The World's Great Snare

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  Table of Contents

  The drive was only a short one, and while it lasted, they scarcely spoke a word. Once, soon after they started, her hand, as though by accident, fell upon his arm. He made no effort to move it, but he did not take it into his. He sat there dallying with a strange sense of unreality, as the cab rolled along Regent Street. Every now and then the interior of the shabby little vehicle was momentarily illuminated with a flash of light from a passing carriage or a street lamp, and at such times he stole several glances at her. It was scarcely possible for him to believe that this was Myra; that this closely-veiled woman, in her dark, well-fitting clothes, from which came the faint odour of some delicate perfume, was really the wild, uncultivated girl who had sat with him in the doorway of his shanty far away in that wild Western world, and watched the glimmering shadows on the mountain’s side, and sang to him, and tried to count the fireflies around the perfumed shrubs. Most wonderful of all metamorphoses!

  The cab set them down at the door of a quiet, dull-looking house, in a street leading off Portland Place. Myra took out a latch-key, and opened the door.

  “My sitting-room is upstairs!” she said.

  He followed her, with sudden grim recollection of that other time when she had brought him home to her rooms, high up in one of the tallest and craziest lodging-houses in San Francisco. After the gesture with which she had motioned him to follow her, she did not look round again. They went up two flights of stairs, and then Myra opened the door of a good-sized, comfortably-furnished sitting-room, and ushered him in. There were flowers upon the table, and a little fire burning on the hearth. A shaded lamp, turned very low, stood upon the sideboard. She closed the door, and turned the lamp up, standing for a few seconds within the little halo of rosy glow. Then she turned towards him, with arms timidly held out, and a wonderful softness in her deep, bright eyes.

  “Kiss me, Bryan!” she murmured.

  He moved nearer towards her, and she drew him into her arms, clasping them around his neck with gentle force. Her head fell back a little, and notwithstanding the fashionable little hat and raised veil, there was something curiously familiar in the slight disorder of her hair, and the seductive curve of her lips. He stooped and kissed her, loathing himself that he did so, but powerless against the witchery of her soft caress, and the expectation of her glowing eyes. Then she drew him to a couch by the fire, and sat down beside him, holding one of his hands.

  “You have changed!” she said. “You have become a gentleman! I always said that you were one, and I was right, wasn’t I?

  “And you,” he said, ignoring her speech; “the change in you is more wonderful still! Tell me about it! Go back—to the very beginning!”

  “To the very beginning!” she repeated. “That means to when we parted in San Francisco—you went out to buy your ticket—one of those stifling nights, nearly two years ago. Yes, I remember it! It was an awful night!”

  The colour burned his cheeks. He was hot with shame. The brutality of his conduct stood out before him, written plain and large. On that night he had fled home with the money which was the price of her soul; had fled home, and had left her to be the mistress of the man whom he knew she loathed. What a coward! And yet she had forgiven him!

  “Bryan!” she said. “Do you know I have never really blamed you, and yet—yet when you heard what happened that night, I sorter wondered—I mean it seemed strange that you never tried to find out what became of me. It was not quite—kind, was it?

  “I do not understand,” he said. “I know that I was a blackguard to go, and I have despised myself for it every day since. But what do you mean happened? You went—to him?”

  Her expression suddenly changed. She sat and looked at him breathlessly.

  “You did not know that Amies Rutten was shot dead that night in his library?”

  “Good God! No!” he cried. “I heard nothing of it! I left San Francisco at seven that night, and travelled straight to New York. I heard nothing!”

  “You did not know that Amies Rutten was shot that night!” she said. “Say it again!”

  “I did not know it!” he repeated firmly. “How should I? I never bought American newspapers. If I had known it, I should have come back!”

  She got up and walked away for a moment. When she came back, her eyes were very bright, and her lips were quivering.

  “It seems odd to have to change all one’s ideas about a thing,” she said, sitting down again beside him. “Bryan, I never loved you less—I could not—but it seemed to me that you were very cruel to leave me all alone to face the horror of that thing! And I have been blaming you all the time, and you did not deserve it. I am real sorry, Bryan!”

  She flashed a brilliant smile upon him through a mist of tears, and swayed slightly towards him, so that he could have kissed her if he would. But he did not!

  “I must tell you all about it, then!” she said nestling close up to him. “There isn’t so very much to tell. That night I went to his house. I walked all the way, I remember, and I felt as though I were looking in the faces of the men and women who passed me, and upon the stars, for the last time. I was going to commit what I heard some one call the other day, moral suicide. Bryan,” she went on softly, “you know that I was not what people call a good woman, but there are times when a woman almost glories in the sin she does, and there are times when she loathes it, and when every step further is a step deeper and deeper down into hell! When I took Amies Rutten’s money, I took that first step; and as I walked towards his house that night, I felt as though I were giving myself up for ever—body and soul! It was something very much worse than death which I seemed to feel closing in upon me. There was a breeze blowing in from the sea when I crossed the Park, and I climbed on to one of those brown knolls to feel it on my face. I remember lingering there, and feeling that the winds would never blow upon me again, that I was going to my death! I could only think of it like that. I went on after a while, loitering very slowly, sitting every now and then on seats in the broad walk, watching the electric light from the cars flash against the deep green trees, and listening to the people’s voices as they passed backwards and forwards. It was late when I got to his house, and as I drew near, I saw that there were a crowd of people outside it. My heart gave a great leap. Something might have happened. I hurried on, and stood amongst the crowd. There were policemen guarding the house, and in all the lower rooms there were lights flashing and moving about. There was a man there whose face I knew, and I touched him on the arm.

  “‘What is it?’ I asked.

  “‘Amies Rutten has been shot!’ he answered.

  “‘Dead?’ I demanded.

  “‘Stone dead!’

  “I think I burst out laughing; I could not help it! I know that he looked at me as though I were mad, and I walked away along the streets and into the Park, laughing all the way softly to myself. Oh, it was horrible, Bryan! I was hysterical! I scarcely knew what I was doing! I didn’t seem to realize the horror of it at all! I simply felt that the cords which had been dragging me down into hell had been cut, and that I was free.”

  “Who shot him?” Bryan asked.

  She turned a little pale.

  “You remember—the man I went to, when he refused to give me the papers, the man Jim told me to go to.”

  “Yes.”

  “It was through that. It was some secret society!”

  “My God! Are you sure?

  “Yes,” she answered. “Here is the proof!”

  She crossed the room, and took an envelope out of her desk. She put it into Bryan’s hand.

  “That night, this was left in my rooms, sealed as you see it! It is yours! Take it! After all, you see, Amies Rutten was false. He did not give me all the papers! He put it into his pocket mechanically.

  “And Skein?” he asked. “Did you ever see or hear of him again?”

  She shuddered. “I heard of him! He was an Englishman who had become the tool of Amies Ratten. He sent him out
to get those papers from Jim. All that tale of his was false. I read of his end the day I left America. He was picked up by a caravan in the desert, raving mad, and he died in a hospital in San Francisco.”

  “Tell me how you got here,” he asked. “What happened after that night?

  “Why, the next day I had a letter, and a lawyer came to see me. Amies Rutten had left me fifty thousand dollars. I felt afraid to take it, but I did. And I dressed in black, and went to his funeral. I—I tried to pray for him. Afterwards I went to New York, and took the steamer for England. I wanted to get right away from America. On the boat there was a concert one night, and I sang. Mr. Doyle, the manager of this theatre, was on board, and he asked me if I would have some lessons in London, and go on the stage. I was quite willing—and that is all! Now, about yourself, please?” she wound up, with a little sigh of relief.

  “My story is very uneventful compared with yours,” he said. “You remember the gold find at the Blue River?” She nodded. “Why, yes.”

  “Well, it has made me a very rich man; and Pete Morrison—you remember Pete—he sends me my share down to the last penny. I have a home down in the country, and I have made some friends. I have come up to town—to be fashionable!” He wound up with a laugh which savoured a little of bitterness.

  “To be fashionable!” she repeated, looking at him as though for the first time she noticed the correctness, even fastidiousness, of his evening attire. “You are changed, Bryan. I wonder—”

  She rose suddenly from her seat, and commenced walking up and down the room, with her hands clasped behind her back, walking with that wonderful sinuous grace of carriage about which the youth of London were raving.

  She stopped in front of him. The colour came and went in her cheeks, her bosom was heaving. Before he could stop her, she had thrown herself upon her knees before him, and her hands were twined around his neck.

  “Bryan, my love!” she murmured passionately, “I have been so lonely, so very lonely. Tell me that the old days are come again now. I am weary of living alone. You care for me still just a little? I don’t ask for too much, Bryan,” she pleaded, tightening her clasp around his neck, and trying to bring his lips to hers. “I don’t want to interfere with any other part of your life, I don’t want to know your friends—only let me belong to you! Come to me sometimes, as often as you can. London is so sad and lonely, I cannot be without you, Bryan, my love!”

  He kissed her; he could not help it. Then he drew a little away, and kept her hands clasped in his. Her passionate pleading and her beauty had stirred him in a vague, strange way. He felt that his own heart was beating wildly. It was only with an effort that he could speak calmly to her.

  “Myra,” he said, “you must not talk like this! You and I have passed into another stage of existence. What we did in that great New World, where all life seemed freer and simpler, would not—be right here. You were very good to me in those days, and they were very pleasant; but here, in London, it is different. You have a name and a future before you! People judge things differently here. They would—oh, don’t you understand?”

  “Bryan!”

  He stopped at once. Something in her voice warned him. “Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “Are you engaged?”

  “No—not yet.”

  “Are you going to be?”

  “I—hope so.”

  “Ah!”

  She drew a deep breath. The colour suddenly left her cheeks. Even her lips seemed white. Her eyes were dry and tearless.

  “You might just as well have told me so, as have tried to be—what is the word?—moral,” she said quietly. “Men do not think of those things when they love. You do not love me—a little bit! That is all.”

  There was a dead silence. Bryan glanced at the clock on the chimney-piece, and wondered, in a dull sort of way, whether Lady Helen had left the Forresters’, and what she thought of his absence. He knew exactly the amount of regret she would feel at his non-appearance, and he could even hear her half-careless question as to its cause. A coal fell on the hearth, and he glanced up. Myra was leaning back on the couch, with her face buried in its cushions.

  He hesitated for a moment, and then bent over her.

  “Myra!”

  No answer.

  He took her hand. It was yielded lifelessly, and without resistance.

  “Myra, I knew her years before I ever knew you—before I came to California at all. Only, in those days, she was so far above me that I scarcely dared to think of her. It was partly because of her that I left England. Now, I am rich, and her friends are becoming my friends.”

  She did not look up at him, but her sobs ceased.

  “Have you asked her to marry you? Has she promised?”

  “Not yet! She is very proud, and her family are what we call in England, noble. I am only rich. I have not even a name. Yet I think she will say ‘yes,’ soon.”

  “What is she like? Is she anything like me—in looks, I mean,” she added hastily.

  “Not in the least!” he answered. “She is fair, and she has blue-gray eyes, and her face is much colder than yours. Then, her manner is very different. She is very reserved, and I am afraid, a little too proud.”

  She nodded slowly.

  “She is just like these icy aristocratic English girls I have read about. And you love her?”

  He did not make any direct answer. He could not have told why he avoided doing so. To him these moments were almost as bitter as to her. The tragedy of this girl’s life was summed up in him. However little he had been to blame in the first case, he could never hereafter deny that he had been the arbiter of her fate. She had been his, had belonged to him absolutely, body and soul. She had given herself to him because she loved him, and, man-like, he had accepted the sacrifice as a perfectly natural thing. The memory of those days burned within him as he sat there. He fancied them known to the world. He fancied Lady Helen, to him the prototype of all purity, looking with a scorn too deep for words upon this chapter of his life.

  She sat up at last, and turned towards him. He was startled to see the deep lines under her eyes, and the intense pallor of her cheeks.

  “Shall we be—quite strangers, then?” she asked. “Shall you never come to see me?”

  In his heart he knew that it were far better not, but he lacked the brutal courage to say so.

  “Of course I shall come, and often,” he declared. “And some day Lady Helen—I must tell her about you—some day she will come too. Her ideas—are a little different from ours; but when she knows that you saved my life she will want to see you.”

  Myra’s great eyes were dim once more.

  “I have been so lonely,” she said. “To-night I thought that it was all over, I could scarcely sing for joy; and now I know that it must go on for ever—for ever! You cannot even spare me a little of your love!”

  “I cannot,” he answered sadly. “I will come and see you, if I may, and I will find you friends—”

  “I do not want any one but you,” she interrupted. “I will not have any one else.”

  He stood up and took his hat from the table.

  “Must you go?” she asked softly.

  He looked away down on the floor, at the clock, anywhere but into that dark, passionate face, with its mute pleadings. He was ashamed to find that his heart was beating, that he was battling with a great desire to take her into his arms, to kiss the colour once more into her lips and cheeks, and to feel her heart beat against his. The clock on the mantelpiece struck one. He held out both his hands.

  “Good-bye, Myra,” he said. “I—I will come and see you again very soon.”

  She walked downstairs with him. At the door she held up her white, tear-stained face. He had no choice but to stoop and kiss her.

  Then he walked away across the broad square, and into the silent streets, with the fire of her kiss still upon his lips. He walked with bent head and knitted brows. What would Lady Helen say to this?
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  III. THE EAST AND THE WEST

  Table of Contents

  Society had upon the whole been very kind indeed to Bryan. Nat content with accepting him at Lord Wessemer’s instigation, it had chosen to make something of a celebrity of him. Here was a man, reported to be rich as Midas, who had actually toiled for his own wealth, with his own hands, and yet presented the tout ensemble of a gentleman of polish and culture, subtly mixed with a dash of pleasing originality. In a week or two after his arrival in London, Bryan found himself a member of several fairly exclusive clubs, and the recipient of more invitations than he could possibly accept. Without the least desire on his part, society chose to make of him something of a lion. The papers chronicled his comings and his goings. He received a good many delightful little invitations which were neither written in the third person nor printed upon cards; and finally when, at Lord Wessemer’s suggestion, he bought some horses and commenced to drive in the Park, a crack sporting journal spoke of him as one of the best amateur whips of his day.

  To Lord Wessemer, Bryan’s success was the source of a good deal of cynical amusement, mingled with a strong undercurrent of deep satisfaction. Lady Helen was at first surprised, and then to her own amazement, gratified by it.

  Unconsciously her manner towards Bryan altered. She was, so far as she was capable of such sentiment, touched by the stubborn devotion with which he had moulded all things towards the accomplishment of what she knew to be his great desire. She became less reserved, and occasionally almost confidential. She treated him with perhaps more consideration than she had ever treated any man before. She went even so far as to offer him what, coming from her, was equivalent to direct encouragement. And her altered demeanour was only the outward sign of a marked change in her own feelings. It was not without reason that her de-. tractors had called her cold and passionless; but now, for the first time, she felt a faint but delightful suggestion of something within her more womanly and natural—the stirring of a new emotion, for whose sake it seemed possible to her that she might be content to lay aside some measure of her pride. A sort of shyness came to her sometimes when Bryan’s great figure moved through the throngs of people at some reception to her side. She became more interested in the great passionate questions of the day. A certain hardness was wearing away from her mannerisms. She had always been admired; this year she was even popular, and a painting of her in the academy by a great artist was one of the season’s successes. She had become so far human as to be conscious of a distinct feeling of vexation at Bryan’s non-appearance at Mrs. Forrester’s reception. Perhaps had she known exactly where he was, she might have experienced an altogether new sensation.