The World's Great Snare

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  “A year after our pretended marriage I was obliged to report myself at Vienna, and I hurried off there, leaving your mother in the little Swiss village where we had been living. The illness of a subordinate detained me for some time. One morning a telegram reached me. Your mother was dangerously ill. I left at once, and was with her in twenty-four hours. I found her in a delirium, and from her ravings I gathered that she had discovered, by some means or other, my treachery. At the height of her illness you were born. I had you removed, and when, after weeks of unconsciousness, she recovered her reason, she was told that you were dead.”

  “What a villain you were!” Bryan exclaimed involuntarily.

  “I admit it,” Lord Wessemer answered calmly. “I was a villain! As soon as your mother recovered I offered to make her the only reparation possible. I had come into some money, and I offered to marry her. She refused! Nothing that I could urge moved her! She went into a sisterhood and I returned to Vienna. We did not meet again for twenty years. I had given the living of Wessemer to her nephew, Raymond Bettesford, for her sake, as she must have known. Raymond was an orphan then, and they were living together. For his sake she made no demur, and she came back to Wessemer. On my return from abroad I went to see her. You were there. She was already suspicious. The next day she sent for me. The time was over for falsehoods between us. I told her everything! I told her where I had placed you when young—it was not far from here—and how you had disappeared suddenly. It was when you went to America.”

  Bryan was thinking.

  “Then it was you that blackguard Hamilton or Huntly came to see! He reeled into my cottage one night, drunk! He had travelled thousands of miles, he said, to find some one—he meant you! You were away, and so he found me out, and in a maudlin way kept dropping hints that he knew my parentage. I gave him a bed, and in the morning he had gone. I followed him—to California!”

  “That was Maurice Huntly!” Lord Wessemer said. “The man who helped me deceive your mother. Did you find him?”

  “Yes, I found him—dead!” Bryan answered. “But I got some papers he left behind. A copy of a marriage certificate between Bryan Nugent and Marion Dennison, and a birth certificate—my own!”

  “That was my own name!” Lord Wessemer said.

  “Hamilton, when he was dying, spoke of papers more valuable still than these! In San Francisco I procured them. They were letters, love-letters—yours and hers, I suppose!”

  “Ay, he stole them. I am glad that the man is dead!” Lord Wessemer declared. “Bryan, many years ago I offered to marry your mother. She refused me! To her I can make no atonement, save that I have not married any one else. With you it may be different. I am well off! I can give you money, or—”

  Bryan stretched out his huge limbs and laughed.

  “Money! I do not know, but I fancy that I am a richer man than you, Lord Wessemer! I have over a hundred thousand pounds in the Bank of England, and last week my partner told me to draw on him for anything under a million dollars. No, I do not want your money!”

  “My friendship may be useful to you!”

  Bryan looked at him steadfastly.

  “In what way?”

  “Well, I could get you into Parliament. I could help you into your right place in society.”

  “I can do all that for myself, quite easily, thanks,” Bryan answered, “or rather, my wealth will do it for me!”

  There was a moment’s silence. Lord Wessemer spoke:

  “Am I to understand, then, that—that you refuse my friendship—that you wish to have nothing to do with me?

  “No, I do not go so far as that!” Bryan said slowly. “I have no ill-feeling against you, Lord Wessemer. You have probably suffered enough. God knows you deserve it, not for my sake, but hers. You call yourself a philosopher, don’t you? Well, I, too, am philosopher enough not to curse you because you have sent me into the world nameless. You say you want to help me. Well, you can!”

  “I am glad to hear it,” Lord Wessemer said. “I am very glad.”

  “Thank you! Well, I want to marry your niece, Lady Helen! I have wanted to all my life.”

  Lord Wessemer raised his eyebrows. He was almost surprised.

  “How can I help you?” he asked. “Lady Helen is ambitious, and she is peculiar.”

  “Exactly. You can help me first negatively, by not refusing your consent. You are her guardian, I understand.”

  “I will give my hearty consent at any time,” Lord Wessemer said. “But I suppose you know Lady Helen. What are you going to tell her about yourself, and your family?”

  “I will see to that,” Bryan answered, frowning. “All that I want from you is unlimited opportunity of seeing her, and your consent when I ask for it.”

  “You shall have both,” Lord Wessemer declared. “But, Bryan, just a word. I think I ought to tell you that Lady Helen is not at all the sort of young woman to make a romantic marriage. She has no imagination, and very little heart; added to which, she is socially ambitious. Only last season she refused two or three men, solely because their position did not satisfy her. I think it right to tell you this.”

  “Exactly,” Bryan remarked. “I know that I am attempting a difficult thing, but you will find that I shall succeed. I am going now. Can I come up again? You understand me!”

  “‘We dine at eight,” Lord Wessemer said, “and I believe we are alone. I shall say that I pressed you to come!”

  Bryan rose. Lord Wessemer held out his hand across the table. There was a moment’s dead silence.

  “I do not think that I want to shake hands with you—just yet,” Bryan said slowly. “It doesn’t matter, does it? It is purely a sentimental feeling, and I know that you are above such trifles. I shall be here at eight.”

  Lord Wessemer watched him go, without moving; watched him through the tall French windows cross the park on his way homewards. Then his hand fell heavily to his side. There was a curious gray shade in his pale face, and his eyes were dim. He sat down in his chair, and buried his face in his hands.

  XV. A SILENT TOAST

  Table of Contents

  At a few minutes to eight, Bryan handed his coat and hat to a footman in the great round hall of Wessemer Court, and was ushered into the drawing-room. The large apartment was empty, and only dimly lit, but from the smaller extension of it, the yellow drawing-room, as Lady Helen had made it, came the sound of soft music, and the glow of a deeper light through the gauze curtains. He walked across and raised them softly.

  His approach had been quite noiseless, and Lady Helen, who was sitting with her profile towards him, did not at once look up. During the moment which elapsed before she was aware of his presence, he found time for a swift glance around the little chamber. It was really only a recess curtained off from the larger apartment, but its style of furniture and decoration had given it an identity of its own. The walls were hung with deep yellow satin, and the same colour was carried out in the upholstery, and the dainty little antique chairs and couches. A bright fire was burning in the grate, and the glow of the flames was mingled with the paler light of half-a-dozen wax candles in a great silver candelabrum. The odour of dead rose-leaves from a huge blue china bowl was floating upon the air, already perfumed with the faint aromatic scent of several vases of yellow and white chrysanthemums. To Bryan it was like a little fairy chamber. It was the type of that new world of refined and elegant sensuousness which lay before him.

  Some slight movement betrayed his presence, and Lady Helen’s slim white fingers rested for a moment on the keys as she glanced up. Their eyes met—and more even than in those few minutes when they had last stood together on the moorside, she realized what a passion was smouldering in this lover of hers. She looked down, and a slight pink flush stole into her cheeks. It died away almost as swiftly as it had come, but its momentary presence annoyed her. Even in her schooldays she had not been used to blush.

  “Lord Wessemer was a little late going up to dress,” she said. “I think he mus
t have fallen asleep in the library. He won’t be long.”

  He bowed silently, and came a little further into the room, standing by the side of the piano, and watching her fingers glide over the keys. She was playing again, but very softly.

  “I think,” he remarked, “that to thoroughly appreciate the refinements and the beautiful side of life, one ought, some time or other, to have been a boor; at any rate to have lived amongst boorish people, and boorish surroundings.”

  “Very likely,” she answered. “Only there would be the danger of always remaining a boor.”

  “I was thinking of myself,” he went on a little absently. “To be with you here in this room and in this atmosphere, is like—heaven!”

  She laughed softly.

  “I should like to have seen the people with whom you dwelt in California,” she said. “I suppose the men must have been dreadfully rough, and the women—were they as bad?”

  A sudden icy chill stole through his veins, and into his heart. The joy of the present was suddenly forgotten. The air seemed full of Myra’s voice; he saw her face, at one moment dark and glowing, brilliant with all the seductiveness of her wonderful beauty; the next, pale and worn, yet chastened with that wonderful effort of self-immolation. He felt the touch of her hands across his face, her kisses upon his lips, her caresses as she crept into his arms. Oh, the horror of it! His eyes, half-frightened, half-fascinated, stole to where Lady Helen sat, half-carelessly waiting for his answer. To him, that pale, proud face of hers, a little softened this evening by an unusual tinge of colour in her cheeks, was the exquisite type of all that was sweetest and purest in womankind. His eyes wandered over her white lace gown, fashioned in somewhat severer style than is customary for an ordinary evening dress, and which seemed to him in its spotless daintiness emblematic of her soul, so white, and so far removed from even a thought of evil. Supposing she were to know! He looked into her face once more, and his heart grew faint at the very thought. If there was any quality lacking there at all, it was surely pity—the softer side of womanliness. The forehead was high and frank, and the hair which would have waved over it was drawn back in severe but becoming simplicity. Her features were clearly and delicately chiselled, the lines of the small mouth were distinct and firm. Her head was thrown back as she usually carried it, and just a suggestion of white arms and shoulders was glimmering through the gauze of her bodice. He looked away, and set his teeth together. It seemed like profanation to think of that other, and of those days, in her presence.

  Fortunately perhaps for him, the need of answering that question of hers passed. Lord Wessemer came in, and immediately afterwards the butler parted the fluttering curtains and announced dinner. Obeying a glance from Lord Wessemer, Bryan offered his arm to Lady Helen. Lord Wessemer came behind alone.

  Dinner was served, not in the great, sombre banqueting hall, but in a smaller room, opposite to the library, and on a round table. The whole of the meal was like a further revelation to Bryan, one step beyond into the world of elegance and refinement. He was by no means unusually silent, yet he found time to appreciate, even to revel in, the unwonted luxury. He drank sparingly, but the first glass of champagne seemed to have a curiously exhilarating effect upon him. All his senses awoke to the delicate charm of his surroundings. The little table at which they sat was all ablaze with heavy sparkling silver, and dazzling glass, with fair linen and dainty fruits, themselves a very feast in colouring, and great masses of sweet-scented flowers filling the air with their faint delicious perfume. The table itself, and the faces of the two people who sat with him, were bathed in a soft glow from the pink-shaded lamps, whilst the room seemed dark and gloomy. It was like a little fairy oasis amongst the shadows; like his life, he thought, frowning heavily for a moment as he thought of those days which had been all shadows. He raised his glass, and he drank a silent toast, “Perish the memory of them for ever!” Perish all memories of those long days and gloomy nights on the banks of the Blue River; of that night of horror in the desert; of the tortures of San Francisco! And perish, too, all memories of that brilliant dark face, with its wild beauty, and its passionate love for him flashing out of the eyes, betraying itself in every word she uttered. Away with them! Let every thought of her fade out of his heart and brain, and remain buried for ever and for ever.

  And as if in some measure purged by that silent outcry of his heart, he suffered his eyes to dwell more freely upon that fair, proud face so close to his, so clearly visible over the waving maidenhair ferns, and the blossoming scarlet geraniums. He joined more in the conversation, and it was odd how well he talked, and how musical his deep bass sounded in contrast to the other lighter voices. Once or twice their eyes met. She did not avert hers, nor did she give him any token such as he craved, of some intelligence between them. He fancied that she had grown a little colder to him. She addressed him directly but seldom, and long before dinner was over, she leaned back in her chair, graceful but bored. He was wise enough to take no notice of it, but continued his conversation with Lord Wessemer anent the shooting of running animals. As soon as she could, she rose, and Bryan, who was nearest to the door, opened it for her. Again he was disappointed. She swept through with a faint inclination of the head, but she did not look at him.

  Bryan resumed his seat, and lit a cigarette from the silver box which Lord Wessemer had pushed towards him. A little cloud of blue smoke curled upwards over the banks of flowers and the dainty dishes of hothouse fruits. Through it Bryan could see that Lord Wessemer’s gray eyes were coolly studying his face.

  “Has Lady Helen told you that we are going up to town early next month?” Lord Wessemer asked.

  Going away! Bryan bit his lip, and ground his heel into the carpet, but he answered calmly enough:

  “No! I am sorry to hear it!”

  Lord Wessemer smoked on deliberately for a minute of two. Then he leaned forward to Bryan.

  “I don’t see why you need be sorry,” he said. “You must go yourself; set up some chambers in Piccadilly, buy some horses, and see something of London life. There are a couple of very decent London clubs into which I have influence enough to get you, and I will see that you meet the right sort of people!”

  Bryan’s first instinct was one of pleasure. Anything to avoid separation! Then he thought of that worn, sweet face, with its gray hair and fond eyes; how would she bear his absence? His face clouded.

  “I do not think that I shall be able to leave the Hall just yet,” he said slowly.

  “You are thinking of—of her!” Lord Wessemer said. “She is wanting to go to London, to be near Dr. Hacker. If you go, she will go!”

  “Then I will go!” Bryan answered.

  “Good!” declared Lord Wessemer. “Come! If you are sure you won’t have a liqueur, let us go and find Lady Helen. One moment; you haven’t finished your claret, I see. Let me give you a toast. London! Success!”

  Bryan lifted his glass to his lips, and drained it. When he set it down, he repeated Lord Wessemer’s words:

  “London! Success!”

  XVI. A SOUL FLITTING INTO THE SUNLIGHT

  Table of Contents

  In the hall the two men parted. Lord Wessemer went into the library, and Bryan turned aside to the drawing-room. He was going to find Lady Helen. The fascination of knowing that she was in the same house, that in all probability they would spend the next hour together, was irresistible. He entered the drawing-room, and in the little yellow chamber he found her writing.

  She laid down her pen as he entered, with the calm air of a hostess whose duty it is to entertain, raising her eyebrows a little as though surprised at his coming.

  “I thought that you and Lord Wessemer would play billiards!” she remarked. “Won’t you sit down?”

  Bryan took a chair, and brought it a little nearer to hers.

  “Lord Wessemer was tired, I fancy, and he had some letters to write. He has gone into the library. Am I interrupting you?”

  She took up her pen again.
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  “If you will excuse me, I will finish this note,” she said. “It is an invitation I ought to have answered a week ago!”

  He bowed, and took up a magazine which lay on the table by his side. But he did not read. Over its pages he looked steadily at the bent head of the woman opposite him. How smooth was her forehead, and how cold and clearly cut her features! Everything about her savoured of an exclusiveness, personal as well as aristocratic. Would he ever be able to break down the barrier, he wondered; to see the light break across her face, and see the depths of her calm blue eyes stirred with passion? A sudden chill went to his heart. Was it possible for him, or any other man, to do it? Was she really as cold and passionless as she seemed; as pure and, alas! as unattainable as that glorious white snow on the Sierra tops when smitten by the morning sunlight? He sighed, and just at that moment she laid down her pen.

  “May I trouble you to ring the bell?” she asked.