The World's Great Snare

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  “Hurrah!” he exclaimed, taking one of her thin hands, and stroking it while he talked. “Wonderful news—wonderful! I’ve got a pupil—two guineas a week! I feel as though I’d come into a fortune! Just fancy! Two guineas a week!”

  She turned a sweet, worn face towards him, and her dark eyes shone brightly underneath a wealth of wavy gray hair.

  “Why, Raymond, you must be joking, surely!” she exclaimed. “Where could you get a pupil from, and at such terms?”

  “I’m in solemn earnest,” he answered. “Here’s his card!”

  She took it and held it for a moment or two in her thin fingers. She repeated it to herself twice, and then she laid it down, and half-closed her eyes.

  “Two Bryans!” she remarked. “It is an odd name. Is that the father’s card?”

  “No; it’s his own!” Raymond Bettesford explained. “He’s not a boy! He’s a man who’s come into money. He looks as though he’d roughed it a good deal, but he’s a splendid fellow, and he has a wonderful air of distinction about him. You’ll be awfully interested to see him.”

  “When is he coming?” she asked.

  “At nine o’clock to-morrow morning. Ah, there he goes! See! If you just turn your head a little, you’ll see him through the side window. He’s just vaulting that gate on to the moor. Jove! he can jump!”

  She bent forward and watched Bryan’s tall figure with a curious strained intentness. Her hand was pressed to her heart, and when Raymond spoke to her she did not hear him.

  As soon as Bryan was out of sight, she leaned back on the couch, and closed her eyes.

  “I am tired, Raymond!” she said wearily. “Shall I have time for a little sleep, I wonder, before tea?”

  “Of course you will!” he answered. “I’ll go away and tell them not to disturb you!”

  He bent down and kissed her, then he went away softly. But she did not sleep. She lay with her eyes fixed upon the fire, and wet with tears.

  “Bryan! Bryan!” she murmured softly. “Ah, me!”

  V. A MEETING ON THE MOOR

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  “You’ve found out by this time that I didn’t come to this part of the world altogether as a stranger!” Bryan said one afternoon to Raymond Bettesford.

  They were on the top of Lone Barrow Down, the highest point of the moor, swept by the winds of sea and land, and as brown as a berry—walking across the open country with a reckless disregard of all footpaths which was in itself a delight to both of them. Away inland was a rolling stretch of wild moorland, with here and there a few shaggy cattle dotted about, and in the distance the broad imposing front of Wessemer Court. Into their faces was borne the spray from the gray winter sea, scarcely a quarter of a mile distant. Every now and then the roar of it filled the air.

  Bettesford took off his clerical hat, and drew in a long breath of the salt wind before he answered.

  “Yes,” he said slowly. “You lived not far from here before you went abroad, didn’t you?”

  “I did—and a pretty character the people would give me, I expect!” Bryan answered, with a deep laugh. “I was a vagabond all the days of my youth, and I’m afraid there’s some of the blood left in me still, in spite of all your efforts to polish me up. I shall break out some day!”

  The Rev. Bettesford laughed confidently.

  “I’m not afraid,” he declared. “But since you’ve mentioned it, old fellow, were you really—a—a—poacher?

  “Ay, I should think that I was!” Bryan answered readily. “There were a good many sins laid to my account in those days. I helped myself to Lord Wessemer’s game, I drank, I fought, and I very seldom worked.”

  “They told me one good thing of you, though,” Bettesford said. “John Higginson told me—excuse me—that you were a blackguard amongst the men, but a gentleman to all women and children. I was glad to hear that.”

  “Ah!”

  Bryan stopped short and turned his face seaward. Out of the mists that rode upon the gray restless waters a woman’s face seemed to have floated before his eyes—a woman’s dark, sweet, passionate face. He saw her, pistol in hand, facing his enemy on the wild Californian desert, steeling her nerves and hardening her heart to kill, that he might live. He saw her bending over his wooden bed in their rooms at San Francisco, once more gentle and feminine, nursing him with unflagging tenderness, bearing with his sick fancies, selling furniture, and jewelry, and even her clothes from her back, to buy him strengthening food and wine. A curious depression stole over him. The wind that blew in from the sea seemed to bring to his ears her last despairing words, and the blackness of his own ingratitude seemed written in flaming letters across the sky. Again he saw that look of inward agony, of supreme pain and despair which had almost spiritualized her face, in those moments of her last great sacrifice. Poor Myra! Was ever the deep, strong love of a woman so ill requited? He had left her—to what? A cold shudder swept through his veins. He gave a sharp little cry and turned away inland, walking so fast that Raymond Bettesford had hard work to keep near him.

  He slackened his pace presently, and looked down at his companion.

  “I forgot all about you,” he said apologetically. “I’m so used to being alone. Something came back to me. Damnation!”

  Bettesford frowned. “I do wish you would not swear,” he said.

  Bryan laughed. “Oh, I’ll be careful,” he answered. “I can’t get out of my old habits all at once; and, Bettesford, there is one little corner of my life that I’d give my little finger to be able to blot out. The memory of it maddens me. I can’t see clearly how I came to be to blame, but when I think of it I feel like a mean coward, like a villain, and I hate myself.”

  “Was it in California?” the other asked.

  “Yes. Some day I’ll tell you about it, and you shall be my judge. Not now; it hurts too much. Away with it! What a glorious walk we are having!”

  They turned their backs upon the sea, and walked inland, side by side. It was odd what a friendship had sprung up between the two men, to all appearance the very antithesis of each other. There was something in their very walk, in the tone of their speech when they addressed one another, which proclaimed a perfect understanding. Physically, the contrast between them was almost absurd. Raymond Bettesford’s fair, kindly little face, with its shrewd mouth and weak eyes, did not reach to Bryan’s shoulder, whilst his clerical black clothes, a little the worse for wear, only accentuated the smallness of his stature. Bryan’s great height seemed positively added to by his well-cut Norfolk coat and knickerbockers. Then his face, bronzed, yet full of power and fire, with his tawny beard reduced now to fashionable dimensions, and his bright blue eyes, seemed full of vigorous and virile animal life. No contrast could have been greater than Raymond Bettesford’s pallid oval face, with its small features and refined expression. Yet from the very first, the two men seemed to have understood one another. The rugged strength and self-reliance of Bryan’s nature was attractive to Bettesford, whilst his own shrewd good-nature and kindliness had appealed equally to Bryan. The curate’s life had been lonely enough before his pupil’s arrival; now he seemed to have found a new interest, and a constant companion. If ever there was an outlying farm to visit, or a service to take in a distant village, Bryan was ready and eager to go; in fact, most of the instruction took place out-of-doors. Every morning they walked together on the moorland, to Raymond Bettesford’s infinite advantage, and every afternoon, wet or fine, Bryan was expected to appear with him at Miss Bettesford’s one effort of the day, the dispensing of afternoon tea. That Bryan should have become such an instant favourite with his aunt, puzzled even Raymond. But so it was. Every afternoon her face lit up at his coming, and became anxious if he were a few minutes late. And Bryan, a little nervous sometimes with men, was absolutely at his ease with her, and curiously enough, had been so from the first moment that Raymond, with some trepidation, had brought him, and introduced him. He would sit and talk with her for hours, bending over her frail, delicate
figure with a devotion that was almost reverential, and ministering to all her little invalid wants with wonderful forethought and care. Once a week he rode off to the market-town on his great bay horse, bringing back a pile of library books, and always a basket of fruit and flowers. He did the shopping for the family on those occasions, and many were the odd little commissions which he laughingly accepted.

  These days formed a sort of interlude for Bryan—a link between his two lives—whose passionless peace he found it always a pleasure to look back upon.

  The Old Hall, of which he had become the tenant, was barely half a mile from the Vicarage, and every morning he carne striding across the fields, with his pipe in his mouth, at about nine o’clock. For an hour, sometimes longer, they read together; then there was a walk, and often the two men would lunch together at the Hall. In the afternoon there would be more walking, probably a round of parish duties, and at four o’clock Miss Bettesford was ready to give them tea. Bryan always went home to dinner—his appetite he used to say, was too huge for him to inflict himself on them for more than one meal a day—but be came down again in the evening, and the two men smoked and talked, and read the time away, unless Miss Bettesford was still up, in which case they spent the first part of the evening in the drawing-room with her. It was a new life to Bryan, this little glimpse of refined yet simple domesticity, and it came to him with an added zest at the very moment when he found himself in reality upon the threshold of a new world. For Raymond Bettesford was in many ways admirably qualified to fill the post of instructor, and Bryan himself was an eager and an apt pupil. All that was rough and course in the man seemed to be purely superficial, the inevitable adjuncts of his early surroundings and later associations. It was wonderful what progress he made. Even Bettesford, an enthusiastic master and proud of his pupil, was amazed at the gentleness and self-repression which came over Bryan in all his conversation and intercourse with Miss Bettesford. The man who could behave as he did by intuition, must be a man of the very finest instincts, and yet there were times when a certain look came into his face—it was there this afternoon—which he had learned to dread. At such times he felt that Bryan was outside his control—that the old vagabondism was triumphant, and the animal nature of the man in revolt against the trammels of knowledge and culture. Bryan had not yet given him his whole confidence—he could only guess from occasional fits of gloom, at some dark corner in his life, the memory of which, in the light of his rapidly expanding experience, must naturally be galling and wearisome. To-day he surmised, for the first time, that it had to do with a woman. The suspicion gave him no shock. In all matters of his own life he was scrupulously faithful to himself and to his vows, but he was no Jesuit. If Bryan had chosen at that moment to have told him all about Myra and his life with her, he would have been a very lenient judge. But Bryan did not tell him. He did not feel that he could tell anybody. No one else could understand it. So they walked on in unbroken silence; Bryan a few yards apart with knitted brows, and a shadow still upon his face.

  In the midst of the desolate country they came to a road which wound its way across the bare moor, and disappeared upon the hillside in the distance—a road without any semblance of a hedge, and here and there completely hidden by the clustering furze-bushes. They were already halfway across it when Bettesford stood still, gazing over the moor inland.

  “Quite a procession coming down the hill,” he remarked. “Not very often one sees a vehicle upon this road either!”

  Bryan, too, stood still and gazed. He was not interested, but anything which afforded a prospect of escape from his present thoughts was welcome. In the far distance, something all bright and glittering was corning at a measured pace along the tortuous road, followed by some other vehicle. They watched for a moment or two. Then Bettesford broke into a little laugh.

  “It is only a Wessemer carriage and the luggage carts,” he exclaimed. “The people coming down from town, I suppose! Come along. We don’t want to see them!”

  But Bryan did not move.

  “Are they coming back to the Court to stay—already, then?” he asked. “The ‘Earl and Lady Helen?”

  Bettesford nodded, and sent a pebble flying with his stick.

  “I suppose so,” he answered. “I heard that they were coining this week! Come on!”

  Still Bryan did not move. He stood in the middle of the road, with his face turned towards the cavalcade, now rapidly approaching. They disappeared for a moment in a dip of the road, and Bettesford again laid his hand upon Bryan’s arm.

  “Come along, man!” he exclaimed, glancing into his face with surprise. “Are you turned to stone? You can’t stand there and gape at them.”

  Bryan moved slowly off the road on to the turf, without speaking. There was an odd look in his downcast face, strange to his companion.

  “Let us walk slowly,” he said. “I should like to see the Earl, I have not seen him since I was a boy.”

  Bettesford shrugged his shoulders and gave in. They walked a few paces and then turned round. The heavy, smoothly-rolling barouche, drawn by a pair of great satin-coated bays, was close at hand now. The men on the box wore cockades, and the Wessemer liveries. There were rosettes upon the horses’ ears, and a coronet upon the low panel. Now it was almost opposite to them, and Bryan’s gaze grew steadfast. On the left side sat the Earl of Wessemer, leaning back amongst the cushions, his dark, classical face destitute of all colour, seeming paler than ever from its setting of rich furs; and by his side was Lady Helen wrapped in sealskins, but with her veil raised, and a faint pink colour in her cheeks, as though she had been enjoying the fresh strong breeze blowing in across the level land from the sea.

  She saw them first, and leaned forward with slightly raised eyebrows and incredulous gaze.

  Quite unconsciously the two watchers, or rather one of them, were forming a somewhat striking picture. Bryan was standing at his full height on the edge of the moor, with no background save of sky and air, against which his great figure stood out with a wonderful statuesque vividness. He carried his cap still in his hand, and the wind was sweeping through his clustering hair and tawny beard. His head was thrown back, and his eyes, bright and piercing underneath his dark contracted eyebrows, seemed to flash with a sort of challenge as they met Lady Helen’s. By his side Raymond Bettesford’s slim figure and polite bow seemed dwarfed into a sort of bathos. The very ease with which he raised his broad-brimmed hat, savouring so essentially of the conventional, seemed to strike an odd discordant note in the little tableau. He was utterly unconscious that anything out of the common was happening. The dramatic side of the meeting upon the bare moorside was lost upon him.

  For a moment there came no response to his salutation. Lady Helen seemed unable to escape from the steady, level lire of those clear bright eyes which never swerved from hers, and the Earl, although he had not abandoned or altered his reclining position, was gazing fixedly at Bryan. Then the whole little tableau came suddenly to its natural ending. The carriage, which had not slackened its pace, rolled on. Just at the last second, Lady Helen withdrew her eyes, and bowed half mechanically, and with a faint smile, to the curate. Then she leaned back amongst the cushions, and Lord Wessemer turned slightly towards her, evidently asking a question. Bryan took a deep breath, and watched the carriage disappear.

  Bettesford glanced at him oddly. “Lady Helen was not particularly gracious,” he remarked, “and the Earl never even looked at me. Bryan, old chap,” he continued, “you’ll forgive me, won’t you, but you must not stare at people like that, even if they are interesting. They seemed quite disturbed.”

  Bryan withdrew his eyes from the road, and looked at his companion for a moment blankly, as though he had not understood. Then suddenly he burst into a mighty laugh, a laugh which went ringing away over the level country, and came back in strange echoes from the hills.

  Bettesford looked at him in amazement. Decidedly his pupil was a very strange fellow!

  VI. LIKE POISON LINGERI
NG IN THE BRAIN

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  It was quite a cosy little tea-party. Miss Bettesford as usual presided, seated in a low chair with a small round table drawn up to her side. As a rule, things were very plainly served at the Vicarage, but afternoon tea was always a dainty repast. The silver teapot was of quaint “Queen Anne” design, and the cups and saucers of old Derby blue. There was hot toast, cake, and bread and butter, and a curious old cut-glass jug of cream. For a household of limited means, Miss Bettesford used to say, it was the only meal which it was possible to serve in an artistic manner. It was the one delight of her long days to welcome her boys, as she was beginning to call her nephew and his strange pupil, in the long, low-roofed drawing-room, and have them sit around the fire in little impossible chairs, and talk to her of the day’s doings. It was very seldom indeed that they were disturbed by callers. It was a sparsely populated neighbourhood as regards county gentlefolk, and Miss Bettesford was known to be, in her way, a proud woman, and not disposed to encourage the advances of strangers. So they generally had it all to themselves.

  They had been talking of the Wessemers, for it was only a day or two after their arrival, and the event was too important a one to be ignored. From the low French windows, the flag at the Court could be seen floating in the breeze. Miss Bettesford had spent a good many hours looking at it—and wondering.

  “You knew the Earl well, didn’t you, Aunt, when he was only Mr. Nugent?” Raymond asked. “What was he like then?”

  Miss Bettesford leaned back, and looked thoughtfully into the fire.

  “What was he like?” she said. “Do you mean in appearance?”

  He shook his head. “No! I mean altogether—in all ways,” he answered vaguely, taking another piece of toast and sipping his tea. “Mrs. Grant told me the other day that he was a famous steeple-chase rider once, and won the Grand National on his own horse. One would scarcely associate any liking for that sort of thing with him now!”