A Waif of the Plains - Bret Harte (best historical biographies .txt) 📗

For an instant the counter against which the boy was leaning seemed to yield with his weight; he was obliged to steady himself with both hands to keep from falling. It was not his disappointment, which was terrible; it was not a thought of his future, which seemed hopeless; it was not his injured pride at appearing to have willfully deceived Mr. Peyton, which was more dreadful than all else; but it was the sudden, sickening sense that HE himself had been deceived, tricked, and fooled! For it flashed upon him for the first time that the vague sense of wrong which had always haunted him was this—that this was the vile culmination of a plan to GET RID OF HIM, and that he had been deliberately lost and led astray by his relatives as helplessly and completely as a useless cat or dog!

Perhaps there was something of this in his face, for the clerk, staring at him, bade him sit down for a moment, and again vanished into the mysterious interior. Clarence had no conception how long he was absent, or indeed anything but his own breathless thoughts, for he was conscious of wondering afterwards why the clerk was leading him through a door in the counter into an inner room of many desks, and again through a glass door into a smaller office, where a preternaturally busy-looking man sat writing at a desk. Without looking up, but pausing only to apply a blotting-pad to the paper before him, the man said crisply—

“So you’ve been consigned to some one who don’t seem to turn up, and can’t be found, eh? Never mind that,” as Clarence laid Peyton’s letter before him. “Can’t read it now. Well, I suppose you want to be shipped back to Stockton?”

“No!” said the boy, recovering his voice with an effort.

“Eh, that’s business, though. Know anybody here?”

“Not a living soul; that’s why they sent me,” said the boy, in sudden reckless desperation. He was the more furious that he knew the tears were standing in his eyes.

The idea seemed to strike the man amusingly. “Looks a little like it, don’t it?” he said, smiling grimly at the paper before him. “Got any money?”

“A little.”

“How much?”

“About twenty dollars,” said Clarence hesitatingly. The man opened a drawer at his side, mechanically, for he did not raise his eyes, and took out two ten-dollar gold pieces. “I’ll go twenty better,” he said, laying them down on the desk. “That’ll give you a chance to look around. Come back here, if you don’t see your way clear.” He dipped his pen into the ink with a significant gesture as if closing the interview.

Clarence pushed back the coin. “I’m not a beggar,” he said doggedly.

The man this time raised his head and surveyed the boy with two keen eyes. “You’re not, hey? Well, do I look like one?”

“No,” stammered Clarence, as he glanced into the man’s haughty eyes.

“Yet, if I were in your fix, I’d take that money and be glad to get it.”

“If you’ll let me pay you back again,” said Clarence, a little ashamed, and considerably frightened at his implied accusation of the man before him.

“You can,” said the man, bending over his desk again.

Clarence took up the money and awkwardly drew out his purse. But it was the first time he had touched it since it was returned to him in the barroom, and it struck him that it was heavy and full— indeed, so full that on opening it a few coins rolled out on to the floor. The man looked up abruptly.

“I thought you said you had only twenty dollars?” he remarked grimly.

“Mr. Peyton gave me forty,” returned Clarence, stupefied and blushing. “I spent twenty dollars for drinks at the bar—and,” he stammered, “I—I—I don’t know how the rest came here.”

“You spent twenty dollars for DRINKS?” said the man, laying down his pen, and leaning back in his chair to gaze at the boy.

“Yes—that is—I treated some gentlemen of the stage, sir, at Davidson’s Crossing.”

“Did you treat the whole stage company?”

“No, sir, only about four or five—and the barkeeper. But everything’s so dear in California. I know that.”

“Evidently. But it don’t seem to make much difference with YOU,” said the man, glancing at the purse.

“They wanted my purse to look at,” said Clarence hurriedly, “and that’s how the thing happened. Somebody put HIS OWN MONEY back into MY purse by accident.”

“Of course,” said the man grimly.

“Yes, that’s the reason,” said Clarence, a little relieved, but somewhat embarrassed by the man’s persistent eyes.

“Then, of course,” said the other quietly, “you don’t require my twenty dollars now.”

“But,” returned Clarence hesitatingly, “this isn’t MY money. I must find out who it belongs to, and give it back again. Perhaps,” he added timidly, “I might leave it here with you, and call for it when I find the man, or send him here.”

With the greatest gravity he here separated the surplus from what was left of Peyton’s gift and the twenty dollars he had just received. The balance unaccounted for was forty dollars. He laid it on the desk before the man, who, still looking at him, rose and opened the door.

“Mr. Reed.”

The clerk who had shown Clarence in appeared.

“Open an account with—” He stopped and turned interrogatively to Clarence.

“Clarence Brant,” said Clarence, coloring with excitement.

“With Clarence Brant. Take that deposit”—pointing to the money— “and give him a receipt.” He paused as the clerk retired with a wondering gaze at the money, looked again at Clarence, said, “I think YOU’LL do,” and reentered the private office, closing the door behind him.

I hope it will not be deemed inconceivable that Clarence, only a few moments before crushed with bitter disappointment and the hopeless revelation of his abandonment by his relatives, now felt himself lifted up suddenly into an imaginary height of independence and manhood. He was leaving the bank, in which he stood a minute before a friendless boy, not as a successful beggar, for this important man had disclaimed the idea, but absolutely as a customer! a depositor! a business man like the grownup clients who were thronging the outer office, and before the eyes of the clerk who had pitied him! And he, Clarence, had been spoken to by this man, whose name he now recognized as the one that was on the door of the building—a man of whom his fellow-passengers had spoken with admiring envy—a banker famous in all California! Will it be deemed incredible that this imaginative and hopeful boy, forgetting all else, the object of his visit, and even the fact that he considered this money was not his own, actually put his hat a little on one side as he strolled out on his way to the streets and prospective fortune?

Two hours later the banker had another visitor. It chanced to be the farmer-looking man who had been Clarence’s fellow-passenger. Evidently a privileged person, he was at once ushered as “Captain Stevens” into the presence of the banker. At the end of a familiar business interview the captain asked carelessly—

“Any letters for me?”

The busy banker pointed with his pen to the letter “S” in a row of alphabetically labeled pigeon-holes against the wall. The captain, having selected his correspondence, paused with a letter in his hand.

“Look here, Carden, there are letters here for some chap called ‘John Silsbee.’ They were here when I called, ten weeks ago.”

“Well?”

“That’s the name of that Pike County man who was killed by Injins in the plains. The ‘Frisco papers had all the particulars last night; may be it’s for that fellow. It hasn’t got a postmark. Who left it here?”

Mr. Carden summoned a clerk. It appeared that the letter had been left by a certain Brant Fauquier, to be called for.

Captain Stevens smiled. “Brant’s been too busy dealin’ faro to think of ‘em agin, and since that shootin’ affair at Angels’ I hear he’s skipped to the southern coast somewhere. Cal Johnson, his old chum, was in the up stage from Stockton this afternoon.”

“Did you come by the up stage from Stockton this afternoon?” said Carden, looking up.

“Yes, as far as Ten-mile Station—rode the rest of the way here.”

“Did you notice a queer little old-fashioned kid—about so high— like a runaway school-boy?”

“Did I? By G—d, sir, he treated me to drinks.”

Carden jumped from his chair. “Then he wasn’t lying!”

“No! We let him do it; but we made it good for the little chap afterwards. Hello! What’s up?”

But Mr. Carden was already in the outer office beside the clerk who had admitted Clarence.

“You remember that boy Brant who was here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where did he go?”

“Don’t know, sir.”

“Go and find him somewhere and somehow. Go to all the hotels, restaurants, and gin-mills near here, and hunt him up. Take some one with you, if you can’t do it alone. Bring him back here, quick!”

It was nearly midnight when the clerk fruitlessly returned. It was the fierce high noon of “steamer nights”; light flashed brilliantly from shops, counting-houses, drinking-saloons, and gambling-hells. The streets were yet full of eager, hurrying feet—swift of fortune, ambition, pleasure, or crime. But from among these deeper harsher footfalls the echo of the homeless boy’s light, innocent tread seemed to have died out forever.