Clarence

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Bret Harte. Clarence

PART I

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

PART II

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

PART III

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

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As Clarence Brant, President of the Robles Land Company, and husband of the rich widow of John Peyton, of the Robles Ranche, mingled with the outgoing audience of the Cosmopolitan Theatre, at San Francisco, he elicited the usual smiling nods and recognition due to his good looks and good fortune. But as he hurriedly slipped through the still lingering winter’s rain into the smart coupe that was awaiting him, and gave the order “Home,” the word struck him with a peculiarly ironical significance. His home was a handsome one, and lacked nothing in appointment and comfort, but he had gone to the theatre to evade its hollow loneliness. Nor was it because his wife was not there, for he had a miserable consciousness that her temporary absence had nothing to do with his homelessness. The distraction of the theatre over, that dull, vague, but aching sense of loneliness which was daily growing upon him returned with greater vigor.

He leaned back in the coupe and gloomily reflected.

.....

“No, you don’t understand HER!” retorted Susy sharply. “Look here, Clarence Brant, you’re right; I didn’t ask you here to tell you—what you and everybody knows—that your wife is a Southerner. I didn’t ask you here to tell you what everybody suspects—that she turns you round her little finger. But I did ask you here to tell you what nobody, not even you, suspects—but what I know!—and that is that she’s a TRAITOR—and more, a SPY!—and that I’ve only got to say the word, or send that man Jim to say the word, to have her dragged out of her Copperhead den at Robles Ranche and shut up in Fort Alcatraz this very night!”

Still with the pink glowing in her rounding cheek, and eyes snapping like splintered sapphires, she rose to her feet, with her pretty shoulders lifted, her small hands and white teeth both tightly clenched, and took a step towards him. Even in her attitude there was a reminiscence of her willful childhood, although still blended with the provincial actress whom he had seen on the stage only an hour ago. Thoroughly alarmed at her threat, in his efforts to conceal his feelings he was not above a weak retaliation. Stepping back, he affected to regard her with a critical admiration that was only half simulated, and said with a smile,—

.....