IV

The youth's sole thought when he walked out into the world was to find opportunities – for exactly what, he neither knew nor greatly cared. He knew himself possessed of power, and he sought a chance to make it felt. He was ambitious beyond measure, but he believed his ambition to be safely under a curb bit. He would achieve great things, but their greatness should minister to the good of his fellow men.

His selfishness was of that kind which looks for its best satisfaction in self-sacrifice. He would spend himself in the service of mankind, and take his reward in seeing the results of his labor. He had been bred to high conceptions of human conduct, and had filled his mind with exalted principles.

It was for the exercise of powers thus directed that he sought opportunities. He would know what to do with them, he was very sure, when they came. He selected Thebes as the scene of his first endeavors because it presented the completest possible contrast to Jefferson. As Jefferson was a city that had ceased to thrive, so Thebes was one that was just about to begin to thrive, as its citizens took pains to notify the rest of the world. Braine wanted to help it thrive, and share its thrift.

The bread-and-butter problem gave him no trouble. Thebes had plenty of work to do in getting ready to prosper, and Braine was prepared to do any work. The shrewd speculators who were engineering the town's scheme of greatness, were quick enough to discover the youth's capacities, as the race-course speculator is to see the fine points of a horse. In whatever fell to him to do he acquitted himself so well that faith in "young Braine" soon gave place to respectful admiration, and Mose Harbell wrote numberless paragraphs in the Thebes Daily Enterprise concerning "our genial and gifted young townsman, Edgar Braine," in which, for reasons that Mose could not have explained, there was notably less of the "genial" insolence of familiarity than was common in Mose's literary productions. When some one mentioned this in Mose's presence, his reply was:

"Well, somehow Braine isn't the sort of fellow you feel like slapping on the back."

It was Abner Hildreth who first drew Braine into relations with the Enterprise.

There was "one of Thebes's oldest and most genial citizens" – Jack Summers by name – who, in addition to a mercantile business, carried on a bank of the kind that opens in the evening by preference, while Abner Hildreth, in all his career as a banker, had preferred daylight hours for business.

Jack Summers corrupted the youth of the town, and when one promising young clerk in the Express office was caught opening money packages, his fall was clearly enough traced to his losses in Summers's establishment.

Hildreth, as a banker and business man, objected to gambling – of that kind. He saw how surely it must undermine the other kind by destroying the trustworthiness of clerks and cashiers. He deprecated it, also, as a thing imperilling the young prosperity of Thebes, in which his investments, as merchant, banker, hotel proprietor, mill owner and the like, were greater than those of any other ten men combined, while even with the other ten he was a silent partner so far as their ventures seemed to him sound.

"The town mustn't get a hard name," he said; "Jack Summers must shut up his gambling shop, or get out of Thebes."

Then he sent for Edgar Braine.

"That young fellow," he reflected, "knows how to write with vim, force, pathos, and energy" – a favorite phrase with Hildreth – "and he has sand in him too. He can skin Summers, and rub aqua fortis into the raw, and he ain't afraid to do it."

This latter point Hildreth knew to be important. Jack Summers was a reckless person of whom most men in Thebes were inclined to be somewhat in awe. He had lived in the place when the only law there was the will of the boldest, enforced with a pistol, and he had not yet reconciled himself to milder methods.

"I want you to score Jack Summers in the Enterprise, Edgar." It was Hildreth's habit to go straight to the marrow of his undertakings. "I want you to drive him out of town, or compel him to shut up his den. He is ruining all the boys, and giving the town a bad name."

"But will Podauger let me?" asked Braine.

"Podauger" was the sobriquet by which old Janus Leftwitch – "Editor and Proprietor of the Thebes Daily Enterprise" – had come to be known, by reason of the ponderous unreadableness of his disquisitions.

"Podauger be – blessed! (I never swear, Braine.) I own Podauger. I can shut up his office to-day if I want to, and assign him a room in the poorhouse. He will print what I tell him to, and Mose Harbell will keep quiet too, when I tell him not to call Jack Summers 'our genial fellow citizen' again. The only question is, will you write the articles?"

"I will, on one condition."

"I didn't think you would be afraid."

"I'm not."

"What is the condition then?"

"That I am to be let alone. I won't begin a thing of that kind, and have it hushed up. It must go clear through if I undertake it."

"That's right. I knew you had sand. You may go ahead, and you shan't be stopped by anybody – unless Summers prepares your corpse for the coroner. Have you thought of that?"

"I am not afraid. The cause is a good one. That's all I ask."

"Very well. Now these articles must be editorials. They'll have more weight that way. Salivate the rascal every day, and I'll back you up. You'd better go armed, though, in case Summers suspects who it is."

"I will take care of that. The first article shall be ready in an hour."

And it was. Braine was too fresh from college not to begin it with an allusion to Roman history, but the people of Thebes were not sufficiently familiar with the classics to resent a reference of the kind. Besides, the allusion was an apt one. It was a reference to the Roman method of dealing with persons who made themselves enemies of the State, and it named Jack Summers as one who bore precisely that relation to Thebes.

There was something like an earthquake in the town that night. Never before had the Enterprise been known to say a harsh thing or a vigorous one. Podauger was never harsh in utterance, lest he offend a subscriber or advertiser; he was never vigorous, because he did not know how to be so. The terror of Jack Summers's displeasure was something that nobody in Thebes had ever before ventured to brave, and what with surprise, apprehension, and a looking-for of sensational results, the little city was in a ferment throughout the night.

Podauger had shut himself up in his room, and barred his door before the newspaper appeared on the streets. Not satisfied with these precautions, he determined to send a flag of truce to the enemy without delay. He wrote in his tangled fashion:

"Dear Mr. Summers:

"I cannot rest till I have acquitted myself of all responsibility for the outrageous assault upon the good name and repute of a fellow-citizen for whom I entertain so high a respect as I trust I have always manifested toward you, which appeared – or I should say, was made this afternoon upon you – in the newspaper of which I am the unhappy, though till now the happy, Editor and Proprietor. I cannot explain my situation in this affair without a breach of confidence which would imperil my present and future prosperity; but I can assure you that I had no more power to prevent this dastardly outrage, or to shut the noisome stuff out of columns which I take pride in remembering have always been courteous in their treatment of my fellow Thebans, than you are – I mean than you had.

"I am deeply agitated, and perhaps my diction is not as perspicuous as it is my proud endeavor to make it when I am inditing matter for publication, but you can make out this much, my dear and highly esteemed friend, that I shall not seek my couch with any hope or prospect of repose, until I receive from you an assurance that you acquit me of responsibility, and won't ask me to make an apology in the Enterprise, for reasons to which I have already alluded in reference to my present and temporary inability to control the conduct of that journal in matters relating to this outrageous affair.

"Do I make myself clear in this the hour of my agitation and humiliation?"

Janus Leftwitch's habit of writing in this fashion was so fixed that he could not write simply, even when he was scared. Summers understood him well enough, however, and wrote him in reply:

"Don't be scared, Pod. Nobody'll ever suspect you. You couldn't write that way if you tried. – Jack."

The next morning excitement was at fever heat. Curiosity to know who had written the article, was the dominant emotion. Excited apprehension of its author's speedy assassination came next.

Summers was in and out of various places of business all the morning, and in each he declared that if ever he learned who had written the article, he would "shoot him like a dog." Nobody doubted the sincerity of the threat, or the certainty of its execution.

About noon Summers was saying something of the kind in a little crowd of business men in front of Hildreth's bank, when Edgar Braine came up the street. He cheerily greeted the company with "Good morning, gentlemen," and then placed himself in front of Summers, and in a very quiet tone said:

"I hear you are going to shoot the writer of that article about you, as soon as you find out who he is. It would be a pity to let you shoot the wrong man by mistake. I should never cease to regret it, because I wrote the article myself, and have just finished a much severer one for to-day's paper."

This unexpected speech fell like a bombshell into the crowd, and Jack Summers was the one worst stunned by it.

He stood staring at Braine, apparently unable to comprehend what had happened. Nobody had ever confronted him in that daring fashion before, and in the novel circumstances he did not know what to do. He did nothing in fact, until Edgar turned to some one else in the crowd, and made pleased comment on the news that land had been purchased by some Pittsburg people for a new rolling mill in Thebes. Then Summers walked away.

While this was going on, Janus Leftwitch was in the bank parlor, talking earnestly with Abner Hildreth. Podauger was in a panic. Jack Summers, he said, had many friends in town, and they would ruin the Enterprise.

"I don't see how that can be," replied Hildreth. "The plant of the paper isn't worth more than three thousand dollars; I've lent you money on it up to five thousand dollars already, and you're in debt up to your eyes still. It looks to me as if you had already done all the ruining in sight."

"But, Mr. Hildreth, that ought to make you the more cautious. You have money in the Enterprise. I have been careful to make everybody its friend, as much in your interest as mine."

"Yes, and I'm short a pile of money in consequence."

"That will come around right all in good time. Thebes is growing, Mr. Hildreth; her wonderful natural resources, situated as she is – "

"Oh, stop that! I've read that in your editorials every day for three years. Look here, Pod, I'm not ill disposed toward you. I'm willing to go on supporting you, but I must find some cheaper way of doing it. I'll foreclose the cut-throat mortgage on the Enterprise now, and give you a place as clerk on the wharf-boat."

"But, my dear Mr. Hildreth – " broke in the editor, with consternation and despair in every line of his countenance.

"There, don't thank me, old fellow," said Hildreth, interrupting; "you know I don't like thanks, and I know you're grateful. The fact is, I ought to have closed out the Enterprise business long ago, but I didn't want the town to be without a paper, and I didn't know anybody to edit it. I know the man now. I'll put Braine in charge to-morrow, and you can print as affectionate a card of farewell this afternoon, as you please. Run along and write it. I'm too busy to talk longer now," and with that he bowed the fallen editor out of the bank, and forever out of a profession which suited no part of his nature, except his vanity.