do for the new Edgar."

But before attacking that problem, he cleared his head by going out to the little shed that served him for a bath house, filling his home-made shower-bath with fresh water and drenching himself in the chill air of the June morning. When dressed, all the weariness of watching was gone, his pulse was full and his mind clear.

He called across the street and bade the negro caterer bring him a cup of coffee, and not until it came did he permit himself to think of anything more important than the beauty of the morning, and a pet scheme he had of persuading the aldermen of Thebes to offer citizens some sort of inducement to plant more permanent trees among the quick growing and quick decaying cotton-woods of the streets.

When the coffee came, he dismissed all these things, and set himself to work out some problems.

"Hildreth thinks he has made himself my master," he thought, "and Duncan and the Boston crowd are sure of it. They intend to make me serviceable to them, and kindly mean to toss a financial bone or two to me now and then. Thank you very much, gentlemen, but the relation you propose doesn't suit me. I prefer to occupy the place of master myself. It suits my peculiar temperament better."

Saying this in imagination, he began to think earnestly of means.

His first task was to discover as accurately as possible what the plans of the speculative combination were, – to spy out the camp which he meant to conquer.

The levee, which the Common Council was about to cede to the Central Railroad, covered the whole water-front of Thebes available for steamboat-landings, wharfs, grain-elevators, warehouses, and the like. To Thebes, the loss of the ground-rents and wharf-charges would be a great sacrifice, but the value of the privilege in that way was clearly not enough to account for the eagerness of the railroad people to secure it. They had other things in mind-indeed, there had been a reference to other things in Duncan's letter. It was Edgar Braine's first care to find out what those other things were.

He reflected that another railroad – the Northern – was in process of extension to Thebes. Upon consideration, he saw that the grant of the levee to the Central would effectually cut off the Northern from a terminus on the river. "That," he said to himself, "will enormously depress Northern stock, as soon as the effects of the cession are understood. Then, this crowd will buy it up for a song, consolidate with the Central and make a Union Depot at the Point. Yes – I see. That's the first part of the game. Then there's the Southern connection. They mean to build the twenty-five miles of road between here and Columbia on the other side of the river, and probably lease the whole system from that point, south. That will give them complete control of a vast system all centring here in Thebes. They'll establish a railroad ferry across the river, of course. Oh, by Jove!" he cried, starting up in excitement, "There are two sides to this river!"

With that he hastily finished his toilet by putting on a paper collar, thinking, as he did so: "I must take to linen, I suppose, now that I am to be a great financier."

After he was dressed, he hastily wrote a note to Helen, which began with the greeting he sent her every morning, and continued with a few loving words as to their approaching marriage.

"I have leased the little cottage, with the bed of sweet-williams in front, dear – by the way, I expect you to call them sweet Edgars in your splendid loyalty – with an option of buying it at the end of two years. It will be good property to own, but you shall not live there long, dear. I have grown ambitious since you consented to be my partner. I shall make money and reputation, and surround you with every luxury – for which you do not in the least care. I shall place you where your superior intellectual and social gifts will have play. You don't care for that either? Ah! but you will, when you find how greatly your social supremacy will aid me in my more masculine ambitions. When you are my wife, I shall be not twice, but ten times the man I am now. But first, I must teach you to appreciate yourself, dear, and convince you that I am not the infatuated lover you think me, when I tell you how superior you are to other women. Abner Hildreth told me yesterday that I have a remarkable head for business; well, the best justification my vanity has for accepting his opinion, is that I have had the shrewdness to recognize your worth, and to secure you for my partner. That's a joke not to my taste, Helen dear, but I haven't time to write this sheet over. You know I marry you simply because I love you, and that I would not profane my thought of you by associating you, even in my mind, with the things of this world. But I do want to see you shine. I want everybody to know your superiority as well as I do. I am ambitious for you, because I love you and wish to exalt you."

A little later, Edgar Braine, with a gun and game-bag, crossed the river in a skiff. It was his custom to shoot a little in the woods beyond the great stream twice or thrice a week, for exercise and for love of the woodland odors that brought back memories of his boyhood. But he was not thinking of exercise or odors this morning, or of the squirrels with which his sport usually filled his bag. When he landed, he walked immediately to the cabin occupied by Waverley Cooke. There he was greeted by Waverley, a tall and once very fine-looking man, whose broad brow was now marked with blotches which had run over as it were, from his brandy-pimpled nose.

Waverley Cooke was a Virginian, whose dignified courtesy of manner had been inherited from ancestors of the old stately school. In his youth he had been promising far beyond the common; in his young manhood he had quickly won distinction as an advocate whose eloquence was singularly persuasive. All doors to success had seemed open to him once; now, all were forever closed. Drink had mastered him before he reached his thirtieth year, and now at fifty, he was old, broken, and hopeless. His patrimony had been wasted, and he had come some years before to live upon the wild waste lands he owned opposite Thebes.

It had been his hope to develop this property, to build up a city there, which should share with Thebes the prosperity that had always been predicted for that town, and was now at last approaching.

But fortune had tarried too long for Waverly Cooke. Hope deferred had made his heart sick, and sorrow and solitude and drink had made wreck of his once buoyant nature. He had no longer any capacity to hope, and all the plans he had cherished lay dead now in his enfeebled hands.

Among these plans had been one to make the river his toll-gate whenever commerce should begin to cross it. In anticipation of that time he had secured in perpetuity the ferry franchise from his own miles of desolate river front to the shore where Thebes had then stood, a half-drowned hamlet waiting to become a city.

In the conviction that some day railroads from the north would meet railroads from the south at this place, he had seized upon this strategic point; this ferry franchise should make him rich, while the building of a town upon his land – it must be there, because there alone was a landing possible for many miles – should make his wealth princely.

But Waverley Cooke had not been able to wait, and all that remained of his project was the plying of his skiff – sometimes rowed by his own hands, and sometimes by a negro man, once his slave, who had remained his faithful attendant in his decay, – to carry infrequent passengers across the stream for hire.

It was to purchase this ferry franchise that Edgar Braine had crossed the river that morning. When the matter was mentioned to Cooke, a sad, dreamy look came into the poor fellow's face, and for a time he said nothing. He poured and drank some undiluted spirit – courteously motioning an invitation to his guest, for he could not speak – and then passed into the rear room of his house.

After a few moments he returned, erect, and with a touch of his old stateliness in his manner, and said: —

"Pardon me, Braine, but it is not a pleasant thing for a man to contemplate a wrecked life, when that life is his own. I quite understand the value this franchise will have some day, and until this hour I have hoped myself to reap the advantage of its possession. It was weak and foolish to cherish such a delusion, but until now I have never frankly admitted to myself the completeness of the ruin I have wrought. I know now that if there were a dozen railroads seeking ferry accommodations here, I could not arrange to provide them. I should have to go to Thebes to negotiate for the means, and I should get helplessly drunk there and part with everything to the first man that found out I had anything. I would rather sell to you, an honest man, and better still, a brave one. I have loved you with a knightly admiration, boy, ever since that affair with Summers. We Virginians cherish our inherited respect for personal courage, Braine. We hold it the chief virtue of manhood. This money-grubbing age laughs at our chivalric folly and mocks it; but our chivalric folly scorns this money-grubbing age, and so we are quits with it."

After a little further conversation, the wrecked Virginian took another drink, and said:

"Why not face the facts? That is my master" – pointing to the bottle. "I drink whiskey before breakfast; I get up in the night to drink it. I cannot go on in that way much longer, and I should go off at once if I quitted it. It's a sorry thing to joke about, isn't it? No matter. What I have in mind is this: I'm a wreck. I shall never do any good to myself or anybody else. My wife is buried out there in the swamp that poisoned her with its miasms. My children lie by her side. There remains for me only a brief period of wretchedness, and then death and oblivion. Why should I stay here in this pestilential wilderness? Why not sell out the whole thing to you, – land – there's seven thousand acres of it – all worthless at present – ferry franchise, railroad charter, and all? You are young and vigorous. You will make something of it. You will realize my dreams, and I have a sentimental pleasure in thinking of that. Sentiment is out of fashion, I know, but never mind. I'm out of fashion too."

"But I haven't money enough for so large a transaction, Mr. Cooke," said Braine.

"Money? It won't take much. If you were to pay me a thousand dollars now, or five thousand, do you know what I would do? I would go over to Thebes, get drunk and die probably. What would be the use of giving me money in large sums? I can't be helped in that way. But I'll tell you how you can buy me out, and at the same time do the best thing there is to be done for me. The home of my fathers in Virginia is vacant – abandoned as worthless since the war. The man who owns it will let me have the use of it, he says, for a song, and the offer has brought a great longing over me. I want to go home again."

Here the poor fellow broke down completely, tears streaming from his eyes and his utterance choking. Braine turned and walked apart in respectful sympathy. After a time he returned, and Cooke, having recovered himself, resumed:

"I want to take my wife and children out of the swamp and bury them in the little graveyard back of the garden at home, where the sweet-briar roses grow. I want to sit there by them every day till I die, trying to tell them how I repent me of my sin that ruined their lives. Who knows? Perhaps the wife's spirit might smile upon me then, as she smiled when she believed in me. Perhaps the little ones might remember in their graves the stories I used to tell them, and learn to love me again. I want to live in the old home till I die, and I want nothing else in the world. Edgar Braine, you can make that possible. Do it, and all these accursed possessions of mine, which will be golden possibilities to you, are yours!"

Braine was too deeply moved to speak for a time. Broken down drunkard that this man was, he had a certain nobility of character yet – it was all that remained to him of his inheritance from his fathers. It was a reviving glow of the old inherited courage and love of truth that prompted him thus to face his own condition, and assume the responsibility of his folly without an attempt to excuse or palliate the wrong he had done.

"What do you want, Mr. Cooke?" at last Braine asked.

"I want to go back to the old home to die. I want you to pay my passage and theirs" – motioning toward the graves – "and to pay me enough every month after I get there to provide me with food and clothes – and this," seizing the bottle and hurling it into the corner angrily. "You are not to send the money to me, mind. That would end all at once. You are to send it to some one I will name. A hundred dollars every month will be ample, and it won't be for long, as your debt is to cease with my death. Will you do this? Oh! will you do this, Braine? Will you have pity on me, and give me one breath of the old air, one look at the old hills, one little rest under the old trees, before I die?"

In the great longing that had taken possession of his imagination, the broken man was in panic lest his proposal should be refused.

"The land will be valuable some day, Braine, and so will the ferry franchise. It is absolute and exclusive, and the railroad commerce of this region must cross the river here. Then there is the railroad franchise."

"What is that?" asked Braine. "You mentioned it before, but I do not understand."

"Why, I have a special charter, granted years ago, for a railroad from here to Columbia – and on to the State line, for that matter, but as there is already a line from Columbia south, it is this twenty-five miles that are important. The charter will be very valuable whenever anybody is ready to build the connecting link, as they will be some day, because it grants valuable, exclusive privileges which can't be had under the present constitution. I drew the charter myself with an eye to the future, and legislatures in those days were ready to grant anything, in their eagerness to encourage railroad-building. I can't recall all the legal points now – my head isn't clear – but I'll show you the charter. You'll see for yourself that whoever builds any railroad to connect the lines centring at Thebes with the Southern system, is absolutely obliged to have this charter."