The Project Gutenberg EBook of Clarence, by Bret Harte

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Title: Clarence

Author: Bret Harte

Release Date: May 21, 2006 [EBook #2635]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLARENCE ***

Produced by Donald Lainson

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 ex