The World's Great Snare

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  He sprang up, and she collected her letters into a little heap. The servant who came brought them coffee in tiny, slender cups. Bryan took some, and sipped it thoughtfully.

  “You did not tell me that you were going to London soon!” he said, after a brief pause.

  She looked at him with a faint smile—a smile which irritated him vaguely.

  “Why should I? Every one goes to London for the season. I thought you knew that!”

  “I am glad that every one goes,” he remarked, “because I am going.”

  “Indeed! When did you decide that?”

  “This evening. It was Lord Wessemer’s suggestion. I have spoken to him about you.”

  “What?”

  Her high, delicate eyebrows were contracted into a distinct frown. She was looking as nearly angry as she permitted herself to be.

  “I have spoken to Lord Wessemer! I told him that I wanted you to marry me! How could I come here, and eat his dinner, and not tell him?

  “I hope you added that I refused you!”

  “I did. I also told him that one of your reasons for refusing me was the improbability of gaining his consent.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He gave it to me!”

  She looked at him, literally dumbfounded. Once again she felt a thrill almost of fear at the dogged persistence of this man, and his silent contempt of all difficulties. There was something mysterious about his success, in his rapid transition from vagabondage to the gentleman he undoubtedly was, in his vast wealth, and in this last crowning piece of successful audacity, the cool demanding of her hand from that most aristocratic and unsympathetic of men, the Earl Wessemer!

  “He gave you his consent!” she repeated slowly.

  “Yes! He gave it to me! He did not make any objection at all.”

  “But did he ask you nothing—forgive me!—as to your family?”

  Bryan shook his head.

  “He knows that I have no family,” he answered. “He knows that so far as the world is concerned, I have to make my own name. But in these days there is much that can be done by a man who has ambition and money. I am very rich indeed, and I am very ambitious. As for the rest, Lord Wessemer has offered me his friendship and his influence.”

  “You have surprised me very much indeed!” Lady Helen said, looking into the fire. “I had imagined that Lord Wessemer’s prejudices would have prevented his even listening to you!”

  “If only I could hope that yours would vanish as speedily,” Bryan said, his deep bass voice a little tremulous, and his eyes very soft and bright, “I should feel myself very happy. Lady Helen, tell me what you would have me do to win you, and I will do it. Would you like me to go into Parliament? I could find a seat in the autumn, and with you to work for, I promise that I would make a name that you would not be ashamed of. Lord Wessemer tells me that the doors of society will not be closed upon me; that his influence is quite enough to enable me to mix with the people whom you would wish to live amongst. My whole life should be an offering to you; and I would make you happy, Lady Helen. I would indeed!”

  She looked at him, not unkindly, but gravely. She was indeed a little moved, more moved than she had ever been before by a man’s pleading. But even then she felt that this new feeling, sweet in a sense though it was, was scarcely a thing to trust to. It might die away as swiftly as it had come; as yet she had no confidence in it. In any case, it had no strength to undermine all the preconceived ideas of her life. She wanted to be fair—to be fair to herself as well as to him; and she thought for some time before she answered.

  “I am afraid that you are going to be disappointed in me, Mr. Bryan,” she said slowly. “I do really admire the wonderful way in which you have stepped out of your old self, and if, as you say, my influence has had anything to do with it, I am very glad. But you ask from me what I am not able to give. You want me to care for you in a certain way, and I do not! It is best to be candid, is it not?”

  “It is best,” Bryan answered. “But, Lady Helen, I do not expect too much. As yet I am almost a stranger to you. I am content to wait. I have never dared to hope to win you easily. All I ask is, that you will take some time to consider.”

  “That I will grant,” she answered. “It is only fair. I warn you that I am naturally not at all of a sympathetic or affectionate disposition. I have never expected to care for any one in the way you desire. I still feel that it is not likely. But if you wish it, I will give you my answer, say in six months’ time.”

  She had risen, and was standing by his side, a fair, stately figure in her creamy-white gown, with its soft folds of lace rising one above the other like the waves of the sea, and emitting at every rustle a faint sweet perfume of dried lavender, which became mingled with the odour of the roses at her bosom. One small slipper was stealing out from beneath a cloud of white lace draperies, and resting upon the fender; her elbow was upon the broad mantelpiece, and her head was reclining slightly upon her hand. They stood together for several moments without any further speech. Then suddenly he took a quick step towards her, and held out his arms. A swift uncontrollable desire had come to him. He must take her into his arms, and clasp her there. One kiss on those firm, proud lips, and she would be his—his for ever! A passion leaped into his face; his hot breath fell even upon her cheek. She, too, was agitated. The rich colour had flooded her cheeks. She was, in a sense, fascinated by the strength of his passion, and the desire in his glowing eyes. If he had carried out his purpose at that moment; if he had risked everything and taken her boldly into his arms, he might have broken down for ever that barrier of icy exclusiveness which custom and disposition had built up around her. If he had dared, she would have been very near yielding. It was the golden opportunity of his life, and while he hesitated it passed away.

  In that intense silence they both distinctly heard the sound of quick footsteps crossing the outer room. The tension between them passed away in a moment. Bryan turned his head, and gave a great start. Raymond Bettesford, pale and splashed with mud, was standing in the aperture.

  “Bryan, she is ill—dying!” he faltered. “There is a horse—”

  With a low, deep cry Bryan sprang past him. He stopped for neither hat nor coat, but in his thin evening clothes he sprang on to the horse which Raymond had ridden up. There were a few moments of wild riding through the darkness, with the bleak wind rushing past him, a leap from the park into the lane, and he was there, through the lit hall and up the narrow staircase to where a door stood open, and a woman lay upon a bed, with a smile upon her lips which was the smile of death. He knew it in a moment; he knew that there was no hope. The doctor and the little servant-maid stood away from the bedside as he entered, a strange, wild figure, with his wind-tossed hair and mud-bespattered clothes. He fell on his knees before her, and his arms drew her into his embrace. But he could not speak.

  “My boy!” she murmured. “My poor, dear boy!”

  She closed her eyes again. He whispered to her, but she did not hear. White and still she lay in his arms through the long, weary hours of the night. And Bryan never moved.

  She opened her eyes at last. The night was gone.

  Through a chink in the blind an odd little ray of white sunlight had found its way on to the bed. She lay looking at it for a moment, as though bewildered. Then her arms suddenly tightened around Bryan. There was a bright light in her face. She understood.

  “My boy!” she cried faintly. “Thank God! Thank God! The morning has come!”

  * * * * *

  An hour later he wandered out into the sunlit garden, and came back with a handful of fresh, wet violets. As he passed up to her room with them, he heard the sound of a man’s deep, subdued sobbing. The library door was open, and he glanced mechanically in. It was Lord Wessemer!

  He called out to him softly, and beckoned. Together the two men stole upstairs, and into the chamber of death.

  They stood over her, and Bryan, pointing to the pillow, gave the wet,
fragrant violets into Lord Wessemer’s hands. He laid them down softly. The two men stood side by side.

  “Bryan—do you think—that she forgave me?” he asked.

  “Ay! I know she did!” Bryan answered.

  Lord Wessemer held out his hand hesitatingly.

  “Will you?” he asked.

  Bryan ground his teeth.

  “She was an angel!” he said simply. “I am not!”

  BOOK III

  Table of Contents

  I. THE “HILARITY” STAR

  Table of Contents

  A tall, broad-shouldered man, with a loose overcoat barely concealing his evening clothes, stood on the pavement opposite the “Hilarity” Theatre, reading the play-bill. It was eight o’clock, and the exterior of the place was a perfect blaze of light. A long stream of carriages and hansoms were setting down people, and there being some rumour of a visit from Royalty, a strip of red drugget had been laid across the pavement from the stalls entrance. Several policemen and commissionaires were very busy opening and banging doors, and shouting at the cabmen, who would drive off with their horses’ heads in the wrong direction. Altogether there was a good deal of bustle.

  Bryan, who was standing with his hands thrust deep down in his coat-pockets, and smoking a cigar, glanced irresolutely into the crowded vestibule, and hesitated.

  “Don’t see why I shouldn’t have an evening off,” he said to himself. “I can get to the Forresters’ after this thing’s over.”

  He glanced down again at the bill. There it was in great, staring letters:

  To-night

  NEW COMIC OPERA

  “MADAME LA PRINCESSE”

  MISS MERCIER AS

  LA PRINCESSE

  “Everybody’s talking about the thing,” he muttered. “I’ll see if I can get a seat, anyway.”

  He threw away his cigar, which was scrambled for by half-a-dozen urchins, and passing through the open doors, entered the luxurious reception room, with its velvet fauteuils and graceful palms, and little groups of women in soft opera cloaks talking to their cavaliers. He made his way to the ticket office and asked for a seat.

  The man looked at him in surprise.

  “Haven’t you booked, sir?” he asked.

  “No. Have you a seat anywhere I can have?”

  The man looked away and whispered to his assistant. Then he turned to Bryan.

  “We have just had a single stall returned,” he said. “You can have that, if you like. It is the only vacant seat in the house.”

  Bryan put down his half-guinea and took the ticket. Then he made his way down the corridor, bought a programme and book of the words, and settled down in the comfortable easy-chair with a sense of anticipation which made him laugh softly to himself as he realized it. He had been in London for nearly four months, and he had found society a little harder work than gold-digging, without half the satisfaction. This was his first evening to himself, and was the result of a moment’s impulse. He had no binding engagement for an hour or so, and the sight of the name on the bills, which was in every one’s mouth, had presented a sudden temptation. He felt something like a schoolboy who has stolen into a circus.

  The orchestra played the overture, which was long, but tuneful, and the curtain went up. Sometimes, afterwards, he tried to remember what it was all about, but he never could. He carried away only a hazy recollection of groups of chorus girls in the short hooped skirts and sabots of French peasants, the swinging sign of an old inn, and a lover in open-worked shirt and velvet knickerbockers, who sang the opening song magnificently, and whom Bryan himself loudly encored. He enjoyed it all hugely at the time, but the whole web of memory was swept away by the crisis which was so close at hand. At one moment he was applauding with a boyish enthusiasm, some sparks of which had survived his latter-day schooling, and the next, his hands had dropped nervously on to his knees, and he was sitting there with eyes still fastened upon the stage, and a curious dazed wonder numbing all his senses. The smile had vanished from his lips, and the colour from his cheeks. There was a singing in his ears, and a wild tumult in his heart. The ghost of his past was there on the gaily-lit stage, the central figure in that dainty scene of Arcadian voluptuousness. She was gliding to the front; there was a roar of applause, and then a deep hush. It was Myra! Myra in powdered hair, under which her dark eyes were flashing as brightly as ever, and silken gown with long train looped up over her arm! There was no possibility of any mistake. It was Myra, whose last note had just died away, and for whom had arisen that storm of applause which was thundering all around him.

  He followed her through the act, watching her graceful movements and coquettish little gestures, without the shadow of a smile. He listened to her voice, which was bringing all London to the theatre, without a single thrill of rapture. The fact that she was more beautiful than ever scarcely occurred to him. He was paralyzed by her mere presence there, within a few feet of him. Once, at a little trill in a song, he set his teeth and drew a sharp breath. She had sung like that one night, on the banks of the Blue River. They had been sitting outside the shanty, watching the fireflies in the valley. He had thrown his arm carelessly around her, and she had sung to him in the soft velvety darkness, with her face turned wistfully to the shadows of the Sierras, and the moonlight gleaming in her dark, passionate eyes. As the echoes of her voice died away, he ground his elbows into the cushioned arms of his stall, and swore.

  At the end of the first act, he rose and quitted his scat, walking with the air of a man in a dream, and all the boyish light-heartedness of a few hours ago completely gone. He found his way with some difficulty to the back of the theatre, and, standing underneath a gas lamp, scribbled a single line on the back of a card.

  He knocked at the stage-door, and stood for a moment in a bare passage until he was sharply confronted by the doorkeeper. He held out his card to him.

  “I want you to take this to Miss Mercier,” he said. “I’ll wait for an answer!”

  The man shook his head, and declined the card.

  “Not a bit of use, sir,” he said sharply. “There’s been scores of them try it. Miss Mercier has given me strict orders to refuse all letters, or cards, or parcels—even flowers! If I were to disobey her, she’d very likely report me!”

  “That’s all right,” Bryan answered quietly. “I am a old friend of Miss Mercier’s. I knew her in America. Here!”

  He slipped a sovereign into the man’s unwilling palm. Bryan was standing underneath the gas lamp, and the man looked into his features doubtfully.

  “There’s been several tried to gammon me that they were friends of Miss Mercier’s,” he said slowly. “I don’t mean no offence, sir, but you remember that if what you say is not true, I shall lose my place.”

  “You’ll find that it is all right,” Bryan answered. “Miss Mercier will remember me.”

  The man nodded, and went off. It was fully five minutes before he reappeared. On his return he addressed Bryan with more consideration.

  “Miss Mercier was just going on, sir,” he announced. “She had no time to write a line. She wished me to say that she would be leaving by this door at a quarter past eleven.”

  “Thank you!” Bryan said simply. “I will be here!”

  He walked away and wandered aimlessly about the streets. He had no desire to see any more of the performance; another time would do for that. To-night he wanted to think. And so he walked away, unwittingly turning his steps towards the very heart of pleasure-seeking London, elbowing his way amongst the crowds of men and women whose faces he did not see, and all the time trying to fix this thing in his mind, to realize what it was that had happened, and to plan for himself some definite course of action. It was a fine May evening, and, even around Leicester Square, the wind was soft, and an odour of spring was in the air. Women laughed in his face, and men turned round and grumbled at his calm monopoly of the pavement. He did not hear either of them. The laughter and soft whisperings of the one, and the angry asides of th
e other, were jumbled together in his ears. He could only think of this strange resurrection of his past, and of that dark bewitching face which had followed him from across the seas to the world’s capital.

  He walked restlessly about, a tall, striking figure amongst the motley throng, until close upon eleven o’clock. He had looked at his watch beneath a gas lamp, and the simple mechanical action seemed to restore him to every-day life. He drew a quick breath, swung round, and walked back to the theatre.

  There were several men standing about in the narrow lane, a little apart, like sentinels, with their eyes fixed upon the closed door. Bryan remembered, with an odd little feeling of annoyance, that only a few nights ago he had spoken with contempt of the boys who hung around the stage-door of a theatre. He, too, was one of them now in the eyes of any who should see him there.

  One or two stylishly-dressed young women came out and strolled away. Then the door opened, and his heart gave a little jump. Myra was there, looking eagerly around her. Their eyes met, and she gave a little start forward. She held out both her hands to him, with the old impulsive delight, and forgetting that such a thing as onlookers existed, he found himself grasping them warmly.

  “At last! At last!” she murmured, with a little familiar croon of delight. “I began to despair of you.”

  He held her hands still, and looked down into her face.

  “I only knew that you were in England to-night!” he said. “I was one of the audience. I found you out quite by accident.”

  She moved across the pavement, and at her motion he opened the door of a cab waiting there.

  “You will come home with me, of course!” she said. “We can talk there.”

  He handed her in and followed himself. As he put up the window, one of the men who had been waiting about, walked away frowning. Bryan leaned back, and bit his lip. It was Sir George Conyers, Lady Helen’s cousin.

  II. A SORROW’S CROWN OF SORROW