The World's Great Snare

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  “You do not care to trust me?” she asked.

  He did not answer her immediately. He walked to his desk, and, unlocking a drawer, took out a little pile of bills. Then he took a sealed packet from the same place, and thrust them all into her hands.

  “I am not afraid to trust you, Myra!” he said gravely. “Good night!”

  She gave him her hand with a little shiver, which he affected not to notice.

  “Good night!” she answered. “I—I shall be here to-morrow!”

  “One moment, Myra!” he said slowly. “I am afraid that you find this very terrible to look forward to! You do not love me—and there is some one else whom you do love! The money and the papers are, I presume, for him. He is welcome to them!”

  There was a ring of fine scorn in his tone. Myra’s eyes fell before his.

  “That is nothing!” he continued. “All that I want to say is this, Myra; I love you, and as surely as I have drawn you into my arms, so surely will I make you happy there! Try and believe that! Now, good night! You will find a carriage waiting for you at the door!”

  She let down her veil, and passed out without a word, following the servant whom he had summoned. And Amies Rutten went back to his guests with a quiet smile upon his lips, and a curiously bright light in his gray-blue eyes.

  “At last, Myra! Great Heavens, what a time you have been!”

  She laid down her hat upon the table, and looked at him.

  Directly their eyes met he knew that something had happened. The handwriting of tragedy was in her pale face and gleaming eyes.

  “Has it seemed long?” she said absently. “I did not think that you would notice!”

  “Where have you been?” he asked.

  “No matter! Tell me! You want to go back to England, don’t you?”

  He turned his face away from her, and looked across the great shadowy gulf of the city, with its blaze of lights. Beyond was the sea. His eyes caught the gleam of the harbour lights flashing upon its dark bosom, and he sighed.

  “Don’t mind telling me, Bryan!” she said. “You want to go, don’t you?”

  He turned round.

  “God knows I do!” he answered. “I am dying here!”

  Her heart beat quickly. In the unlit room he could see her bosom rising and falling underneath her thin, threadbare dress, and her dark eyes wet with tears. She tried to speak, but a great lump was in her throat.

  He had more to say now that the ice was broken.

  “I am only a wretched, miserable burden to you here, Myra! If only I could find the money to go home, I might live! I have given up all hopes of the papers. I only want to get away from this cruel, awful place. The very air here chokes me! And to think that I am living on you all this time! If I could only get to England, I could work, and send you out some money! You’ve been a real brick to me, Myra! I—”

  “Stop!”

  His flow of eloquence was suddenly checked by that quick staccato cry—the cry of a woman whose heart-strings are being roughly handled. He looked up at her in surprise. Her face was convulsed with pain.

  “I do not want money! I shall not want it any more! Here are your papers, and here is the money to go home with!”

  She flung them upon the table before him. He looked at them, and then at her. In a dim, vague sort of way he began to understand. He leaned on the back of the chair, and looked at her.

  “You are going to him!” he muttered hoarsely. “Well?”

  She flung the challenge across at him. Her eyes were bright and dry; now and then there was a scarlet glow in her cheeks.

  “Well, what would you have me do? You are going away! It doesn’t much matter, does it? There are the papers for which you came here, and there is money sufficient to take you home!”

  He could not keep the light from his eyes as he looked at them, but as yet he had not taken them up. His face was troubled. He had an uneasy feeling in his heart. He was irresolute! He did not understand. He was not capable of it! Between him and her was fixed a mighty gulf. She, the offspring of a western lumberman who had married the daughter of a small farmer, the pioneers of a new race upon a new soil, had inherited in some mysterious way a leaven of all that is sweetest and greatest and best in womankind. She had given her love to this man, had loved him to the extent of a glorious self-immolation beyond any possible understanding of his. Far below on the plane of humanity, he looked up at her, uneasy, yet wholly incapable of appreciating this sacrifice of herself which she was offering to him. With the eyes that she saw, he could not see, and the pains which rent her heart, he could not suffer. In the days to come, before he and she should meet again in a larger world, some knowledge of these things had dawned upon him. There were days when the memory of these few moments in the little dark chamber high up amongst the slums of San Francisco was an exquisite torture to him—when her calm, white face seemed to haunt him like an everlasting reproach, and the shame of her sacrifice sank into his very soul. But that was when he too had been quickened into a larger life and understanding, when he had become a man of his generation, a creature of Nature’s great system of education. To-night, he realized none of these things.

  “I do not quite understand!” he said. “Only a few days ago, you shuddered at the mention of this man’s name!”

  She laughed. The echoes of that laugh, too, lingered with him. There were days to come when the memory of it should be like a keen torture.

  “Ah, that was when you were ill and helpless—before you had become homesick! I have changed! Amies Rutten is well enough, and he has the wealth of a prince! Go and get your ticket before the office closes!”

  She held out a handful of the notes. Still he hesitated. “I don’t like touching his money!” he muttered. “It is not his!” she answered. “It is mine!”

  He raised his hand, and their fingers touched for a moment as he took the notes. Hers were deathly cold, but he did not seem to notice. He left her, and hurried out without a word.

  He walked swiftly through the brilliantly-lit streets on his way to the ticket-office. His weakness was all forgotten! He had money in his hand, and the papers which had been the desire of his life, in his pocket. His cheeks were flushed with joy, and his eyes were bright. And in that little lone room high up above the roar of the great city, a woman lay, face downwards upon the floor, dry-eyed, but moaning softly like some beautiful wild creature whose life-blood is ebbing slowly away.

  He took a ticket to New York, and booked a Cunard passage to Liverpool at the same office. Then he bought food and wine—Myra and he should have their last little supper together! But, when he got back, the little room where they had lived together was empty. She had gone!

  BOOK II

  Table of Contents

  I. IN THE OLD WORLD

  Table of Contents

  The afternoon sun was streaming through the latticed window of an old-fashioned West of England farmhouse, throwing strange gleams of light into the quaint old corners, and across the red-tiled floor.

  Leaning back in a chintz-covered old easy-chair drawn out from the corner was Bryan. His cap and stick were upon the table, and his hair was rough and wind-tossed. He had just come in from a long walk.

  A little gray-haired woman—the picture of neat old age—came across the floor to him from the other end of the room. She stopped when she saw the dark cloud upon his face, and the weary look in his eyes.

  “You’re over-tired, sir!” she said reproachfully.

  “You’ll have some tea, won’t you?”

  Bryan looked up suddenly. He had been deep in thought.

  “Ay, Mrs. Holmes, I will!” he answered. “Some tea, and something to eat. I’m starved!”

  “Why, surely, sir, and that you shall!” she exclaimed.

  “Jane! Jane!”

  She bustled away in search of her little domestic. Just as she turned her back, a shadow darkened the window for a moment, and immediately afterwards there was a sharp tapping at the door. Bryan
looked round.

  “Open the door, Mrs. Holmes!” he said. “Some one knocking!”

  “It’ll be the baker!” she remarked, hurrying back and raising the latch. “Sakes alive! it’s my Lady!” she exclaimed, in an altogether different key. “Do walk in, my Lady Helen! You’ll take a chair! Deary me, I’m right glad to see you looking so fine and well! Deary me!”

  A tall, slim girl dressed in a plain riding-habit, and holding her whip and skirts in her left hand, stepped lightly in.

  “I’ll take something more than a chair, Mrs. Holmes!” she said, with a little laugh. “I want a cup of your very best tea, and some bread and butter! I’m positively starved! John was to have met me at Welby Gorse with my sandwich-case, but I missed him somehow, and I’ve had nothing all day! Oh!”

  She had suddenly seen Bryan. He rose up from his seat in the chimney-corner, and stood upright, so that his head nearly touched the old beam which crossed the ceiling. Her eyes rested at first upon him carelessly—then with a faint expression of surprise. She stood quite still, tapping her skirts with her whip, and with a slight frown upon her clear white forehead. As for him, a deep flush had stolen through the bronze sunburn of his cheeks, mounting even to his brow. There was a new look in his face, and a new fire in his eyes.

  Mrs. Holmes hastened to explain his presence.

  “It’s a gentleman lodging with me for a few days, my Lady!” she said apologetically. “I’ll see for the tea! You’ll take a chair?”

  She bustled away into the back regions. Bryan mechanically wheeled out his chair, and placed it for her.

  “So you have come back again!” she remarked, with a little smile. “Why, I thought that you had gone to the Cape, or Australia, or somewhere, to make your fortune! You have soon tired of wandering!”

  “I’m very tired of it!” he answered. “I am glad to be back in England again!”

  She took his chair, and laid her whip upon the table by the side of his stick. He remained standing before her. From the kitchen behind came the pleasant rattle of cups and saucers, and the hissing of a kettle. Neither of them spoke for several moments. A faint ray of winter sunlight was glancing upon the oak table, and upon her fair hair, resolutely brushed back, but waving a little round the temples. She leaned back and watched him, smoothing out her gloves thoughtfully.

  “Well, tell me all about it!” she said at length. “Where have you been?”

  “In California and San Francisco, most of the time!” he answered. “Digging for gold, amongst other things!”

  “Were you successful?” she asked.

  “In a measure! I was there on a different sort of search, too. I had a rough time of it altogether!”

  She looked at him critically.

  “Ah! a search for a name and a fortune, wasn’t it? I remember your telling me something about it, don’t I? Well, did you find them?”

  “I think so!” he answered slowly. “One of them, at any rate!”

  A peculiar gravity in his tone attracted her. She raised her eyes to his face again, and looked at him with a quiet, supercilious interest.

  “Really, how interesting! Might one inquire which?”

  “No; you mayn’t!” he answered roughly. “Don’t make me mad, Lady Helen! When you look at me like that, I don’t feel quite myself. What have I done that you should despise me so?”

  She shrugged her shoulders, and leaned back in the chair, half-closing her eyes.

  “Dear me!” she said softly. “I did hope that you had forgotten those terrible heroics of yours!”

  His chest heaved, and there was a strange bright light in his eyes.

  “Forgotten! I have forgotten nothing—nothing, curse it!” he muttered under his breath. “I have been a rank utter fool from the day I flung myself upon your horses; and you deigned to thank me with a smile. God! how the memory of that day has clung to me! I thought of it at night, on the steamer, when the deep silence and the loneliness of the sea brought it all back, and even the rushing winds seemed to speak to me with your voice! And in the darkness, when I sat and smoked my pipe outside my hut on the banks of the Blue River, there was something about the scent of the shrubs there which reminded me of the perfume of your clothes. Once I was as near death as a man can come—so near that my eyes were closed, and the death burr was in my ears; I was thinking of you then! I couldn’t keep you out of my thoughts! I never can! God knows I try! Oh, you make me wish that I could hate you when I see you looking as you do now, as calm, and proud, and disdainful as though the breaking of a man’s heart were nothing to you!”

  “The breaking of some men’s hearts, if they really possess such a thing, would be a great deal to me in some cases,” she said, looking at him steadfastly. “But you must really excuse me if I wonder sometimes whether you quite realize to whom you are talking!”

  He laughed hoarsely. “Ay, I know! You are Lady Helen Wessemer, niece and ward of the Earl of Wessemer, and I am—well, nobody! That’s so! I know it well enough, but there are times when I can only remember that I am a man, and you are a woman.”

  “You are certainly the boldest man I ever met!” she said, with a slight flush in her cheeks. “I can see that you are excited, and scarcely accountable for what you are saying, or I should take care not to see you or speak to you again! I don’t want to do that, if only you would control yourself, and be reasonable. It would be so much better! Now, listen! Four or five years ago, you saved my life—saved it bravely, too! What were you then? Try and recall yourself! You were the terror of the whole village. A notorious poacher, a frequenter of public-houses, ill-dressed and ill-mannered, and associated only with the worst characters about the place! Why Lord Wessemer passed over all your misdeeds, and persistently refused to have you punished, I cannot imagine; but it was so! You were a completely lawless creature; you earned no money; you never worked; you slept out of doors—in short, you were half a wild animal!”

  “Exactly!”

  She leaned forward to the fire, and held her fingers to the blaze for a few moments. Then she continued, keeping her eyes steadily fixed upon him.

  “Well, after my accident and your bravery, I naturally felt some anxiety to serve you; and I gave you what you most needed—good advice. It pleased you to follow it! What I suggested, you did. You commenced to lead a decent life, and, to my surprise, I found that you were very fairly educated. In a very few months you were vastly improved. You had a very fair amount of money for your position, and Lord Wessemer would have let you have any of his farms rent-free. It was then that your gratitude to me commenced to take—an objectionable form. You followed me about, you glared at me if you saw me at any time with the men who were the natural companions of my position—in short, you behaved like a thorough idiot. You began to talk wildly, too, of some possible good fortune which might happen to you, and, in short, you wearied me horribly. At last you went away, and don’t feel hurt if I say it was a great relief. You see you have forced me to be very frank! I want to continue to be your friend, but if I do, you must remember this: that I am Lady Helen Wessemer, and you are—yourself. You understand! Don’t, please, look so tragical! Is Mrs. Holmes ever going to bring that tea, I wonder!”

  “One moment!”

  He was standing over her, stern and pale. She half rose, but sat down again. There was a certain strength in the man—in his resolute face and set brows—which it was hard to resist.

  “Suppose for one moment, that I was a gentleman, and rich—richer even than you! What then?”

  “Nothing!”

  “You mean—”

  “I mean that you would be to me then—what you are now!” she interrupted. “Don’t you understand? You have no real education, no culture! You and I dwell in different worlds! You force me to tell you this! I am sorry to hurt you, but nothing in this world could make—what you suggest possible!”

  He clenched his fists tightly together, and drew himself up so that his head touched the roof. His face was white and desperate
, and his eyes glowed like pieces of live coal. She shrank back in her chair, and looked at him—afraid.

  “It’s—not true!” he said, in a tone quite low, but vibrating with passion. “Lady Helen, the time will come when you shall take back your words. Look at me! I’m a strong man. I’m one of those who gets what he wants! I want you—you and your love! And I shall have you! I swear it before God—on my soul!”

  She shrank away from him, for once speechless. He caught his cap and stick from the table, and strode across the stone floor. The door opened and shut. He was gone!

  “He is mad!” she told herself. “He must be out of his senses!”

  II. THE JUDGMENT OF FORTUNE

  Table of Contents

  Bryan left the farmyard by the gate in the ordinary way, but once in the fields, he strode along regardless of footpaths or stiles, with the set, white face of a man suddenly bereft of his senses. As a matter of fact, he was utterly without knowledge of where he was going to, but he kept his face resolutely turned towards the setting sun, and in about half an hour he had reached a slight elevation of the country from which a lonely tract of moorland rolled away to the horizon. Here he paused, and stood with tightly clenched hands, gazing away at the far-distant line where the winter’s sun seemed sinking into the bosom of the earth. For a moment his face worked spasmodically. Then he commenced to mutter to himself, his voice deep and low, scarcely rising above a whisper.

  “Curse her! How she scorns me—me, the vagabond poacher, the country yokel! No education, no—what was that word she used?—no culture! My God! how beautiful she is—so fair and stately and proud! She is like a princess. There is not another woman in the world like her! When she looks at me, I am on fire! When she scoffs at me, I go mad! Lord! what a fool I am! What a d—d fool!”