The World's Great Snare Read online

  “Let the past be, Amies Rutten!” she said. “He is dead, and I have forgiven him! Give me my papers, and let me go! There can never be anything between you and me!”

  He stood perfectly still for a moment or two, and when she looked at him, wondering at his silence, she was afraid.

  He spoke to her at last. No matter what he was going to say, it was a relief to her to hear him speak.

  “You are wrong, Myra!” he said slowly. “There will be something between us, so surely as I, Amies Rutten, speak the words! There is no power in this world shall keep you from me! You may struggle a little while! Never mind! My time will surely come! You are poor! You will become poorer! I shall see to it! Wealth will taste all the sweeter presently. What was it you were asking for—papers? I have no papers!”

  She drew a pencil and card from her pocket, and wrote the words which the dying man had whispered into her ear. He grew a shade paler as he read them, but he did not hesitate. He tore the card into pieces, and scattered them at her feet.

  “I am above all danger from such a source as this!” he said calmly. “If I were not, I should not hesitate! I should do what I have done! I will give you nothing until you come to me! Nothing!”

  He hesitated for a moment. When he continued, his deep tone was tremulous with emotion, and the passion had leaped once more into his face.

  “Is it worth while, Myra, my love; is it worth while to face suffering, and poverty, and shame; to endure them all, for the sake of a hopeless struggle? Every day will bring you nearer to me! In the end you will be mine! It is your destiny! Do you think that you can match your single will against mine—mine backed by endless wealth and unflagging energy? When you leave here to-night, my spies will follow you; where you are living, and with whom, will be known to me! Every effort you make to get away, I shall easily find out and thwart. Myra, is it worth while?” he continued, a wonderful tenderness stealing into his tone as he leaned over towards her. “We could leave for Europe at once, on Saturday if you like. I will be your slave! You shall command, and I will obey. Say but one word, Myra, and a few strokes of my pen,” he pointed to the open desk, “shall make you rich for life—as rich as any woman in San Francisco! You have lived all your days amongst the shadows, you know nothing of the beautiful side of life! I will show it to you! You do not care for me. Well, I know it! But it is because you do not know me! You have thought of me only as the associate of such men as Huntly! I will show you the other and the better side of myself. I will show you other worlds into which I have the entry, the worlds of art, and music, and poetry, which I have always loved in secret, and which I will teach you to love too. I will make your life one long dream of pleasure; pleasure, poor child, which you have never dreamed of. You shall forget all your sufferings, all the miserable humiliation of your life with that scoundrel who blackened your young days. You shall be born again into a new world, a world of culture and refinement, and a perfect happiness. I promise you this, Myra, and I will keep my word unto the uttermost letter!”

  She had listened to him with averted head, and she had dropped her veil, so that he was not able to gather in any way from her face what impression his words had made upon her. But when he had finished, she looked up, and he knew at once.

  “You will not give me the papers, then?” she said.

  “I will not!” he answered, looking away that she might not see how bitterly disappointed he was. “I will give you the papers, and a fortune of ten times their value, when you come to me! But it must be all or nothing!”

  She turned away, and walked towards the door. He touched a bell, and a servant met her there. She did not look round or speak to him again.

  He took up one of the speaking-tubes, and spoke into it.

  “The girl who has just left me is to be followed home and watched!” he said. “Jameson and Ardell had better take the matter in hand. See that I have a full report every few hours!”

  Then he sat down at his desk, and drew his papers towards him. But he did not write any more.

  XX. MA THE BRUTE AND WOMAN THE ANGEL

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  “At last, Myra! Was the man away, or dead, or what? Give me a drink! I’m parched!”

  The Englishman half-raised himself from a shabby little couch which groaned and creaked with his weight, and held out his hand to her. His cheeks were blanched and thin, and his eyes were unnaturally bright. The fever through which he had passed had played strange havoc with him.

  She stood still for a moment to recover her breath; she had run up seven flights of steep stairs without a pause. Then she threw her hat on to the table, and poured him out some lemonade from a jug.

  “Has it seemed very long?” she said softly. “I am sorry! I had to walk back, and it was a long way!”

  He drained the cup and set it down. Then he drew a long breath, and looked fixedly at her.

  “Well?” he said.

  She knelt down by his side, and leant her head upon his pillow.

  “I have failed!” she whispered huskily. “He would not give them to me!”

  “He would not give them to you!” the Englishman faltered. “Has he got them? Did he say that he had them?”

  “Yes, he has them!”

  “Did he say so?”

  “Yes!”

  “Then why will he not give them up? Does he want money?”

  She shook her head.

  “He is as rich as a prince now. He has no need of money!”

  “Then why won’t he give them up—why won’t he? Have you forgotten anything that Jim told you to say to him, eh?”

  His face and even his limbs were shaking with the excitement which he was too weak to bear. His long, thin fingers were clutched around her wrist, and his bright eyes were fastened upon her.

  “I remembered everything! It was not that!”

  “Go on! go on!” he muttered.

  “Bryan,” she whispered, burying her face in the pillow by his side, “do you remember—I told you about the man, and how he persecuted me in the days when Jim and he were together so much? Do you remember?”

  “Ay, something of it! Go on!”

  “He—he has not forgotten! He has been searching for me everywhere! He—oh, don’t you understand?”

  “No, I’m d—d if I do!” the Englishman answered peevishly. “Speak out, do!”

  She drew a little breath between her teeth, and looked at him with white face, but without flinching.

  “He wants me to go and live with him! That is the price of those papers!”

  “Ah!”

  The eager light died suddenly out from his face. He sank back on the couch, pale almost to the lips, and with half-closed eyes. She looked at him for a moment in alarm, and then ran hastily across the room to a cupboard, and poured out a few drops of brandy into a glass.

  “Bryan,” she whispered, bending over him. “Oh, don’t! You mustn’t faint, dear! Remember what the doctor said!”

  She forced the brandy between his lips, and kissed them. He shivered and opened his eyes.

  “I’m—all right!” he muttered. “It’s so stewing hot up here. Open the window higher, Myra!”

  She pushed it up a few more inches, but there seemed to be scarcely a breath of air. From the narrow street below came the murmur of a strange babel of tongues, reaching them, however, but faintly. Away as far as the eye could see, flared up to the sky the lights from the great city of pleasure.

  “Bryan, after I left him,” she whispered, “I went to Josi’s Cafi, and saw the man whom Jim told me to see. I told him the whole story. He made me repeat it twice, and then he sent me away without a word. But, Bryan, I am afraid that Amies Rutten is far above the power of these men now. They won’t be able to touch him!”

  “I will go to him myself!” the Englishman muttered. “The papers belong to me! I will make him give them up!”

  She shook her head.

  “It would not be a bit of use!” she said sadly. “If he knew tha
t it was for you I wanted them, he would throw them on the fire!”

  He looked away out of the open window. He had been very ill, and the fever which had brought him to the brink of death had left him very low and weak. Just then he felt that it would be rather a relief to die.

  “I came here—to get those papers!” he said slowly. “I vowed that I would get them! Well, I have failed! I may as well die! I’d just as lief! I’m only a burden to you; you’re starving yourself for my sake! I’m not worth it! Better let me die, Myra—much better!”

  Her eyes filled with tears. Watching her, he could see more clearly than ever how thin and white she was. Her black gown shone with wear, and was mended in many places. The roundness had gone from her form, and the fire from her eyes. It was odd that she remained so beautiful. He looked around the little room. It was bare and empty—utterly poverty-stricken. Everything had been given to keep him alive—her few trinkets, her oddments of finery, even some dainty little treasures of fine linen, which had been her single luxury. His brows contracted into a frown.

  “Myra, why don’t you let me die?” he said fretfully. “I’d just as soon! I shall never sec England again now! I don’t want to be a burden upon you like this!”

  She bent over him, sad but dry-eyed. All that she had done for him was as nothing to her; would have seemed infinitely less than nothing if only he had known how to repay her. Her eyes met his wistfully. Would it have been so great a sacrifice for him to have drawn her down and kissed her just once; to have pressed her hand, and to have suffered just one note of tenderness to have crept into his tone? Her record of the last few weeks had been one long course of martyrdom for his sake. For his sake she had looked death in the face. For his sake Dan Cooper had lain dead with his sightless eyes turned to heaven, slain by her hand. It was the last extremity of self-defence—but the thing pressed on her heart, and at night-time his cold, white face and glazed eyes had stolen to her side out of the shadows of many a nightmare. She would never be quite able to forget that her hand had taken human life, although the burden would seem less to her since it was for his sake that she bore it. And in the rude wagons of the gold-seekers from Christopher’s Creek who had rescued them, and brought them to San Francisco, she had sat from sunrise to sunset with his head in her lap, watching him and ministering to the wants of his fever. Those days and the days which followed left their mark for ever upon her life. They had reached the city one morning, and she had brought him to these rooms which she herself had once occupied, and had collected the few remnants of her little stock of furniture, doing her best to make the place habitable. The fever was followed by a lethargy almost as wearing. She had no money, and the gold which he had brought from the Blue River had been lost in the desert. One by one her little stock of possessions had gone to keep him in food, and pay the doctor. Of her few trinkets, she had not one left; three days ago she had sold the wedding-ring which Maurice Huntly had placed upon her finger. Even her gowns had gone! She had only the one she stood upright in. And all the time she had not breathed a word to him of the straits in which they were. Her one thought had been of him, and her one prayer for his life! She had saved it!—saved it for what, and for whom?

  He was by no means a bad man. He had many good qualities, and the instincts which belong to them; and in the days which came afterwards, he suffered many times and deeply when he reviewed his conduct at this time. For without doubt, he was both callous and brutally selfish. The peevishness of the invalid had transformed him. The sense of his reliance upon her fretted and worried him. He would rather have been left to die in the desert than owe so much to her. A sort of sullenness came over him. He had not uttered a single word of thanks, not a single grateful sentence. Her loving care, the sufferings and privations which she had borne, went for nothing with him. In his sleep he had raved for the papers, and for his sake she had gone to the man whom she both feared and loathed, seeking to obtain them for him. In vain, too, had been this last service. Not even by a single look had he shown her any measure of gratitude.

  The night wore on, and the lights of the great city flared up into the dark sky. He had fallen into a troubled slumber, and she was on her knees by his side, gazing with rapt face but unseeing eyes out of the wide-open window. The harsh clanging of the engine bells as the cars wound their way across the maze of streets into the heart of the city, and the rattle of the serpent-like trains sweeping along the overhead railway, were unheard. She saw nothing and heard nothing. She thought only of herself and him, two lone figures in the dark tragedy of her young life. In his indifference she seemed to read the hopelessness of her fate. It had been her last sweet hope, her only salvation; and it was gone. In the calm brooding silence of the later night, she saw as it were, written in letters of fire across the dark sky, the cruel and hopeless record of these last days. He was weary of her! Even her mere presence fretted and disturbed him. He was ashamed of the days that had been; ashamed to owe her this return into the world from amongst the very shadows of death. It was so! She could not alter it, the very snapping of her heart-strings could not make it any different. In this moment of acute and agonizing realization, out of the great despair which swept in upon her, was born that first glimmering suggestion of her supreme immolation. All through the night it grew and grew in her heart, bringing her in a measure some sense of strange relief, although when she suffered her thoughts to dwell for a moment upon it her brain reeled, and her whole physical system rebelled with a great sense of shuddering recoil. But when dawn came, it lived!

  XXI. THE OFFERING OF A SOUL

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  On the seventh day after her first visit to him, Myra stood once more in Amies Rutten’s library. She had found it empty; he was at dinner with some friends, the servant told her, and she would probably have to wait for an hour. But in less than five minutes he pushed aside the curtains and entered the room; his pale face flushed a little, perhaps with wine, or was it with the triumph of her visit?

  He walked calmly across the great room, banishing all traces of expectation from his face, as self-possessed and impassive in manner as he was immaculate in the white shirt-front and plain gold stud of his evening dress. He placed a chair for her, and greeted her kindly, choosing to ignore altogether the dumb misery stamped into her white face.

  “You have come to see me, then, Myra,” he said. “That’s well!”

  “Yes, I have come,” she answered. “I do not want to talk much. I am tired.”

  “You look it,” he answered pityingly. “Wait a moment.”

  He unlocked a cabinet, and poured out a glass of rich ruby-coloured wine. Then he brought it to her, and after a moment’s hesitation she accepted and drank it. It ran through her veins like lightning, and brought even a faint flush into her cheeks.

  “Poor child!” he said softly. “Myra, why did you set yourself against me? Sooner or later I was bound to win. Now tell me; you have a proposition to make.”

  She bowed her head. “Yes.”

  “Well, don’t hurry about it. My time is my own. I have told my friends that I may be engaged for some time.”

  “Thank you. I am a little faint. It was hot, waiting. I will rest for a minute.”

  She half closed her eyes, and he watched her steadily for a few seconds. He understood too well the meaning of those sunken cheeks, and the dark rims under her eyes. It was not only mental suffering that had worked this havoc, it was hunger, starvation. He crossed to one of the speaking-tubes, and whispered a few sentences down it. When she opened her eyes, there was a small table by her side, spread with a white cloth, a silver dish of oysters, some pbti, fruit, and a bottle of gold-foiled wine, a glass of which was already poured out.

  “You were fond of oysters once, Myra!” he said, coming over to her. “Take some; you need food.”

  She shrank back, and covered her face with her hands. But he insisted quietly, and in the end she yielded. After all, if this thing was to be, she might just as well eat his f
ood and drink his wine. She ate, the first time for twenty-four hours, and took a few sips of the wine. Then she called to him; he had walked across to his desk, and was sitting there, writing, or pretending to write.

  He came to her at once.

  “I am here, Myra,” he said.

  She stood up—stood away from the table, and as near as possible to the lamp.

  “I want you to look at me!” she said, in a dull, mechanical tone. “I want you to see me exactly as I am. I am thin—thinner than I have ever been in my life. Look at my face! I have lost my beauty! I am just a wreck, and I never expect to be anything better. Do you still want me?”

  “More than ever!” he answered quietly. “More than ever, that I may show you a life which knows no privations, and no unhappiness.”

  “Let me go right on, please!” she said slowly. “I dislike you more than any living man. I think that I hate you! The touch of your fingers would make me shudder now, as it has done before! You understand that! Do you still want me?”

  “More than ever!” he answered, in the same tone. “I shall show you that I am not the man you think I am! I do not blame you for hating me now! I shall teach you to love me!”

  “II never could! Never! never!”

  “That is my risk!” he answered. “I am content!”

  She drew her hands together and shivered, half-closing her eyes. For a full minute there was silence between them. Then she spoke again, and her voice had an odd far-away sound in it.

  “I am willing to come to you!” she said. “There is a condition. You must hear it first!”

  He turned his head away. He did not wish her to see the sudden glow of passion which had transformed his cold, set face.

  “I am listening!” he said.

  “I want you to give the papers now—to-night; and some money. I will come to you to-morrow!”

  His face darkened. He had no fear of her not keeping her word, but he had a particular reluctance to letting her go. He knew with whom she was sharing her room, and the thought was like fire in his brain. She wanted to go back to him! It was but for a single night, and yet—curse him!