JUGGERNAUT
A Veiled Record
BY GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON AND DOLORES MARBOURG
NEW YORK
FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT
1891
Copyright in 1891, by
GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON
and
DOLORES MARBOURG
All Rights Reserved
To Madame
JUGGERNAUT:
A VEILED RECORD.
I.
Edgar Braine was never so blithe in all his life as on the morning ofhis suicide.
Years after, in the swirl and tumult of his extraordinary career, thememory 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 eagervoices that besought his attention, distracting his mind for thebriefest fraction of an instant from the complex problems of affairswith which he wrestled ceaselessly.
In the brief moment during which he allowed the vision of a dead pastthus to invade his mind, he would recall every detail of that morningwith photographic accuracy, and more than photographic vividness.
In such moments, he saw himself young, but with a mature man's ambition,and more than the strength of a man, as he strode sturdily down thestreets of the little Western city, the June sunshine all about him in agolden glory, while the sunshine within exceeded it a hundredfold.
His mood was exultant, and with reason. He had already conquered theonly obstacles that barred his way to success and power. He hadimpressed himself upon the minds of men, in a small way as yet, to besure, but sufficiently to prove his capacity, and confirm his confidencein his ability to conquer, whithersoever he might direct his march.
Life opened its best portals to him. He was poor, but strong and wellequipped. 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 whoconfronts life armed only with his own abilities. That accomplished, ifthe man be worthy, the rest follows quite as a matter of course,—aneffect flowing from an efficient cause.
Edgar Braine had proved to himself that he possessed superiorcapacities. He had long entertained that opinion of his endowment, buthis caution in self-estimate was so great that he had been slower thanany of his acquaintances to accept the fact as indisputably proved.
It had been proved, however, and that was cause enough for rejoicing, toa mind which had tortured itself from boyhood with unutterable longingsfor that power over men which superior intellect gives,—a mind that haddreamed high dreams of the employment of such power for human progress.
His was not an ambition achieved. It was that immeasurably more joyousthing, an ambition in sure process of achievement.
But this was not his only cause of joy. Love, as well as life, hadsmiled upon him, and the woman who had subdued all that was noblest inhim to that which was still nobler in her, was presently to be his wife.
And so Edgar Braine's heart sang merrily within him as he strode throughthe cottonwood-bordered streets toward his editorial work-shop.
He entered the composing-room in front, and greeted the foreman witheven more of cordiality than was his custom, though his custom was acordial one.
He tried not to observe that Mikey Hagin, the Spartan-souled apprenticeof the establishment, was complacently burning a hole in the palm of hishand, in a heroic endeavor to hide the fact that he had been smoking acigarette in risk of that instant discharge which Braine had