Clarence

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CLARENCE


By Bret Harte




PART I.




CHAPTER I.



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.

He had been married scarcely a year, yet even in the illusions of
the honeymoon the woman, older than himself, and the widow of his old
patron, had half unconsciously reasserted herself, and slipped back
into the domination of her old position. It was at first pleasant
enough,--this half-maternal protectorate which is apt to mingle even
with the affections of younger women,--and Clarence, in his easy,
half-feminine intuition of the sex, yielded, as the strong are apt to
yield, through the very consciousness of their own superiority. But this
is a quality the weaker are not apt to recognize, and the woman who
has once tasted equal power with her husband not only does not easily
relegate it, but even makes its continuance a test of the affections.
The usual triumphant feminine conclusion, "Then you no longer love me,"
had in Clarence's brief experience gone even further and reached its
inscrutable climax, "Then I no longer love you," although shown only in
a momentary hardening of the eye and voice. And added to this was his
sudden, but confused remembrance that he had seen that eye and heard
that voice in marital altercation during Judge Peyton's life, and that
he himself, her boy partisan, had sympathized with her. Yet, strange to
say, this had given him more pain than her occasional other reversions
to the past--to her old suspicious of him when he was a youthful protege
of her husband and a presumed suitor of her adopted daughter Susy.
High natures are more apt to forgive wrong done to themselves than any
abstract injustice. And her capricious tyranny over her dependents and
servants, or an unreasoning enmity to a neighbor or friend, outraged his
finer sense more than her own misconception of himself. Nor did he dream
that this was a thing most women seldom understand, or, understanding,
ever forgive.

The coupe rattled over the stones or swirled through the muddy pools
of the main thoroughfares. Newspaper and telegraphic offices were still
brilliantly lit, and crowds were gathered among the bulletin boards.
He knew that news had arrived from Washington that evening of the first
active outbreaks of secession, and that the city was breathless with
excitement. Had he not just come from the theatre, where certain
insignificant allusions in the play had been suddenly caught up
and cheered or hissed by hitherto unknown partisans, to the dumb
astonishment of a majority of the audience comfortably settled to
money-getting and their own affairs alone? Had he not applauded, albeit
half-scornfully, the pretty actress--his old playmate Susy--who had
audaciously and all incongruously waved the American flag in their
faces? Yes! he had known it; had lived for the last few weeks in an
atmosphere electrically surcharged with it--and yet it had chiefly
affected him in his personal homelessness. For his wife was a
Southerner, a born slaveholder, and a secessionist, whose noted
prejudices to the North had even outrun her late husband's politics. At
first the piquancy and recklessness of her opinionative speech amused
him as part of her characteristic flavor, or as a lingering youthfulness
which the maturer intellect always pardons. He had never taken her
politics seriously--why should he? With her head on his shoulder he had
listened to her extravagant diatribes against the North. He had forgiven
her outrageous indictment of his caste and his associates for the sake
of the imperious but handsome lips that uttered it. But when he was
compelled to listen to her words echoed and repeated by her friends and
family; when he found that with the clannishness of her race she had
drawn closer to them in this controversy,--that she depended upon them
for her intelligence and information rather than upon him,--he had
awakened to the reality of his situation. He had borne the allusions
of her brother, whose old scorn for his dependent childhood had been
embittered by his sister's marriage and was now scarcely concealed. Yet,
while he had never altered his own political faith and social creed
in this antagonistic atmosphere, he had often wondered, with his old
conscientiousness and characteristic self-abnegation, whether his own
political convictions were not merely a revulsion from his domestic
tyranny and alien surroundings.

In the midst of this gloomy retrospect the coupe stopped with a jerk
before his own house. The door was quickly opened by a servant, who
appeared to be awaiting him.

"Some one to see you in the library, sir," said the man, "and"--He
hesitated and looked towards the coupe.

"Well?" said Clarence impatiently.

"He said, sir, as how you were not to send away the carriage."

"Indeed, and who is it?" demanded Clarence sharply.

"Mr. Hooker. He said I was to say Jim Hooker."

The momentary annoyance in Clarence's face changed to a look of
reflective curiosity.

"He said he knew you were at the theatre, and he would wait until you
came home," continued the man, dubiously watching his master's face. "He
don't know you've come in, sir, and--and I can easily get rid of him."

"No matter now. I'll see him, and," added Clarence, with a faint smile,
"let the carriage wait."

Yet, as he turned towards the library he was by no means certain that
an interview with the old associate of his boyhood under Judge Peyton's
guardianship would divert his mind. Yet he let no trace of his doubts
nor of his past gloom show in his face as he entered the room.

Mr. Hooker was apparently examining the elegant furniture and luxurious
accommodation with his usual resentful enviousness. Clarence had got a
"soft thing." That it was more or less the result of his "artfulness,"
and that he was unduly "puffed up" by it, was, in Hooker's
characteristic reasoning, equally clear. As his host smilingly advanced
with outstretched hand, Mr. Hooker's efforts to assume a proper
abstraction of manner and contemptuous indifference to Clarence's
surroundings which should wound his vanity ended in his lolling back at
full length in the chair with his eyes on the ceiling. But, remembering
suddenly that he was really the bearer of a message to Clarence, it
struck him that his supine position was, from a theatrical view-point,
infelicitous. In his experiences of the stage he had never delivered a
message in that way. He rose awkwardly to his feet.

"It was so good of you to wait," said Clarence courteously.

"Saw you in the theatre," said Hooker brusquely. "Third row in parquet.
Susy said it was you, and had suthin' to say to you. Suthin' you ought
to know," he continued, with a slight return of his old mystery of
manner which Clarence so well remembered. "You saw HER--she fetched the
house with that flag business, eh? She knows which way the cat is
going to jump, you bet. I tell you, for all the blowing of these
secessionists, the Union's goin' to pay! Yes, sir!" He stopped, glanced
round the handsome room, and added darkly, "Mebbee better than this."

With the memory of Hooker's characteristic fondness for mystery still in
his mind, Clarence overlooked the innuendo, and said smilingly,--

"Why didn't you bring Mrs. Hooker here? I should have been honored with
her company."

Mr. Hooker frowned slightly at this seeming levity.

"Never goes out after a performance. Nervous exhaustion. Left her at our
rooms in Market Street. We can drive there in ten minutes. That's why I
asked to have the carriage wait."

Clarence hesitated. Without caring in the least to renew the
acquaintance of his old playmate and sweetheart, a meeting that night
in some vague way suggested to him a providential diversion. Nor was he
deceived by any gravity in the message. With his remembrance of Susy's
theatrical tendencies, he was quite prepared for any capricious futile
extravagance.

"You are sure we will not disturb her?" he said politely.

"No."

Clarence led the way to the carriage. If Mr. Hooker expected him during
the journey to try to divine the purport of Susy's message he was
disappointed. His companion did not allude to it. Possibly looking upon
it as a combined theatrical performance, Clarence preferred to wait for
Susy as the better actor. The carriage rolled rapidly through the now
deserted streets, and at last, under the directions of Mr. Hooker,
who was leaning half out of the window, it drew up at a middle-class
restaurant, above whose still lit and steaming windows were some
ostentatiously public apartments, accessible from a side entrance. As
they ascended the staircase together, it became evident that Mr. Hooker
was scarcely more at his ease in the character of host than he had been
as guest. He stared gloomily at a descending visitor, grunted audibly
at a waiter in the passage, and stopped before a door, where a recently
deposited tray displayed the half-eaten carcase of a fowl, an empty
champagne bottle, two half-filled glasses, and a faded bouquet. The
whole passage was redolent with a singular blending of damp cooking,
stale cigarette smoke, and patchouli.

Putting the tray aside with his foot, Mr. Hooker opened the door
hesitatingly and peered into the room, muttered a few indistinct words,
which were followed by a rapid rustling of skirts, and then, with his
hand still on the door-knob, turning to Clarence, who had discreetly
halted on the threshold, flung the door open theatrically and bade him
enter.

"She is somewhere in the suite," he added, with a large wave of the hand
towards a door that was still oscillating. "Be here in a minit."

Clarence took in the apartment with a quiet glance. Its furniture had
the frayed and discolored splendors of a public parlor which had
been privately used and maltreated; there were stains in the large
medallioned carpet; the gilded veneer had been chipped from a heavy
centre table, showing the rough, white deal beneath, which gave it the
appearance of a stage "property;" the walls, paneled with gilt-framed
mirrors, reflected every domestic detail or private relaxation with
shameless publicity. A damp waterproof, shawl, and open newspaper were
lying across the once brilliant sofa; a powder-puff, a plate of fruit,
and a play-book were on the centre table, and on the marble-topped
sideboard was Mr. Hooker's second-best hat, with a soiled collar,
evidently but lately exchanged for the one he had on, peeping over its
brim. The whole apartment seemed to mingle the furtive disclosures of
the dressing-room with the open ostentations of the stage, with even a
slight suggestion of the auditorium in a few scattered programmes on the
floor and chairs.

The inner door opened again with a slight theatrical start, and Susy,
in an elaborate dressing-gown, moved languidly into the room. She
apparently had not had time to change her underskirt, for there was the
dust of the stage on its delicate lace edging, as she threw herself into
an armchair and crossed her pretty slippered feet before her. Her face
was pale, its pallor incautiously increased by powder; and as Clarence
looked at its still youthful, charming outline, he was not perhaps
sorry that the exquisite pink and white skin beneath, which he had once
kissed, was hidden from that awakened recollection. Yet there was little
trace of the girlish Susy in the pretty, but prematurely jaded, actress
before him, and he felt momentarily relieved. It was her youth and
freshness appealing to his own youth and imagination that he had
loved--not HER. Yet as she greeted him with a slight exaggeration of
glance, voice, and manner, he remembered that even as a girl she was an
actress.

Nothing of this, however, was in his voice and manner as he gently
thanked her for the opportunity of meeting her again. And he was frank,
for the diversion he had expected he had found; he even was conscious of
thinking more kindly of his wife who had supplanted her.

"I told Jim he must fetch you if he had to carry you," she said,
striking the palm of her hand with her fan, and glancing at her husband.
"I reckon he guessed WHY, though I didn't tell him--I don't tell Jim
EVERYTHING."

Here Jim rose, and looking at his watch, "guessed he'd run over to the
Lick House and get some cigars." If he was acting upon some hint from
his wife, his simulation was so badly done that Clarence felt his
first sense of uneasiness. But as Hooker closed the door awkwardly and
unostentatiously behind him, Clarence smilingly said he had waited to
hear the message from her own lips.

"Jim only knows what he's heard outside: the talk of men, you know,--and
he hears a good deal of that--more, perhaps, than YOU do. It was that
which put me up to finding out the truth. And I didn't rest till I did.
I'm not to be fooled, Clarence,--you don't mind my calling you Clarence
now we're both married and done for,--and I'm not the kind to be fooled
by anybody from the Cow counties--and that's the Robles Ranche. I'm a
Southern woman myself from Missouri, but I'm for the Union first, last,
and all the time, and I call myself a match for any lazy, dawdling,
lash-swinging slaveholder and slaveholderess--whether they're mixed
blood, Heaven only knows, or what--or their friends or relations, or
the dirty half-Spanish grandees and their mixed half-nigger peons who
truckle to them. You bet!"

His blood had stirred quickly at the mention of the Robles Ranche,
but the rest of Susy's speech was too much in the vein of her old
extravagance to touch him seriously. He found himself only considering
how strange it was that the old petulance and impulsiveness of her
girlhood were actually bringing back with them her pink cheeks and
brilliant eyes.

"You surely didn't ask Jim to bring me here," he said smilingly, "to
tell me that Mrs. Peyton"--he corrected himself hastily as a malicious
sparkle came into Susy's blue eyes--"that my wife was a Southern woman,
and probably sympathized with her class? Well, I don't know that I
should blame her for that any more than she should blame me for being a
Northern man and a Unionist."

"And she doesn't blame you?" asked Susy sneeringly.

The color came slightly to Clarence's cheek, but before he could reply
the actress added,--

"No, she prefers to use you!"

"I don't think I understand you," said Clarence, rising coldly.

"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,--

"Very well done--but you have forgotten the flag."

She did not flinch. Rather accepting the sarcasm as a tribute to her
art, she went on with increasing exaggeration: "No, it is YOU who
have forgotten the flag--forgotten your country, your people, your
manhood--everything for that high-toned, double-dyed old spy and
traitress! For while you are standing here, your wife is gathering under
her roof at Robles a gang of spies and traitors like herself--secession
leaders and their bloated, drunken 'chivalry'! Yes, you may smile your
superior smile, but I tell you, Clarence Brant, that with all your
smartness and book learning you know no more of what goes on around you
than a child. But others do! This conspiracy is known to the government,
the Federal officers have been warned; General Sumner has been sent out
here--and his first act was to change the command at Fort Alcatraz, and
send your wife's Southern friend--Captain Pinckney--to the right about!
Yes--everything is known but ONE thing, and that is WHERE and HOW this
precious crew meet! That I alone know, and that I've told you!"

"And I suppose," said Clarence, with an unchanged smile, "that this
valuable information came from your husband--my old friend, Jim Hooker?"

"No," she answered sharply, "it comes from Cencho--one of your own
peons--who is more true to you and the old Rancho than YOU have ever
been. He saw what was going on, and came to me, to warn you!"

"But why not to me directly?" asked Clarence, with affected incredulity.

"Ask him!" she said viciously. "Perhaps he didn't want to warn the
master against the mistress. Perhaps he thought WE are still friends.
Perhaps"--she hesitated with a lower voice and a forced smile--"perhaps
he used to see us together in the old times."

"Very likely," said Clarence quietly. "And for the sake of those old
times, Susy," he went on, with a singular gentleness that was quite
distinct from his paling face and set eyes, "I am going to forget all
that you have just said of me and mine, in all the old willfulness and
impatience that I see you still keep--with all your old prettiness." He
took his hat from the table and gravely held out his hand.

She was frightened for a moment with his impassive abstraction. In
the old days she had known it--had believed it was his dogged
"obstinacy"--but she knew the hopelessness of opposing it. Yet with
feminine persistency she again threw herself against it, as against a
wall.

"You don't believe me! Well, go and see for yourself. They are at Robles
NOW. If you catch the early morning stage at Santa Clara you will come
upon them before they disperse. Dare you try it?"

"Whatever I do," he returned smilingly, "I shall always be grateful to
you for giving me this opportunity of seeing you again AS YOU WERE. Make
my excuses to your husband. Good-night."

"Clarence!"

But he had already closed the door behind him. His face did not relax
its expression nor change as he looked again at the tray with its broken
viands before the door, the worn, stained hall carpet, or the waiter who
shuffled past him. He was apparently as critically conscious of them and
of the close odors of the hall, and the atmosphere of listless decay and
faded extravagance around him, as before the interview. But if the woman
he had just parted from had watched him she would have supposed he still
utterly disbelieved her story. Yet he was conscious that all that he saw
was a part of his degradation, for he had believed every word she had
uttered. Through all her extravagance, envy, and revengefulness he saw
the central truth--that he had been deceived--not by his wife, but by
himself! He had suspected all this before. This was what had been really
troubling him--this was what he had put aside, rather than his faith,
not in her, but in his ideal. He remembered letters that had passed
between her and Captain Pinckney--letters that she had openly sent to
notorious Southern leaders; her nervous anxiety to remain at the Rancho;
the innuendoes and significant glances of friends which he had put
aside--as he had this woman's message! Susy had told him nothing new of
his wife--but the truth of HIMSELF! And the revelation came from people
who he was conscious were the inferiors of himself and his wife. To an
independent, proud, and self-made man it was the culminating stroke.

In the same abstracted voice he told the coachman to drive home. The
return seemed interminable--though he never shifted his position. Yet
when he drew up at his own door and looked at his watch he found he
had been absent only half an hour. Only half an hour! As he entered the
house he turned with the same abstraction towards a mirror in the hall,
as if he expected to see some outward and visible change in himself
in that time. Dismissing his servants to bed, he went into his
dressing-room, completely changed his attire, put on a pair of long
riding-boots, and throwing a serape over his shoulders, paused a moment,
took a pair of small "Derringer" pistols from a box, put them in his
pockets, and then slipped cautiously down the staircase. A lack of
confidence in his own domestics had invaded him for the first time. The
lights were out. He silently opened the door and was in the street.

He walked hastily a few squares to a livery stable whose proprietor he
knew. His first inquiry was for one "Redskin," a particular horse; the
second for its proprietor. Happily both were in. The proprietor asked no
question of a customer of Clarence's condition. The horse, half Spanish,
powerful and irascible, was quickly saddled. As Clarence mounted, the
man in an impulse of sociability said,--

"Saw you at the theatre to-night, sir."

"Ah," returned Clarence, quietly gathering up the reins.

"Rather a smart trick of that woman with the flag," he went on
tentatively. Then, with a possible doubt of his customer's politics, he
added with a forced smile, "I reckon it's all party fuss, though; there
ain't any real danger."

But fast as Clarence might ride the words lingered in his ears. He saw
through the man's hesitation; he, too, had probably heard that Clarence
Brant weakly sympathized with his wife's sentiments, and dared not speak
fully. And he understood the cowardly suggestion that there was "no real
danger." It had been Clarence's one fallacy. He had believed the public
excitement was only a temporary outbreak of partisan feeling, soon to
subside. Even now he was conscious that he was less doubtful of the
integrity of the Union than of his own household. It was not the
devotion of the patriot, but the indignation of an outraged husband,
that was spurring him on.

He knew that if he reached Woodville by five o'clock he could get
ferried across the bay at the Embarcadero, and catch the down coach to
Fair Plains, whence he could ride to the Rancho. As the coach did not
connect directly with San Francisco, the chance of his surprising them
was greater. Once clear of the city outskirts, he bullied Redskin into
irascible speed, and plunged into the rainy darkness of the highroad.
The way was familiar. For a while he was content to feel the buffeting,
caused by his rapid pace, of wind and rain against his depressed head
and shoulders in a sheer brutal sense of opposition and power, or to
relieve his pent-up excitement by dashing through overflowed gullies in
the road or across the quaggy, sodden edges of meadowland, until he had
controlled Redskin's rebellious extravagance into a long steady stride.
Then he raised his head and straightened himself on the saddle, to
think. But to no purpose. He had no plan; everything would depend
upon the situation; the thought of forestalling any action of the
conspirators, by warning or calling in the aid of the authorities, for
an instant crossed his mind, but was as instantly dismissed. He had but
an instinct--to see with his own eyes what his reason told him was true.
Day was breaking through drifting scud and pewter-colored clouds as he
reached Woodville ferry, checkered with splashes of the soil and the
spume of his horse, from whose neck and flanks the sweat rolled like
lather. Yet he was not conscious how intent had been his purpose until
he felt a sudden instinctive shock on seeing that the ferryboat was
gone. For an instant his wonderful self-possession abandoned him; he
could only gaze vacantly at the leaden-colored bay, without a thought or
expedient. But in another moment he saw that the boat was returning from
the distance. Had he lost his only chance? He glanced hurriedly at his
watch; he had come more quickly than he imagined; there would still
be time. He beckoned impatiently to the ferryman; the boat--a ship's
pinnace, with two men in it--crept in with exasperating slowness. At
last the two rowers suddenly leaped ashore.