As he called up pictures there in the dark, Edgar Braine saw himself a
little country boy in Southern Indiana, growing strong in the sweet,
wholesome air of the river and the hills, and torturing his young mind
with questions to which he could not comprehend the answers.
At first his questioning had to do with nature, whose wonders lay around
him. He wanted to know of the river. Whence it came, and how; he asked
Wherefore, of the hills; he made friends of all growing things, and
companions of those that had conscious life.
Then came his father's death to turn his mind into new and darker
chambers of inquiry, and for a time he brooded, disposed, in loyalty to
that wisdom which age assumes, to accept the conventional dogmas given
to him by the ignorance about him, as explanations of the mysteries, but
unable to conceal their absurdity from a mind whose instinct it was to
stand face to face with Doubt and to compel Truth to lift her mask of
seeming.
The loneliness of his life was good for him for a time. It taught him to
find a sufficient companionship in his own mind--a lesson which all of
us need, but few learn. But the time came when his wise mother saw the
necessity of a change, and, scant as her resources were, she took him to
the little city of Jefferson, where the schools were good and
companionship was to be found.
The city was at that time a beautiful corpse. It had just died, and had
not yet become conscious of the fact. Ten or fifteen years before, a
railroad running from the State capital had made its terminus at
Jefferson, making the river town the one outlet of the interior. A great
tide of travel passed through the place, and a large trade centred
there. But the course of railroad development which gave the city life,
destroyed it later. Other railroads were built through the interior to
other river outlets, and Cincinnati and Louisville took to themselves
what had been Jefferson's prosperity.
And so when Edgar Braine first knew the town, it had lost its hold upon
life, though it had not yet found out what had happened to it. The great
rows of warehouses along the levee, with the legends "Forwarding and
Commission," "Groceries at Wholesale Only," "Flour, Grain and
Provisions," "Carriage Repository," and all the rest of it, staringly
inscribed upon their outer walls, were empty now, and closed. In West
Street, two only of the once great wholesale houses maintained a show of
life. In one, an old man sat alone all day, and contemplated three bags
of coffee and two chests of tea, for which no customer made inquiry. In
the other there remained unsold half a ton of iron bars, and a few kegs
of nails, to justify the assertion of the signboard that the proprietors
were dealers in "Iron and Nails." The two partners who owned the place
appeared there every morning, as regularly as when their sales were
reckoned in six figures. They were always scrupulously neat, always
courteously polite to each other, and always as cheerful and contented a
pair of business partners as one need desire to see. Why not, seeing
that they both liked the game of checkers, and had nothing to do but sit
in the doorway and play from the beginning to the end of "business
hours" every day?
But the town did not realize its condition yet. Weyer & McKee were
putting up a new and imposing building for the better accommodation of
their wholesale grocery business, inattentive to the fact that their
wholesale grocery business had ceased to be. Polleys & Butler were still
issuing their _Market Bulletin_ for the information of their
"customers," not having yet realized that their customers had
permanently transferred their custom to Cincinnati. In this interesting
little sheet they had not yet begun to discuss "The Present Depression
in Trade--Its Cause and Cure." That came a little later.
The city was very well satisfied with itself. It had water-works and
gas, broad streets, and comfortable houses in such abundance that every
family might have had two for the asking. The people did not greatly
mind their loss of prosperity. Those who did mind had already gone away;
those who remained had succeeded, during the days of activity, in
getting out of other people enough to live on comfortably, and were
content to enjoy leisure and occupy themselves with church work and the
like for the rest of their lives.
The boy did not discover that anything was amiss with Jefferson until
two or three years after his arrival there. Having seen no other city he
did not observe that there was anything peculiar in the condition of
this one, until he saw a "to let" notice on the gorgeously decorated
front of Fred Dubachs' "Paintery" and learned that Fred was about to
remove to Keokuk. Fred was a notably expert painter, and the front of
his shop had always a strong fascination for Edgar. Fred had lavished
his best skill and industry upon its ornamentation during the two or
three years since he had ceased to have any painting to do for others.
Now he had given up and was going away.
The thing set the boy thinking. He reflected that it would be a sad
waste of time and labor for Fred to paint any more signs for a town
which already had some thousands no longer serving any useful purpose.
As he followed out this suggestion it dawned upon him that perhaps
Jefferson was a city in decay, and when he had questioned the matter a
little further, the evidence all about him left no room for doubt.
Then he went home and said to his mother: "I will not live in Jefferson
after I finish at Hanover. This town is done for. I must have
opportunities, and there will never be any here."
But Jefferson's condition had been educating him all the time, and
shaping his character in ways which affected all his future. He saw this
clearly now as he paced his room in Thebes that night after the suicide,
and recalled it all.
Among his schoolmates in Jefferson there were some, the sons of vulgar
people who had grown rich in the rapid rise of the town. These were
mainly stupid and arrogant, and their insolence was unceasing. At first
it had stung the sensitive boy to that kind of protest which involves
blows and bloody noses.
He was lithe of limb and strong, and he usually managed to get a
sufficient revenge in that way to satisfy him. But something occurred at
last to spoil the enjoyment he got out of pommelling the young bullies,
and to show him that, with all his strength and agility, he was meeting
his adversaries on unequal terms. He accidentally saw his mother toiling
late at night over the clothes in which he had that day fought Cale
Dodge to a finish. Cale, he knew, would simply put on a new suit next
day.
"I will have no more fights of that kind," he said to himself. Then,
after a period of silent thought, he said aloud:
"I have better weapons. I will show them in class who is master."
From that hour the inattention to books which had given his mother some
uneasiness, ceased. He mastered every lesson days before it was assigned
to him, and when an opportunity offered he submitted himself to
examinations in advance, and passed into the higher grades of the high
school, leaving his adversaries behind.
In this process he acquired two unquenchable thirsts--the one for
knowledge, the other for power. He searched the town library for books
that might supplement the meagre instruction of the schools. In his
search for knowledge he found culture. General literature opened its
treasures to him, and he read everything, from Shakespeare to Burke's
Works, that the library could supply.
But while all this went on, his delight in his superiority to the youths
who had been insolent to him, and were so still, crystallized more and
more into a great longing for power, and a relentless determination to
achieve it. Cost what it might he must be great, and look down upon
these his foes. His ambition became a passion, wild and unruly, but he
resolutely curbed it as one controls a spirited horse, and for the same
reason. He did not mean to let the ambition run away with his life and
wreck it before the destination was reached.
In the little college ten miles away, when at last he entered there, he
was said to have no ambition, because he lightly put aside the petty
prizes and honors for which others struggled so eagerly. His mates did
not dream how ambitious he was. He was thinking of larger things. There
was a scholarship to be won, and he took that, because it would spare
him his tuition fees; but for the class and society "honors" he cared
not at all.
He made his own all of value that the college libraries held and when
the senior examinations were over he was without a rival near him on
that record of achievement which determines who shall be valedictorian.
But he placed no value on the empty honor so coveted by others. A month
remained before Commencement, and he had no mind to lose a month. He
said to the President:
"I am going away to-morrow. If you choose to give me my degree please
take care of the diploma for me, if it is not too much trouble. Perhaps
I shall send for it some day."
"But you are surely not going to leave before Commencement?"
"Why not? I have got all I can out of college. I can't afford to waste a
month for nothing."
"But you are first-honor-man, Braine!"
"Yes, so I hear. Give that to some one who cares for it. I don't."
The next morning Edgar Braine quitted the village on foot, and without
returning to Jefferson, passed out of the little world of youth into
the great world of manhood. His equipment consisted of his character,
his education, and fifty dollars.
He thought the character a good one then. He revised his opinion as he
paced the little room in Thebes, and remembered.