The Secret Power, Marie Corelli [good romance books to read .TXT] 📗

way!—I suppose all men are like that!—they want women to submit, not to command!” She laughed again. “See!—here he comes,—with the sulky air of a naughty boy!” this, as Rivardi slowly mounted the terrace steps and approached—“I’m off to dress for dinner—come, ‘Duchess!’ We’ll leave the men to themselves!”

She slipped her arm through Lady Kingswood’s and hurried her away. Don Aloysius was puzzled by her words,—and, as Rivardi came up to him raised his eyebrows interrogatively. The Marchese answered the unspoken query by an impatient shrug.

“Altro! She is impossible!” he said irritably—“Wild as the wind!— uncontrollable! She will kill herself!—but she does not care!”

“What has she done?” asked Aloysius, smiling a little—“Has she invented something new?—a parachute in which to fall gracefully like a falling star?”

“Nothing of the kind”—retorted Rivardi; vexed beyond all reason at the priest’s tranquil air of good-humored tolerance—“But she insists on steering the air-ship herself! She took my place to-day.”

“Well?”

“Well! You think that nothing? I tell you it is very serious—very foolhardy. She knows nothing of aerial navigation—”

“Was her steering faulty?”

Rivardi hesitated.

“No,—it was wonderful”—he admitted, reluctantly; “Especially for a first attempt. And now she declares she will travel with the ‘White Eagle’ alone! Alone! Think of it! That little creature alone in the air with a huge air-ship under her sole control! The very idea is madness!”

“Have patience, Giulio!” said Don Aloysius, gently—“I think she cannot mean what she says in this particular instance. She is naturally full of triumph at the success of her invention,—an amazing invention you must own!—and her triumph makes her bold. But be quite easy in your mind!—she will not travel alone!”

“She will—she will!” declared Rivardi, passionately—“She will do anything she has a mind to do! As well try to stop the wind as stop her! She has some scheme in her brain,—so fantastic vision of that Brazen City you spoke of the other day—”

Don Aloysius gave a sudden start.

“No!—not possible!” he said—“She will not pursue a phantasm,—a dream!”

He spoke nervously, and his face paled. Rivardi looked at him curiously.

“There is no such place then?” he asked—“It is only a legend?”

“Only a legend!” replied Aloysius, slowly—“Some travellers say it is a mirage of the desert,—others tell stories of having heard the bells in the brazen towers ring,—but no one—NO ONE,” and he repeated the words with emphasis—“has ever been able to reach even the traditional environs of the place. Our hostess,” and he smiled— “is a very wonderful little person, but even she will hardly be able to discover the undiscoverable!”

“Can we say that anything is undiscoverable?” suggested Rivardi.

Don Aloysius thought a moment before replying.

“Perhaps not!”—he said, at last—“Our life all through is a voyage of discovery wherein we have no certainty of the port of arrival. The puzzling part of it is that we often ‘discover’ what has been discovered before in past ages where the discoverers seemed to make no use of their discoveries!—and so we lose ourselves in wonder— and often in weariness!” He sighed,—then added—“Had we not better go in and prepare to meet our hostess at dinner? And Giulio!—unbend your brows!—you must not get angry with your charming benefactress! If you do not let her have HER way, she will never let you have YOURS!”

Rivardi gave a resigned gesture.

“Oh, MINE! I must give up all hope—she will never think of me more than as a workman who has carried out her design. There is something very strange about her—she seems, at certain moments, to withdraw herself from all the interests of mere humanity. To-day, for instance, she looked down from the air-ship on the swarming crowds in the streets of Naples and said ‘Poor little microbes! How sad it is to see them crawling about and festering down there! What IS the use of them! I wish I knew!’ Then, when I ventured to suggest that possibly they were more than ‘microbes,’—they were human beings that loved and worked and thought and created, she looked at me with those wonderful eyes of hers and answered—‘Microbes do the same— only we don’t take the trouble to think about them! But if we knew their lives and intentions, I dare say we should find they are quite as clever in their own line as we are in ours!’ What is one to say to a woman who argues in this way?”

Don Aloysius laughed gently.

“But she argues quite correctly after all! My son, you are like the majority of men—they grow impatient with clever women,—they prefer stupid ones. In fact they deliberately choose stupid ones to be the mothers of their children—hence the ever increasing multitude of fools!” He moved towards the open doors of the beautiful lounge-hall of the Palazzo, Rivardi walking at his side. “But you will grant me a measure of wisdom in the advice I gave you the other day-the little millionairess is unlike other women—she is not capable of loving,—not in the way loving is understood in this world,— therefore do not seek from her what she cannot give!—As for her ‘flying alone’—leave that to the fates!—I do not think she will attempt it.”

They entered the Palazzo just as a servant was about to announce to them that dinner would be served in a quarter of an hour, and their talk, for the time being, ended. But the thoughts of both men were busy; and unknown to each other, centered round the enigmatical personality of one woman who had become more interesting to them than anything else in the world,—so much so indeed that each in his own private mind wondered what life would be worth without her!

CHAPTER XVI

That evening Morgana was in one of her most bewitching moods—even the old Highland word “fey” scarcely described her many brilliant variations from grave to gay, from gay to romantic, and from romantic to a kind of humorous-satiric vein which moved her to utter quick little witticisms which might have seemed barbed with too sharp a point were they not so quickly covered with a sweetness of manner which deprived them of all malice. She looked her best, too,- she had robed herself in a garment of pale shimmering blue which shone softly like the gleam of moonbeams through crystal-her wonderful hair was twisted up in a coronal held in place by a band of diamonds,—tiny diamonds twinkled in her ears, and a star of diamonds glittered on her breast. Her elfin beauty, totally unlike the beauty of accepted standards, exhaled a subtle influence as a lily exhales fragrance—and the knowledge she had of her own charm combined with her indifference as to its effect upon others gave her a dangerous attractiveness. As she sat at the head of her daintily adorned dinner-table she might have posed for a fairy queen in days when fairies were still believed in and queens were envied,—and Giulio Rivardi’s thoughts were swept to and fro in his brain by cross-currents of emotion which were not altogether disinterested or virtuous. For years his spirit had been fretted and galled by poverty,—he, the descendant of a long line of proud Sicilian nobles, had been forced to earn a precarious livelihood as an art decorator and adviser to “newly rich” people who had neither taste nor judgment, teaching them how to build, restore or furnish their houses according to the pure canons of art, in the knowledge of which he excelled,—and now, when chance or providence had thrown Morgana in his way,—Morgana with her millions, and an enchanting personality,—he inwardly demanded why he should not win her to have and to hold for his own? He was a personable man, nobly born, finely educated,—was it possible that he had not sufficient resolution and force of character to take the precious citadel by storm? These ideas flitted vaguely across his mind as he watched his fair hostess talking, now to Don Aloysius, now to Lady Kingswood, and sometimes flinging him a light word of badinage to rally him on what she chose to call his “sulks.”

“He can’t get over it!” she declared, smiling—“Poor Marchese Giulio! That I should have dared to steer my own air-ship was too much for him, and he can’t forgive me!”

“I cannot forgive your putting yourself into danger,” said Rivardi— “You ran a great risk—you must pardon me if I hold your life too valuable to be lightly lost.”

“It is good of you to think it valuable,”—and her wonderful blue eyes were suddenly shadowed with sadness—“To me it is valueless.”

“My dear!” exclaimed Lady Kingswood—“How can you say such a thing!”

“Only because I feel it”—replied Morgana—“I dare say my life is not more valueless than other lives—they are all without ultimate meaning. If I knew, quite positively, that I was all in all to some ONE being who would be unhappy without me,—to whom I could be helper and inspirer, I dare say I should value my life more,—but unfortunately I have seen too much of the modern world to believe in the sincerity of even that ‘one’ being, could I find him—or her. I am very positively alone in life,—no woman was ever more alone than I!”

“But—is not that your own fault?” suggested Don Aloysius, gently.

“Quite!” she answered, smiling—“I fully admit it. I am what they call ‘difficult’ I know,—I do not like ‘society’ or its amusements, which to me seem very vulgar and senseless,—I do not like its conversation, which I find excessively banal and often coarse—I cannot set my soul on tennis or golf or bridge—so I’m quite an ‘outsider.’ But I’m not sorry!—I should not care to be INside the human menagerie. Too much barking, biting, scratching, and general howling among the animals!—it wouldn’t suit me!”

She laughed lightly, and continued,—

“That’s why I say my life is valueless to anyone but myself. And that’s why I’m not afraid to risk it in flying the ‘White Eagle’ alone.”

Her hearers were silent. Indeed there was nothing to be said. Whatever her will or caprice there was no one with any right to gainsay it. Rivardi was inwardly seething with suppressed irritation—but his handsome face showed no sign of annoyance save in an extreme pallor and gravity of expression.

“I think,”—said Don Aloysius, after a pause—“I think our hostess will do us the grace of believing that whatever she has experienced of the world in general, she has certainly won the regard and interest of those whom she honours with her company at the present moment!”—and his voice had a thrill of irresistible kindness—“And whatever she chooses to do, and however she chooses to do it, she cannot avoid involving such affection and interest as those friends represent—”

“Dear Father Aloysius!” interrupted Morgana, quickly and impulsively—“Forgive me!—I did not think!—I am sure you and the Marchese and Lady Kingswood have the kindest feeling for me!—but—”

“But!”—and Aloysius smiled—“But—it is a little lady that will not be commanded or controlled! Yes—that is so! However this may be, let us not imagine that in the rush of commerce and the marvels of science the world is left empty of love! Love is still the strongest force in nature!”

Morgana’s eyes flashed up, then drooped under their white lids fringed with gold.

“You think so?” she murmured—“To me, love leads nowhere!”

“Except to Heaven!” said Aloysius.

There followed a silence.

It was broken by the entrance of a servant announcing that coffee was served in the loggia. They left the dinner-table and went out into the wonder of a perfect Sicilian moonlight. All the gardens were illumined and the sea beyond, with wide strands of silver spreading on all sides, falling over the marble pavements and steps of the