The Trap
“Didn’t you sleep well, dear? You look dreadfully tired.” Leila’s eyes
fluttered upward to meet her husband’s across the breakfast table and
then lowered as she added hesitatingly: “I—I didn’t hear you come in
last night.”
“No?” Storm gazed at her in studied deliberation as he responded. “I
did not wish to disturb you.”
She looked as fresh and sparkling as the morning, and the sudden
wild-rose color which flooded her cheeks beneath his scrutiny
heightened the charm of the picture she made; yet it sent a surge of
hot resentment to his heart. Her solicitude was not for him, but in
fear lest he had discovered her absence on that nocturnal errand!
He wondered at himself, at his stoic outward calm as he accepted his
cup of coffee from her hands. Every fiber of him cried out to seize
her hand and wring the truth from her lips, but the pride which had
held him back from following her on the previous night still dominated
him after sleepless hours of nerve-racking doubt. He would make sure
of the truth without whining for explanations or dogging her
footsteps.
Leila glanced at him furtively more than once as he forced himself to
eat, then left her own breakfast almost untasted and turned with a
sigh to the little pile of letters beside her plate. As she scanned
them Storm saw her expression change, and she thrust one of the
envelopes hastily beneath the rest; but not before his eyes had caught
two words of the superscription upon the upper left hand corner.
“Leicester Building.” That was the name of the skyscraper from which
he had seen her emerge on the previous day! His hands clenched and he
thrust back his chair with a harsh, grating noise as he rose.
“I must go. I am late,” he muttered thickly.
“But Norman, dear, Barker hasn’t brought the car around yet.” Leila,
too, rose from her chair and with a quick movement thrust the
tell-tale letter into her belt.
“No matter, I’ll walk.” He turned to the door with a blind instinct of
flight before he betrayed himself. If his suspicions were after all
capable of an explanation other than the one his jealous fury
presented he would not play the fool. But he must know!
“Will you be home early this afternoon?” Leila bent to rearrange the
daffodils in a low glass bowl as she spoke, and her face was averted
from him. “Early enough for your golf, I mean?”
“No, I shan’t be out here until late. Don’t wait dinner for me.” A
swift thought came to him, and he added deliberately: “There is to be
a special meeting at the club in town; I’ll try to catch the midnight
train, but in the event that I decide to stay over, I’ll ’phone, of
course.”
She followed him out upon the veranda for his customary farewell kiss,
but to his relief he spied a familiar runabout halting at the gate and
escaped from her with a wave of his hand.
“There’s Millard! I’ll ride down with him. Good-bye.”
Millard was a golf enthusiast, and his detailed description of the
previous day’s game lasted throughout the interval at the station, but
it fell upon deaf ears.
Storm’s thoughts were in a turmoil. At one moment he felt that he
could no longer endure the strain of the attitude he had assumed; that
he must stop the train, rush back to his wife and demand from her the
truth. At the next, his pride once more came uppermost; his pride, and
the underlying doubt that his worst suspicions were actually founded
on fact, which made him fear to render himself ridiculous in her eyes.
It was true that she had lied about her presence in the city on the
previous day, but she had gone openly to an office building at broad
noon and left it alone. She had received a letter from someone in that
building which she tried to keep from his observation, but her
expression when she picked it up, although furtive, had not been
guilty; rather, it had been full of pleased expectancy, as quickly
masked. That visit, that letter might be simply explained, but the
telephone call which he had overheard, the errand that had caused her,
his wife, to steal from her house at midnight like a thief——!
There could be no other construction than the obvious one! He recalled
her cool, unruffled assurance at the breakfast table, her charming air
of solicitude at his own haggard appearance, and his blood boiled with
rage. Did she think to deceive him, to keep him indefinitely in the
state of fatuous complacency in which he had pitied other husbands?
Was he to be spoken of, for instance, as George Holworthy had spoken
of Dick Brewster the night before?
With the thought Storm glanced about him at his neighbors in the club
car. If what he suspected were true, did any of them know already?
Were any of them pitying him with that careless, half-contemptuous
pity reserved for the deceived? He detected no sign of it, but the
idea was like a knife turned in a wound, and he hurried from them as
soon as the train drew in to the city station.
There he found himself mechanically making his way toward the
Leicester Building, with no very clear impression of what he meant to
do on arrival. Among its myriad offices, representing scores of varied
financial and commercial activities, he could scarcely hope to obtain
a clue to the purpose of his wife’s visit; and yet the place drew him
like a magnet.
Within the entrance he halted before the huge directory board with its
rows of names alphabetically arranged; halted, and then stood as
though transfixed. Midway down the first column a single name had
leaped out to him, and its staring letters of white upon the black
background seemed to dance mockingly before his vision.
“Brewster, Richard E. Insurance Broker.”
Dick Brewster! The husband of that light-headed, irresponsible little
Julie, the very man to whom his thoughts had turned in the train not a
half-hour since! The man of whom George Holworthy had spoken—and what
was it that George had said?
“She’s going it rather strong with young Mattison. Dick’s not a fool;
he’ll either blow up some day or find somebody’s else wife to
sympathize——” Was that the solution? Could old George, obtuse as he
was, have divined the truth and been trying in his stupid, blundering
fashion, to warn him? Could it actually be that the woman who bore his
name, who belonged to him, his property, had dared to flout his
possession of her, to supplant him with another, to make of him a
byword, a thing of pitying contempt?
How long he stood there before the directory he never afterward knew.
He came dimly to realize at last that in the passing crowd which
brushed by him more than one turned to stare curiously at him; and,
turning, he stumbled blindly toward the elevator. Alighting at
Brewster’s floor, he made his way to the number which had been
indicated opposite the name upon the board below, and, wrenching open
the door, he strode into the office.
A languid stenographer looked up from behind her typewriter.
“Mr. Brewster won’t be in town to-day. Do you want to leave any
message?”
“No. I’ll call again,” Storm muttered. “Not—not in town to-day, you
say?”
“He ’phoned just now from his country place; he’ll be in to-morrow.
Did you have an appointment with him?”
Storm shook his head, and, ignoring the card and pencil which the girl
laid suggestively before him, he turned to the door.
“I’ll call up to-morrow.”
The elevator whirled him down to the street level once more, and as he
made his way from the building his senses gradually cleared.
What an escape! That was his first thought. Had Brewster been there,
in his uncontrollable rage he must have betrayed himself, given the
other an opportunity to gloat over him! His fastidious soul writhed
from the thought of a vulgar, sordid scene; yet the one thing in all
his domineering life which he had been unable to master was his own
temper, and he knew and secretly feared it. After all, suppose his
wife had called at Brewster’s office, that it was Brewster who had
telephoned to her, Brewster whom she had gone at midnight to meet?
Suppose the worst were true, these were all the facts he held with
which to confront them; they could explain them away with some shallow
lie and laugh in his very face! He must master himself, must bide his
time until they should have played into his hands.
He strode on abruptly, heedless of the direction, shouldering from his
path those who crowded in against him, unconscious of aught save the
struggle which was taking place within him.
That it should have been Dick Brewster, of all men! Brewster, with his
dapper little mustache and weak, effeminate face! Yet he was
goodlooking, damn him, and attractive to women; younger, too, almost
as young as Leila herself. Was that what George had meant when he
spoke of people being thrown together intimately with too much money
and not enough to do? Had he been trying to excuse them on the score
of propinquity? When Storm in his own easy, complacent sophistry had
twitted the other with being old-fashioned, George had asserted, with
what seemed now to have added significance, that he went about enough
to “hear things”. So this was what he had been driving at!
And Leila herself? At thought of her Storm felt his rage rising again
in an overwhelming wave. Her tenderness, the years of their happiness,
their love, were blotted out in the swift fury which consumed him at
this affront to his pride, his dominance. Her beauty, her charm in
which he had reveled almost as a personal attribute to himself, seemed
all at once hideous, baleful to him. As her smiling face rose up
before his memory he could have struck it down with his bare hands. If
this despicable thing were true——!
He fought back the thought, succeeded at last in forcing a measure of
calmness and dragged himself to his own office, where the interminable
hours wore to a close. Then he went to a club; not that which he
usually frequented when in town where the small-talk of his friends
would madden him, but to an older, more sedate affair, a remnant of an
earlier aristocracy to a membership in which his birth had
automatically elected him. There he ordered a solitary meal and
afterward sat in the somber, silent library with his eyes fixed upon
the solemn clock. He had said that he would take the midnight
train . . . .
Leila, after an equally solitary dinner had ensconced herself in her
own dainty library at home that she might be near the telephone,
should he call as he had tentatively suggested doing. No summons came,
however, and it was after ten o’clock when a step sounded upon the
veranda, and she sprang up, thrusting between the leaves of her book
the letter over which she had been exulting; a letter which bore the
superscription of the Leicester Building.
It was not her husband who stood before her when she opened the door.
She paused, and then from the gloom of the veranda a voice spoke
reassuringly:
“It is I, Mrs. Storm; Dick Brewster. I hope you and Norman will pardon
the lateness of this call, but I must see you, if you will grant me a
few minutes.” His quiet, pleasantly modulated voice seemed oddly
shaken, and a quick constraint fell also upon Leila’s manner, but she
held the door wide.
“Come in, of course, Mr. Brewster. My husband is not at home yet, and
I am waiting up for him, You—you wanted to see him?”
“No. That is, I wished especially to see you.”
He followed her into the library and took the chair she indicated,
while she seated herself in her own once more and regarded him with an
air of grave, troubled inquiry. His face was pale, and beneath the
glow of the lamp she saw that it was working as though with some
strong emotion, although he strove to remain calm.
“Mrs. Storm, I want to ask you a personal question, and I hope you
will not be offended. I should not have intruded at this hour, I
should not have come to you at all, if your reply had not been vital
to me. Will you tell me where you were yesterday?”
Leila laughed lightly but with an unmistakable note of confusion.
“That is a very simple question, Mr. Brewster. I was with Julie. We
motored out to the Ferndale Inn——”
“Alone, Mrs. Storm?”
“Alone, of course. We went with Julie’s new roadster.” She paused, and
then the words came in a little rush. “We didn’t start out with
any—any definite object, but it was such a beautiful day and it grew
late, almost noon before we knew it, and we found ourselves further
from home than we had realized, so we ’phoned back—at least, I did——”
“Where did you ’phone from?”
“From the Inn, when we decided to stop there for lunch. But really,
Mr. Brewster, I cannot quite understand——”
“I will explain in a moment. Tell me, was anyone there at the Inn whom
you knew?”
Leila hesitated, biting her lips.
“The—the Featherstones——”
“Did you see them, Mrs. Storm?”
“No, I—I had gone to the dressing-room to rearrange my hair, and when
I rejoined Julie she told me they had just left.”
“I see.” Brewster nodded slowly. “Will you answer one more question,
please? How did you reach home?”
“Why, the way we came, of course, in Julie’s car.” Leila’s voice
trembled slightly and her eyes wavered.
“You did not, Mrs. Storm.” His tone was gently deferential, but there
was a note of finality in it which she could not combat.
“Not all the way,” she amended hurriedly. “Julie dropped me at the
house of some friends of mine over on Harper’s Ridge, and they brought
me home later.”
He shook his head.
“You did not leave the Ferndale Inn with Julie.”
“Mr. Brewster!” Leila rose. “I have listened to you and I have
answered your questions very patiently, but now I must ask you to
excuse me. You have no right to question me, my conduct is no concern
of yours——”
“Except where it touches upon my wife’s.” Her guest, too, had risen,
and although he spoke quietly his voice quivered. “Your story is
substantially the same as hers, but you both ignored one detail—that
the Featherstones might have caught a glimpse of her companion and
that others might have seen them both leave the Inn. Please believe,
Mrs. Storm, that I am not attempting to censure you. Your loyalty to
my wife, your effort to shield her is very praiseworthy from the
standpoint of friendship, but there is something holier than that
which has been violated.”
“Oh, not that!” Leila cried. “Julie hasn’t done anything really wrong!
You must believe that, Mr. Brewster! Oh, I warned her not to go, that
it was foolishly indiscreet!”
“Yet she went.” Brewster’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “I only came
here to learn the truth beyond possibility of a mistake. I won’t
detain you any longer.”
He bowed and turned to the door, but Leila sprang forward and caught
his arm.
“Oh, what are you going to do?”
Brewster drew himself up, and his slight, dapper figure assumed a
sudden dignity it had not borne before.
“I am going to turn her out of my house! To send her to this puppy,
Mattison, whom she loves!”
“She doesn’t! Mr. Brewster, you must listen to me, you shall! You are
on the point of making a terrible mistake, a mistake that will wreck
both your lives!” Leila pleaded frantically. “Julie is not in love
with Ted Mattison! It is only a flirtation; that luncheon yesterday
was the merest escapade——”
“Like the other luncheons and motor trips and tétes-a-téte which have
made her the talk of Greenlea for weeks past, while I was supposed to
be blind and deaf and dumb?” Brewster shook off his hostess’ detaining
hand. “I have reached the end now——”
“But she hasn’t. Will you drive her to it? She is young, only a girl,
and irresponsible, but she is innocent now of any actual wrong. What
if she is infatuated for the moment with Ted Mattison? It isn’t love,
I know that, and you—oh, I have no right to say it, but you have come
to me and I cannot let you go without opening your eyes to the truth!
You have neglected her for your new business, left her alone and
lonely, forced her to seek companionship elsewhere. You are at least
equally to blame for the situation, and now, instead of driving her
from you for a mere indiscretion, now when she needs you most, you owe
it to her and to yourself to win her back; not _take_ her back
patronizingly, forgiving and magnifying her fault, but win her, regain
the love you have almost lost!” Leila paused and added softly: “You
love her, and she cares for you in her heart. She is only deeply hurt
at your neglect, and I think she began this affair with Ted in a
childish effort just to pay you back. She is only waiting a word to
turn to you again. Will you speak that word? You have your great
chance now, to-night, for happiness or misery, to save her or to drive
her to despair. Will you let this chance pass you by forever?”
There was a pause, and then Brewster turned away, his head bowed.
“I love her, God knows!” he groaned. “You may be right about neglect;
I never thought of that, I was only working for her! If I could only
believe that there was still a chance——! But I have heard and seen too
much, things have gone too far——”
“They haven’t. You must believe me!” Leila followed him a step or two
and then halted. “Julie has been foolish, but no more. You admit that
you still love her; then go home and tell her so. Tell her every day,
over and over, until she believes _you_ again, and realizes that her
happiness lies with you.”
Brewster turned once more, his head held high, and the tears glistened
unashamed in his eyes.
“I will, Mrs. Storm! You can never know what you have done for me, for
us both! I came here to-night the most miserable of men, but you have
shown me the way to happiness again.”
Leila gave him both her hands with a glad little cry.
“Oh, I knew that you would understand, that you would see! I have done
nothing, it is you yourself——”
“You have made me the happiest man in the world! I shall always
remember my hour here to-night with you, and if ever doubt comes to me
again, if my faith wavers, I shall think of what you have given me!”
He bent reverently and kissed her hands, and she bowed her head, the
happy tears glistening in her own eyes.
Neither of them were aware of the soft opening and closing of the
front door, neither saw the figure which halted for a moment in the
doorway behind them, in time to catch the last speech which fell from
Brewster’s lips and witness the salutation which concluded it; neither
of them heard the muffled, almost noiseless footsteps as the figure
withdrew as silently as it had come and disappeared in the further
recesses of the house.