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

very morose companion! You are still in the dumps about my steering the ‘White Eagle!’—how cross of you!”

“Madama, I think of your safety,”—he said, curtly.

“It is kind of you! But if I do not care for my safety?”

“I do!” he said, decisively.

“And I also!”—said Aloysius, earnestly—“Dear lady, be advised! Think no more of flying in the vast spaces of air alone—alone with an enormous piece of mechanism which might fail at any moment—”

“It cannot fail unless the laws of nature fail!”—said Morgana, emphatically—“How strange it is that neither of you seems to realise that the force which moves the ‘White Eagle’ is natural force alone! However—you are but men!” Here she stopped in her walk, and her brilliant eyes flashed from one to the other—“Men!— with pre-conceived ideas wedged in obstinacy!—yes!—you cannot help yourselves! Even Father Aloysius—” she paused, as she met his grave eyes fixed full upon her.

“Well!” he said gently—“What of Father Aloysius? He is ‘but man’ as you say!—a poor priest having nothing in common with your wealth or your self-will, my child!—one whose soul admits no other instruction than that of the Great Intelligence ruling the universe, and from whose ordinance comes forth joy or sorrow, wisdom or ignorance. We are but dust on the wind before this mighty power!— even you, with all your study and attainment are but a little phantom on the air!”

She smiled as he spoke.

“True!” she said—“And you would save this phantom from vanishing into air utterly?”

“I would!” he answered—“I would fain place you in God’s keeping,”— and with a gesture infinitely tender and solemn, he made the sign of the cross above her head—“with a prayer that you may be guided out of the tangled ways of life as lived in these days, to the true realisation of happiness!”

She caught his hand and impulsively kissed it.

“You are good!—far too good!” she said—“And I am wild and wilful— forgive me! I will say good night here—we are just at the gate. Good night, Marchese! I promise you shall fly with me to the East—I will not go alone. There!—be satisfied!” And she gave him a bewitching smile—then with another markedly gentle “Good night” to Aloysius, she turned away and left them, choosing a path back to the house which was thickly overgrown with trees, so that her figure was almost immediately lost to view.

The two men looked at each other in silence.

“You will not succeed by thwarting her!”—said Aloysius, warningly.

Rivardi gave an impatient gesture.

“And you?”

“I? My son, I have no aim in view with regard to her! I should like to see her happy—she has great wealth, and great gifts of intellect and ability—but these do not make real happiness for a woman. And yet—I doubt whether she could ever be happy in the ordinary woman’s way.”

“No, because she is not an ‘ordinary’ woman,” said Rivardi, quickly- “More’s the pity I think-for HER!”

“And for you!” added Aloysius, meaningly.

Rivardi made no answer, and they walked on in silence, the priest parting with his companion at the gate of the monastery, and the Marchese going on to his own half-ruined villa lifting its crumbling walls out of wild verdure and suggesting the historic past, when a Caesar spent festal hours in its great gardens which were now a wilderness.

Meanwhile, Morgana, the subject of their mutual thoughts, followed the path she had taken down to the seashore. Alone there, she stood absorbed,—a fairylike figure in her shimmering soft robe and the diamonds flashing in her hair—now looking at the moonlit water,— now back to the beautiful outline of the Palazzo d’Oro, lifted on its rocky height and surrounded by a paradise of flowers and foliage—then to the long wide structure of the huge shed where her wonderful air-ship lay, as it were, in harbour. She stretched out her arms with a fatigued, appealing gesture.

“I have all I want!”—she said softly aloud,—“All!—all that money can buy—more than money has ever bought!—and yet—the unknown quantity called happiness is not in the bargain. What is it? Why is it? I am like the princess in the ‘Arabian Nights’ who was quite satisfied with her beautiful palace till an old woman came along and told her that it wanted a roc’s egg to make it perfect. And she became at once miserable and discontented because she had not the roc’s egg! I thought her a fool when I read that story in my childhood—but I am as great a fool as she to-day. I want that roc’s egg!”

She laughed to herself and looked up at the splendid moon, round as a golden shield in heaven.

“How the moon shone that night in California!” she murmured—“And Roger Seaton—bear-man as he is—would have given worlds to hold me in his arms and kiss me as he did once when he ‘didn’t mean it!’ Ah! I wonder if he ever WILL mean it! Perhaps—when it is too late!”

And there swept over her mind the memory of Manella—her rich, warm, dark beauty—her frank abandonment to passions purely primitive,— and she smiled, a cold little weird smile.

“He may marry her,”—she said—“And yet—I think not! But—if he does marry her he will never love her—as he loves ME! How we play at cross-purposes in our lives!—he is not a marrying man—I am not a marrying woman—we are both out for conquest on other lines,—and if either of us wins our way, what then? Shall we be content to live on a triumph of power,—without love?”

CHAPTER XVII

“So the man from Washington told you to bring this to me?”

Roger Seaton asked the question of Manella, twirling in his hand an unopened letter she had just given him. She nodded in the affirmative. He looked at her critically, amused at the evident pains she had taken with her dress and general appearance. He twirled the letter again like a toy in his fingers.

“I wonder what it’s all about? Do you know?”

Manella shrugged her shoulders with a charming air of indifference.

“I? How should I know? He is your friend I suppose?”

“Not a bit of it!” and Roger stretched himself lazily and yawned— “He’s the friend of nobody who is poor. But he’s the comrade of everybody with plenty of cash. He’s as hard as a dried old walnut, without the shred of a heart—”

“You are wrong!” said Manella, flushing up suddenly—“You are wrong and unjust! He is an ugly old man, but he is very kind.”

Seaton threw back his head and laughed heartily with real enjoyment.

“Manella, oh, Manella!” he exclaimed—“What has he said or done to you to win your good opinion? Has he made you some pretty compliments, and told you that you are beautiful? Every one can tell you that, my dear! It does not need Mr. Senator Gwent’s assurance to emphasise the fact! That you find him an ugly old man is natural— but that you should also think him ‘very kind’ DOES surprise me!”

Manella gazed at him seriously—her lovely eyes gleaming like jewels under her long black lashes.

“You mock at everything,”—she said—“It is a pity!”

Her tone was faintly reproachful. He smiled.

“My dear girl, I really cannot regard Mr. Senator Gwent as a figure to be reverenced!”—he said—“He’s one of the dustiest, driest old dollar-grabbers in the States. I gave him the chance of fresh grab— but he was too much afraid to take it—”

“Afraid of what?” asked Manella, quickly.

“Of shadows!—shadows of coming events!—yes, they scared him! Now if you are a good girl, and will sit very quiet, you can come into my hut out of this scorching sun, and sit down while I read the letter—I may have to write an answer—and if so you can post it at the Plaza.”

He went before her into the hut, and she followed. He bade her sit down in the chair by the window,—she obeyed, and glanced about her shyly, yet curiously. The room was not untidy, as she expected it would be without a woman’s hand to set it in order,—on the contrary it was the perfection of neatness and cleanliness. Her gaze was quickly attracted by the bowl of perpetually moving fluid in the center of the table.

“What is that?” she asked.

“That? Oh, nothing! An invention of mine—just to look pretty and cool in warm weather! It reminds me of women’s caprices and fancies- always on the jump! Yes!-don’t frown, Manella!—that is so! Now— let me see what Mr. Sam Gwent has to say that he didn’t say before— -“and seating himself, he opened the letter and began to read.

Manella watched him from under the shadow of her long-fringed eyelids—her heart beat quickly and uncomfortably. She was fearful lest Gwent should have broken faith with her after all, and have written of her and her vain passion, to the man who already knew of it only too well. She waited patiently for the “god of her idolatry” to look up. At last he did so. But he seemed to have forgotten her presence. His brows were knitted in a frown, and he spoke aloud, as to himself—

“A syndicate! Old humbug! He knows perfectly well that the thing could not be run by a syndicate! It must be a State’s own single possession—a State’s special secret. If I were as bent on sheer destructiveness as he imagines me to be, I should waste no more time, but offer it to Germany. Germany would take it at once— Germany would require no persuasion to use it!—Germany would make me a millionaire twice over for the monopoly of such a force!—that is, if I wanted to be a millionaire, which I don’t. But Gwent’s a fool—I must have scared him out of his wits, or he wouldn’t write all this stuff about risks to my life, advising me to marry quickly and settle down! Good God! I?—Marry and settle down? What a tame ending to a life’s adventure! Hello, Manella!”

His eyes lighted upon her as if he had only just seen her. He rose from his chair and went over to where she sat by the window.

“Patient girl!” he said, patting her dark head with his big sun- browned hand—“As good as gold and quieter than a mouse! Well! You may go now. I’ve read the letter and there’s no answer. Nothing for me to write, or for you to post!” She lifted her brilliant eyes to his—what glorious eyes they were! He would not have been man had he not been conscious of their amorous fire. He patted her head again in quite a paternal way.

“Nothing for me to write or for you to post”—he repeated, abstractedly—“and how satisfactory that is!”

“Then you are pleased?” she said.

“Pleased? My dear, there is nothing to be pleased or displeased about! The ugly old man whom you found so ‘very kind’ tells me to take care of myself—which I always do. Also—to marry and settle down—which I always don’t!”

She stood upright, turning her head away from the touch of his hand. She had never looked more attractive than at that moment,—she wore the white gown in which he had before admired her, and a cluster of roses which were pinned to her bodice gave rich contrast to the soft tone of her smooth, suntanned skin, and swayed lightly with the unquiet heaving of the beautiful bosom which might have served a sculptor as a perfect model. A faint, quivering smile was on her lips.

“You always don’t? That sounds very droll! You will be unlike every man in the world, then,—they all marry!”

“Oh, do they? You know all about it? Wise