Kitobni o'qish: «Juggernaut: A Veiled Record», sahifa 4

He took the document from his desk, and Braine read it through carefully. Then he said:

"Mr. Cooke, this is a very valuable piece of paper."

"Then you will grant what I have asked?" eagerly interjected the other, almost in accents of prayer.

"I will if you insist. But as an honest man, or one who tries to be tolerably honest" – he remembered his suicide – "I cannot accept your offer without telling you that you are giving greatly more than you imagine. This twenty-five miles of road must be built, and men of enormous means will build it."

"Will they buy the charter on my terms, and now? A month hence it may be too late."

"They would buy it now, and on better terms than I am able to offer, if they knew of its existence," said Braine.

"I tell you there are no better terms possible. I won't have money paid me for it. I should get drunk and die, and never get home with them," again pointing to the graves. "Now listen to me, Edgar Braine. I must start home in three days, with them, or I must drown myself. I cannot live if this thing is not carried out. It is impossible to make better terms for me. All other terms would be worse, infinitely worse."

"Could I not execute a mortgage to you for a sum fairly representing the worth of this?" holding up the paper.

"No! I should trade it off for liquor and die the sooner. I tell you I want one thing and no other. There is nobody to come after me to inherit anything I might leave."

"Very well. Take to-day to think over the matter. You're excited now. If you adhere to your proposal to-morrow, I will accept it."

"No, no, no! It must be now, I tell you. I will execute the papers now, and begin to get ready for home!"

And so it was arranged. Excitement seemed to clear the head of the inebriate, and though his hand trembled, he wrote without a pause until every detail of the transaction was covered in legal form. Then he directed the negro boy, Sam, to harness the horse to the rickety buggy, and drove his visitor to the county seat, ten miles away, where the necessary legal forms of acknowledgment, record, etc., were completed.

When Edgar Braine walked into Hildreth's bank parlor late that afternoon, he said quite carelessly:

"I have come into a little property, and have some payments to make in the settlement. I may have to borrow a few hundred dollars to-morrow on a thirty days' acceptance."

"You can have a few thousands if you want it," said the banker, "any time you like. Now that you're one of us, I'll take care that your credit is good."

"Now that I'm one of you," replied Braine, "perhaps I shall be able to look after that a little myself. You say I have a good head for business."

With that he strolled out and bought a copy of the Enterprise to see if Mose Harbell had read his proofs carefully in his absence. As he passed a shop he paused and said to himself:

"As there really are two sides to the river, I may as well take to linen collars at once." And he went in and bought a supply.

IX

[From Helen's Diary.]

June 5, 18 – . Received a short note from Edgar at noon. It was a peculiar, unnatural note in some respects. It seemed a mechanical affair, instead of an impulse of the heart. He did not call this evening. I am much worried over it.

June 6, 18 – . Edgar is just now gone. This morning I received a note from him as usual, saying that he had secured a cottage just at the edge of town for us. He called at eight. He was in the wildest spirits. I have never seen him in this way before. His happiness infected me. He has had a wonderful stroke of good fortune, by which he has come into the proprietorship of the Enterprise, as well as the editorship, and he has just engaged in a land speculation – which I am not to mention – that is going to be worth a fortune to him, – something about a railroad grant, or something. I don't understand it exactly.

The cottage has seven rooms, and we are going to furnish them all. Ed laughed, and observed that he had already reached the linen collar period of his existence. There was a certain grim ring in his laugh to-night. I feel anything but grim. My entire person feels like a perpetual smile of joy. This stroke of fortune is glorious. Ed said that I must say absolutely nothing about affairs. That he had some people in his hands, and that we must be very discreet. I can't bear discretion. It always seems to suggest something to be ashamed of. Of course, it doesn't in this instance, because Edgar is the one who enjoins it. There is something glorious in this feeling of absolute faith. To know that for the rest of my life I shall never know the responsibility of having to decide anything. To know that I can place myself entirely in his hands, and be confident of always being counselled aright. I could never have loved him if I could not have felt this. It is my temperament. I do not feel this because I love him, but I love him because of this feeling. A good and honorable man – a man above the petty meanness of his fellows – inspires one almost with reverence.

There is a certain magnificent assurance of superiority in Edgar Braine, so that at times the thought of his marriage with a woman like me seems almost outrageous. I feel so inferior, morally and intellectually. I fear being a drag upon him; an obstacle in the road of his advancement. I am determined to keep up with him as far as it lies in my power. He said to-night that he lived for but two things – power, and my love. I can satisfy the latter, and will never hinder the former. I realize how dear this wish for power is to him; how he longs to be able to better the condition of those people whom he comes in contact with. His ideas are constantly broadening. To-night he talked a little wildly, but in a tone and with a manner that in some way carried conviction with it, of becoming a power not only among his immediate associates but among the people in general; a power in the nation.

When I think of the noble aims of this man that I love, I cannot help feeling that such a situation would vastly benefit the country. With such a spirit at the helm, there could be no danger of wreck. Heigho! What speculations.

I found myself smiling at the absurdity of my thoughts just now. If I believed that such a thing could be, I should not be so supremely happy as I am now. I could sacrifice my feelings, if it were to the interests of the country, or Edgar. I should even enjoy sacrificing them, I think. But there will never be any question of that. It seems to me that all has come to the point that I have longed for. We are to be married; never separated; live comfortably, without the necessity for anxiety as to the practical things of life, and love each other unmolested by anyone or anything. This is absolute and perfect happiness. To love and live with no ambition save to do right, and feel that the world may be a little better for two loving people having lived in it.

When I teased Ed to-night about not taking me to New York for our wedding trip, he actually looked unhappy, and as though he thought I meant it. It made me laugh to see the miserable expression on his face for a moment, when I have been thanking Heaven all this time that we could not afford to go further than Chicago, and so would get back here to Thebes and our little home in half the time. Besides, I hate travelling. It covers me with dust till I feel as if I could never be clean again. The dust seems to get even into my mind and soul. It isn't so with Edgar. There is a halo of immaculateness about him: cleanliness is in the very atmosphere when he is near. He is absolutely an indescribable man. He walks down the street, and if one but gets a glimpse of his shiny coat-tails rounding the corner, one is impressed with the superiority of the manner those coat-tails have of rounding that corner. One knows that they belong to a man who is worth knowing. One would be impressed that the proprietor of those shiny coat-tails had accomplished some great thing.

If I don't stop right here, I shall get to elaborating on this subject until I shall not get to bed at all.

Good night, Edgar. I hold up my face to be kissed.

June 19th. I have not written in this diary for days. There has been plenty to write about – plenty of emotions, not many incidents.

Edgar has reached what, to me, seems the pinnacle of fame and honor – though he only laughs when I say so, and says, with almost a touch of contempt in his tone – "Wait!"

I am a thousand times more elated over the situation than he is – and yet I hardly know whether I am quite as happy as I was before, or not. When I am overwhelmed with exaltation and admiration for his wonderful achievements, Edgar smiles indulgently, and the other night he turned suddenly and said:

"Listen, dear! When I was a young boy, I used to become frenzied at times with certain indignities that other boys with only half my brains compelled me to endure, because they happened to be situated more advantageously than I as regards material things. While I had perfect contempt for them, I felt a wild desire to convince them of my superiority, as I was convinced of it. I decided that brute force was the only thing at my command at first, and one morning, went out and whipped that one of them whose prestige was such in the town that victory over him meant reverence for me from the rest in the set. It was this very respect which I had whipped the fellow to gain, and which these little ruffians accorded me afterward, that disgusted me. I found I didn't value the respect of a lot of little loafers who could appreciate superiority of that kind only. That evening, when I saw my mother patching those clothes that had been torn in the fight, I discovered that there was no longer even the flavor of satisfaction left me. I said then, 'I will adopt a larger plan.' I did. I had then no thought that – that just this would be the outcome," and here he looked out of the window for a time, with the strange, determined, ominous look that I have seen in his face so often lately.

"But the situation is more than my – wildest dreams could have anticipated."

Here he laughed. His laugh, too, has changed a little lately. He went on in a sort of abstracted tone. "And what that first brutal success was to me, now is this that enthuses you so. Like that first success it has, from the very fact of its unsatisfactory character, urged and assured greater achievements. I think of it as paltry, inconsequential – from my present point of view. It is only a means by which to accomplish great things, things worthy of achievement – as most people regard worthiness.

"The present is nothing to me, absolutely nothing, except so far as it affects the future."

Then he fell into one of his little silent moments, of which he has so many now. There is something about it all that makes me feel strange and hysterical. I am so proud of him that I want to cry out on the street corners that this man belongs to me – and yet there is something lacking. He is with me even more than usual, for it seems as though he has sudden plans and constantly occurring things to tell me about.

He always says: "Be discreet; never speak to your Aunt or anyone but me of any of these things. They are just between us." He says that I am remarkably trustworthy, and that he could not live if he could not tell me about how things are going. He never seems to think of himself. He will sit for ten minutes looking at me without speaking, and suddenly say:

"Wait, wait! Just a little time and everything shall be yours. I will bring the world to you and lay it at your feet," and when he says it I almost believe it to be true for a moment.

It is only because his nerves are overwrought. (He is nervous to the verge of insanity sometimes.) It seems to me that I am the only one in the world who could possibly understand his temperament. He says I am. The other night we were at a small reception given by Mrs. Clews. He walked about the house all the time I was putting on my things. I knew that he was so nervous and excited over something that he could hardly control himself.

When we reached the Clews's he suddenly became another man. For an hour and a half he was calm almost to coldness. He was magnificent. Mr. Hildreth was there, and once while Edgar and I were talking together we saw him near us. Edgar had taken me a little aside, and was saying nothing, but allowing himself to relax for a moment from the strain under which I knew he was keeping himself. Suddenly he saw Mr. Hildreth, and his tone and attitude and manner changed completely. Where he had seemed almost like a tired, petulant child looking for comfort from me, he suddenly changed to a stern, masterful man without a trace of helplessness or nervousness.

He said: "This is as good a time as any," and excused himself and went over to Hildreth, and touched his arm. It seemed to me that Mr. Hildreth was positively deferential to him. It was no doubt my imagination, but they disappeared for a while, and when they returned, Edgar and I left.

He was his usual self – the self that others know, until we were outside. Then he became silent – preoccupied. I asked him what he wanted with Mr. Hildreth, and he laughed and said:

"A little matter of business – technicalities that you could not understand." There is a great deal that I cannot understand, and these things he never tells me about, because he says that if he annoyed me with these dry details, I would not listen to him at all by and bye. As though that were true!

When we reached home, he suddenly took me in his arms, and said: "How glorious you are! It would be nothing to me if you were not to share it with me."

He talks in such a wild fashion at times. I suppose he means all this honor and attention that he receives. Since it has become certain that his exertions are to carry through the railroad affair to the advantage of Thebes, he seems to have become a sort of god with the Thebans. I don't understand the business part of it very well, but I know that every one thinks that he has done a great thing for the town. When I speak of the gratitude that the people of Thebes should feel, he shrugs his shoulders and changes the subject. Once, he said in a sort of a passion: – "For heaven's sake never speak again of anything I seem to have done for Thebes."

This sensitiveness and modesty are constant with him in everything that he does – though the trait seems to be intensified now.

The other day I stopped at the office and some man was in there talking to Edgar, and said something about his being a public benefactor, and Edgar said, coldly:

"Don't be grateful too soon, my dear fellow," and when he saw me, his whole face lighted up, and he dismissed the man.

The man stared at me as he went out, and suddenly Edgar looked like a thunder cloud, and slipped between us a sort of improvised screen for me. He said after the door had closed:

"I don't want you to come to the office any more – things are a little different now."

They are different because he has grown to thinking of the effect of everything on other people now, instead of just ourselves, as he always has done. He has always said:

"As long as one has a clear conscience, and is satisfied with one's self, the opinions of other people are of little consequence."

I don't feel quite comfortable with the change, but he reminded me that circumstances alter cases; that one must adapt himself to changed situations. I asked him if it was quite right, and he looked at me a long time, and finally said with the old, new determination in his face and voice: "We are to do it," without answering my question. Somehow it taught me a lesson. I think I shall never again question anything that he says. His tone, his manner seemed to forbid it, seemed to settle forever any doubt as to a possibility of anything being wrong that he says or decides.

I was almost astonished at myself afterwards, when I realized that I had questioned any motive he might have had, or any suggestion he might have made. A woman like me, questioning the propriety of anything that such a man as Edgar Braine might do!

Sometimes I try to make up my mind whether he looked more magnificent in his shiny coat with fringed bindings, or in his present immaculate toilet. I can come to no conclusion. The reverence and awe that Edgar Braine inspired in his shabby suit were overwhelming. The dignity that he lends to his present clothes is – well, is simply glorious. He makes the clothes. In either case, one is impressed that clothes are but a matter of convenience, and really of too little importance to be remembered – except long enough to put them on and take them off – by Edgar Braine. Such a man as he would be perfect in any clothes.

X

The doings of Edgar Braine, during the few weeks following his negotiations with Waverley Cooke, were a riddle to those who knew of them; but Thebes was so well used to his puzzling methods that the little ripple of talk raised at this time did not swell into a wave of chatter, as it might in another man's case.

In the first place, he borrowed a very considerable sum of money from Hildreth, and insisted upon so arranging the terms of the loan, that he could repay the money at any time after ninety days, but should be free to retain it for a year upon renewals, if that suited him better.

Hildreth was willing enough to lend him the money, but he speculated a little as to what Braine was going to do with so large a sum. He did not find out.

Next, Braine jauntily upset all the plans for the marriage, which he and Helen had so laboriously formed. It was on the evening of the special charter election that he did this. Up to that day he had worked ceaselessly at the task of persuading the people of Thebes that the best thing they could do with their one valuable municipal possession was to give it away to the Central Railroad Company. He had found time in the interval, however, to see Helen almost every day. He had not contented himself with supporting the measure in the Enterprise, but had organized support for it in quarters where support was not to be expected, and in quarters in which it was supposed that he of all men had least influence. The machinery of his own political party was easy to handle, but Braine boldly undertook to control that of the opposing party as well.

A city clerk, to replace the one who had defaulted and run away, was to be chosen by the City Council, in which Braine's own party was dominant. Braine seized upon this circumstance as his lever. He boldly offered the place to the leader of the opposite party in return for that party's support of the levee transfer proposal, which, being in no respect a political question, men of either party might advocate or oppose at will. Having made the bargain he set to work to induce the aldermen of his own party to carry it out. He reckoned upon their venality as a stronger motive than their party zeal, and his reckoning was not amiss.

"Hildreth is to pay those rascals for voting the transfer, of course," he reasoned; "and they can't vote it unless this election is carried to authorize it. Hildreth isn't fool enough to pay them till the thing is done. Very well. There is a ring in the nose of every scamp of them."

And it was so. The aldermen were angrily reluctant to surrender a political office, and the one with whom Braine negotiated at first flatly refused. But Braine knew his ground.

"Very well," he said, "but reflect a little. This election is very close. We need all the help we can get. Davidson has his men perfectly in hand, and now that I've offered the thing to him he will vote them to a man on the other side if this isn't carried out."

"Why in thunder did you make him such an offer, then? Nobody authorized it."

"It is not worth while to discuss that. Call it impertinent intermeddling on my part, if you choose, and ease your mind in that way. But the offer has been made. If you ratify it, we shall carry the charter election. If you refuse, – well, you know what the result is likely to be as well as I do."

The alderman understood perfectly, and was not minded to take risks. The bargain as to the city clerkship was carried out. This was one of many ways in which Braine organized the victory he had set out to win, and during those few short weeks, the people of Thebes discovered a new fact about Edgar Braine; they learned that he had what they called "a genius for politics."

When Edgar heard that said, he reflected: "Well, I seem to be developing new qualities rapidly. What with a 'good head for business,' discovered by that expert, Abner Hildreth, and a 'genius for politics,' diagnosticated by those eminent specialists the aldermen of Thebes, I ought to make my way, especially as I own a railroad charter and a ferry franchise. Poor old Waverley Cooke! I hope he is breathing his native air with a relish by this time. I shall be sorry when the payments to him cease."

He sighed deeply. Was it over Waverley Cooke, or was he thinking of another wreck?

As soon as the polls closed after an exciting contest – for the opposition had been very determined – Edgar turned his back upon the bustling crowds, and briskly walked away.

Helen met him at the door, though she had not expected him that evening. Somehow she had acquired a habit of always discovering his approach and meeting him in the vestibule, a convenient place for the exchange of certain quasi masonic – but we must not intrude upon privacy with prying eyes.

As she was not expecting him, she was not dressed to receive him, a circumstance in which he rejoiced mightily, her careless costume seeming in his eyes to set off her beauty ravishingly.

She wore a loose gown of a thin, limp goods, Pompeiian red in hue, with flowing sleeves of white, equally limp, and a broad, starchless collar of white to match the sleeves. The gown was belted in at the waist with a rope girdle of dull, oxidized silver. The costume seemed to cling lovingly to the lines of her superb length, and Braine was at the moment certain that he should never permit her to wear any other. "Man-like," was her commentary, when he told her this a few weeks later.

"You are weary," she said, "and it is very warm. Loll here by the windows. No, not in that chair, it is rickety, and you are so big and strong I always expect weak things to break with you. My will did, you know, when you made up your mind to marry me. No, no, you mustn't, now! people are passing."

What this last injunction and remark had to do with the subject of conversation, I cannot make out, but that is what Helen said, hurriedly, as she drew back a little.

"Now you shall not talk to me," she said, as she sank in graceful folds upon the floor, with an ease which made one doubt the existence of bones in her tall person. "You are tired, and I'll do the talking. What shall the subject be?"

"Tell me of yourself. What have you been doing and thinking?"

"Nibbling pickles, sewing, trying to read Browning because you told me to, and carrying pins in my mouth."

"I thought you promised me not to put pins in your mouth. I gave you a cushion, to bind the bargain."

"That's why I told you about it. You see I'm honest above all things. I get busy and forget, but I'm really trying, Edgar."

"What have you been sewing on?"

"I must tell you. (I'm too honest.) Clothes."

"What sort?"

"White. Linen and cotton."

"But what – "

"Hush! You're not to talk. Where did Browning get the story of Hervé Riel? Is it historical?"

"I can't tell you without talking."

"Oh, you can talk just a little, you know – enough to answer my questions. But I don't care anything about Hervé Riel. I asked because I could not think of anything else at the moment. Tell me instead, where our wedding cards should be made – Chicago or St. Louis?"

Taking that evening's Enterprise from the table Edgar read aloud:

"There is no longer any occasion for citizens of Thebes to incur the delays and uncertainties incident to having printing of any kind done in Chicago or St. Louis. The job office of the Daily Enterprise is now perfectly equipped for all work of the kind, from the plainest of posters to the daintiest of wedding invitations."

"But I won't have printing done at that establishment, Mr. Braine."

"Why not, Miss Thayer?"

"I don't approve of its editor."

"What has the poor fellow done to incur your displeasure?"

"Many things. He persists in asking me about the clothes I am making; he insists upon changing my pretty name, and he is too stingy of his time to take me further than Chicago for a wedding trip when I am crazy to be stunned and bewildered by the glories of New York."

"Helen dear," broke in Braine, with a sudden earnestness of protest in his tone, "you know, do you not – "

"Certainly I know, and I perfectly approve that and everything else you do, Ed. Forgive me. I was only teasing."

At this point there was a brief wait in the dialogue. Then Helen, sitting down on the floor again, resumed in an earnest tone, with her large eyes looking fixedly at her lover:

"You must never misunderstand me, Ed. You know I am devoted to your interests only. I would not let you spend an hour that you cannot spare from your work, in gratifying me. I was only jesting, dear. You understand me, don't you?"

If the words did not make the matter entirely clear to Braine's intelligence they were helped a good deal by the "eloquent language of signs," and the whole matter was rapidly becoming perfectly lucid, when a knock at the door startled the pair, and caused Helen to withdraw suddenly to a particularly prim and painful Queen Elizabeth chair on the other side of the room. By the time she was uncomfortably seated, the knock was repeated, and it dawned upon her mind that some one should open the door. She did this herself, as on the whole, best.

"It's Mikey, with a note for me," said Braine; "I told Mose Harbell to send him."

Helen brought in the note, and Braine quietly opened and read it.

"Please tell Mikey to wait for an answer," he said. "May I have some paper?"

Helen supplied him, and he wrote. When the messenger was gone, he turned and said:

"Come here, Helen dear. Kneel down here by my chair. I want to talk to you."

His manner was a trifle puzzling. It indicated a good deal of earnestness and some concern to enforce whatever it was he meant to say; but there was an inflection of exultation in his voice:

"I'm going to upset all our arrangements, Helen. You needn't have any wedding cards printed at all."

"Oh Edgar!" she cried in distress. "What has happened? Are you ruined in your business, dear? Tell me what it is?"

"No, I'm not ruined – not in my business at least," he added, with a meaning to which Helen had no clew. "On the contrary, my prospects were never so good before. But you don't need any wedding invitations, dear, because we must be married to-night. We leave by the midnight train for a wedding journey to New York."

"But, Edgar, how absurd!"

"Yes, I know it's absurd. Many things I do are so. But it must be, all the same. I have just had the returns from this election. It has gone as I wished, and that involves a good many things – among them an immediate journey to New York, and perhaps a stay of several weeks there. I have only been waiting till Mikey brought me certain news of the result before telling you about this."

"You mean to tell me that you have sat there chatting with me all this time, with that in your mind, and not telling me a word about it?"

"I couldn't, you know. You told me not to talk."

"You don't deserve that I should marry you at all."

"I know it. I've told you so all along. But the same thing is true of every other man in the world, and so you will have to put up with it."

"But you're not serious about this, Edgar?"

"Perfectly."

"It's preposterous!"

"Of course it is, but I can't help it."

"It's out of the question."

"Of course it is. Things that are decided are no longer in the question."

"But seriously, Edgar, I'm not ready. I can't be married so suddenly. I haven't any clothes," with that tremendous emphasis on the word clothes which the feminine mind instinctively places on the idea it represents, where marriage is in question.

"Seriously, Helen, I know this is a great annoyance to you, and I deeply regret annoying you with anything. But it is absolutely necessary for me to go to New York at once, and to remain there for I don't know how long. It means more to me than you can imagine. It means success and power. Perhaps it may mean wealth, also. We were to have been married in July. I may not be able to leave New York then without risk of loss and ruin. So we must be married to-night, and you shall have your vision of New York after all. It is now nine o'clock. I will be back here at eleven, with a license and a clergyman. I have written to Mose Harbell to send you a dozen newsboys for messengers. They'll be here soon. He will send 'genial' ones, of course, and they will carry notes summoning all your friends to the wedding. Lily Holliday will help you with the notes. You might send for Daisy Berkeley too, or I'll call by there on my way down town, and tell her you've a romantic secret to confide to her. That will send her to you in five minutes. It would if it were midnight and she in bed."

With that he hurried away, leaving Helen standing in the middle of the floor in a dazed condition, till Daisy Berkeley, who lived but a little distance away, came hurriedly in to ask: "What is it?" in many and varied forms of words.

"I could not think of yielding to so preposterous a plan," said Helen, after she had briefly explained the situation, "but what am I to do? Edgar is gone, and I can't argue it with him. And the clergyman will be here at eleven, and there come the newsboys now, and I haven't a stitch of clothes! Oh, what shall I do?"

"Do?" cried Daisy. "Why carry the thing through, of course. It's the most deliciously romantic thing I ever heard of in my life. Oh, how I do envy you!"

"But what am I to do for clothes, Daisy? And besides, it's so undignified!"