The next few years of Edgar Braine's life were years of strenuous,
almost turbulent, endeavor, but their details do not belong to this
history. Their outline only concerns us.
When the consolidation of the Central road with the other lines north
and south, was effected, Braine had every reason to feel as he had on
the day of his battle with Cale Dodge. In the one case, as in the other,
he had won a passionately coveted victory; in the one case as in the
other, it was unsatisfying.
He had felt almost a savage joy in the process of conquering Hildreth
and his party, and teaching them to recognize him as the master; but
when the conquest was over, it seemed a very little victory after all,
because the enemy was so contemptible.
"Hildreth has experience and cunning," he said, "but he has no masterful
ability. As to the rest--faugh! Why should I care to match my brains
against their poor headpieces? One little loving thought of Helen's is
worth more than a thousand such victories."
Braine valued the wealth that was now securely his, not for any vulgar
love of wealth, such as men are apt to feel who have grown up in poverty
and wrought out riches for themselves, but for the liberty it secured to
him to prosecute his other purposes unhampered by any bread-winning
necessity.
He had enough money now, in possession and in certain prospect, to
satisfy his desires in that direction, and if he afterward engaged in
great financial undertakings, as he did, it was as the athlete expends
his strength, not for results, but for the joy of the exercise.
Braine's mind found pleasure in forming and directing difficult schemes,
and his self-love was gratified by the recognition of himself as the
master mind among the strong men of finance with whom he allied himself
in these schemes.
There was another reason for his continued activity in affairs. He saw
in such activity vast opportunities to impress himself upon a rapidly
developing country, and thus to forward his political ambition, which
boldly grasped at the highest things, just as in finance he never
suffered the magnitude or difficulty of any undertaking to appal him.
"We shall keep the cottage for our residence, dear," he said to Helen a
few months after the events already related, "but we must live mainly in
New York now. My business enterprises require it. You shall have such
quarters as you want there, but I should like to keep the cottage just
as it is, with a servant always in charge. It will be pleasant for us
now and then to come back here for a little rest, and a little quiet
love-making. Will it not?"
And so it was arranged. Braine retained control of the _Enterprise_, and
even actively directed it, wherever he might be. No matter how
absorbingly engaged he might become in any of his great enterprises, he
found time each day to communicate by telegraph with the newspaper
office and by crisp, brief commands to determine the character of every
issue.
He still retained Thebes as his legal residence, and it was expected
that he would represent the Thebes district in Congress, but to the
surprise of every one, he chose to have himself elected to the State
Legislature instead.
There his activity was ceaseless. He mastered every detail of
information concerning the State, so perfectly that he could, and often
did, instruct members from distant quarters concerning affairs in their
own districts, about which their information was confidently inexact.
He carefully avoided accepting the leadership of his party, which might
have been his for the taking, and before the session was over he was
said to have won the personal friendship of every man in the
Legislature.
At the next election he declined to be a candidate, and put up Mose
Harbell instead. The nomination created general surprise at first, and a
general laugh when surprise and incredulity had subsided; but Braine
took care that his "genial" local editor should be elected.
He made himself very active in the State General Committee of his party
also, though he was not a member of that body. He contributed largely to
the Campaign fund, and took great pains to keep himself well informed as
to the state of the canvass in every district in which there was any
chance of success for his party. Whenever news came that the
chance was slender in any district, Braine opened a confidential
correspondence--usually conducted by Mose Harbell--with the local
political leader of that district, and it was almost uniformly the case
that the prospect of success in the district rapidly improved from the
moment Braine's attention was directed to it.
The result of the election was a cause of general astonishment. The
opposing party, which had long been in the ascendant, had carried the
State ticket by about its customary majority, but the Legislature
elected held--for the first time in many years--a good working majority
for Braine's party, to the surprise of everybody in the State except
Braine himself. He had expected precisely that result. Perhaps his
anticipations had been stimulated by his carefully directed efforts to
secure their fulfilment.
The fact that a United States Senator was to be chosen by this
Legislature gave peculiar interest to the event. The senator whose place
was to be filled had expected to be re-elected without opposition. He
had made a secure bargain for re-election with the leaders of his party.
But his party, being unexpectedly in the minority, was of course, unable
to fulfil the contract.
The stir created by the unforeseen situation was very great. The several
prominent men of the party were named one after another for the high
place, and the newspapers by their advocacy of local "favorite sons"
soon made the contest between them a very heated one.
Braine wrote with extreme courtesy of each of them in his newspaper,
favoring none in particular, but daily pointing out the necessity of
uniting upon some man who could command the hearty approval of the
entire party, and emphasizing the apparent impossibility of such a union
in behalf of any of those who had been named.
Mose Harbell held his peace, perhaps because he was equally impressed
with the exceeding "geniality" of all the candidates.
Braine pleaded strongly for harmony in the interest of the party, and
particularly for the selection of some rising man of ability, whose age
had not deprived him of the energy necessary to make his ability felt at
Washington.
When the Legislature assembled it was found that an extraordinarily
large number of the members on the majority side were not positively
pledged to any candidate for the caucus nomination, beyond the first two
or three ballots, and a careful canvass showed that on the first ballot
at least six candidates would be voted for, no one of whom would receive
more than one fourth of the total vote.
Mose Harbell, of course, knew all the "genial" men about him in the
Legislature and all of them knew Mose--mainly as a joke. Mose entered
the caucus, pledged, for the first two ballots, to the least likely
candidate on the list. He made his first speech in advocacy of that
candidate's election, emphasizing the "geniality" of the man, and
telling some stories of his own peculiar manufacture in illustration of
it. With three others he voted for that man.
The first ballot in the caucus showed six candidates voted for and no
election. The second ballot showed six candidates voted for and no
election.
When the third ballot was ordered, Mose Harbell untwisted his long legs,
removed his feet from the desk to the floor, and rose in his place to
make a very brief speech.
"Mr. Chairman," he said, "it is evident that we cannot nominate any of
the gentlemen for whom we have been voting. Why should we not nominate
the man who best represents the intelligence and integrity of the party,
the man to whose earnest devotion in the late election the party owes
its opportunity to elect a senator? I, for one, shall vote on this
ballot for Edgar Braine!"
It will be observed that the style of this speech was wholly unlike the
usual literary methods of Mose Harbell. Perhaps that was sufficiently
accounted for by the fact that the slip of paper from which Mose had
committed it to memory, was in the handwriting of--his master.
The burst of applause that greeted the speech, seemed to indicate that a
large proportion of the members present shared Mose's view of the
situation, and the third ballot showed three candidates voted for, with
Edgar Braine's name leading, and within two of a majority.
On the fourth ballot, Braine was nominated amid a roar of applause.
It had all been done precisely as the editor of the _Enterprise_ had
planned that it should be done.
That night Edgar incidentally mentioned to Helen that she was to be the
wife of a United States Senator, at the next session of Congress, and so
would have only one more winter to pass in New York.