[Gutenberg 39922] • Juggernaut: A Veiled Record

JUGGERNAUT T A V E I L E D R E C O R D BY GEORGE CARY -- 1891, -- EDGAR BRAINE was never so blithe in all his life as on the morning of his suicide. Years after, in the swirl and tumult of his extraordinary career, the memory of that June morning, and of the mood in which he greeted it, would rush upon him as a flood, and for the moment drown the eager voices that be- sought his attention, distracting his mind for the briefest fraction of an instant from the complex problems of affairs with which he wrestled ceaselessly. In the brief moment during which he allowed the vision of a dead past thus to in- vade his mind, he would recall every detail of that morning with photographic accuracy, and more than photographic vividness. In such moments, he saw himself young, but with a mature mans ambition, and more than the strength of a man, as he strode sturdily down the streets of the little Western city, the June sunshine all about him in a golaen glory, while the sunshine within ex- ceeded it a hundredfold. His mood was exultant, and with reason. He had already conquered the only obstacles that barred his way to success and power. He had impressed himself upon the minds of men, in a small way as yet, to be sure, but sufficiently to prove his capacity, and confirm his confidence in his ability to conquer, whith- ersoever he might direct his march. Life opened its best portals to him. He was poor, but strong and well equipped. He had won possession of the tools with which to do his work and the conquest of the tools is the most difficult task set the man who con- fronts life armed only with his own abilities. That accomplished, if the man be worthy, the fest follows quite as a matter ofcourse, -an effect flowing from an efficient cause. Edgar Braine had proved to himself that he possessed superior capacities. He had long entertained that opinion of his endowment, but his caution in self-estimate was so great that he had been slower than any of his ac- quaintances to accept the fact as indisputably proved. It had been proved, however, and that was cause enough for rejoicing, to a mind which had tortured itself from boyhood with unutter- able longings for that power over men which superior intellect gives, -a mind that had dreamed high dreams of the employment of such power for human progress. His was not an ambition achieved. It was that immeasurably more joyous thing, an am- bition in sure process of achievement. But this was not his only cause of joy. Love, as well as life, had smiled upon him, and the woman who had subdued all that was noblest in him to that which was still nobler in her, was presently to be his wife. And so Edgar Braines heart sang merrily within him as he strode through the cotton- wood-bordered streets toward his editorial work-shop. He entered the composing-room in front, and greeted the foreman with even more of cordiality than was his custom, though his custom was a cordial one. He tried not to observe that Mikey Hagin, the Spartan-souled apprentice of the establish- ment, was complacently burning a hole in the palm of his hand, in a heroic endeavor to hide the fact that he had been smoking a cigarette in risk of that instant discharge which Braine had threatened as the fore-ordained punish- ment of that crime, if he should ever catch the precocious youth committing it again. He saw the cigarette, of course, -it was his habit to see things, -andthe blue wreath floating upward from the hand in which a hasty attempt had been made to conceal it, was perfectly apparent. But his humor was much too joyous for him to enforce the pen- alty, though he had decreed it with a fixed purpose to enforce it...