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The Secret Power

M >> Marie Corelli >> The Secret Power



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Online Distributed Proofreading Team.





THE SECRET POWER


BY MARIE CORELLI

AUTHOR OF

"God's Good Man" "The Master Christian" "Innocent,"
"The Treasure of Heaven," etc.







THE SECRET POWER

CHAPTER I


A cloud floated slowly above the mountain peak. Vast, fleecy and
white as the crested foam of a sea-wave, it sailed through the sky
with a divine air of majesty, seeming almost to express a
consciousness of its own grandeur. Over a spacious tract of Southern
California it extended its snowy canopy, moving from the distant
Pacific Ocean across the heights of the Sierra Madre, now and then
catching fire at its extreme edge from the sinking sun, which burned
like a red brand flung on the roof of a roughly built hut situated
on the side of a sloping hollow in one of the smaller hills. The
door of the hut stood open; there were a couple of benches on the
burnt grass outside, one serving as a table, the other as a chair.
Papers and books were neatly piled on the table,--and on the chair,
if chair it might be called, a man sat reading. His appearance was
not prepossessing at a first glance, though his actual features
could hardly be seen, so concealed were they by a heavy growth of
beard. In the way of clothing he had little to trouble him. Loose
woollen trousers, a white shirt, and a leathern belt to keep the two
garments in place, formed his complete outfit, finished off by wide
canvas shoes. A thatch of dark hair, thick and ill combed,
apparently served all his need of head covering, and he seemed
unconscious of, or else indifferent to, the hot glare of the summer
sky which was hardly tempered by the long shadow of the floating
cloud. At some moments he was absorbed in reading,--at others in
writing. Close within his reach was a small note-book in which from
time to time he jotted down certain numerals and made rapid
calculations, frowning impatiently as though the very act of writing
was too slow for the speed of his thought. There was a wonderful
silence everywhere,--a silence such as can hardly be comprehended by
anyone who has never visited wide-spreading country, over-canopied
by large stretches of open sky, and barricaded from the further
world by mountain ranges which are like huge walls built by a race
of Titans. The dwellers in such regions are few--there is no traffic
save the coming and going of occasional pack-mules across the hill
tracks--no sign of modern civilisation. Among such deep and solemn
solitudes the sight of a living human being is strange and
incongruous, yet the man seated outside his hut had an air of ease
and satisfied proprietorship not always found with wealthy owners of
mansions and park-lands. He was so thoroughly engrossed in his books
and papers that he hardly saw, and certainly did not hear, the
approach of a woman who came climbing wearily up the edge of the
sloping hill against which his cabin presented itself to the view as
a sort of fitment, and advanced towards him carrying a tin pail full
of milk. This she set down within a yard or so of him, and then,
straightening her back, she rested her hands on her hips and drew a
long breath. For a minute or two he took no notice of her. She
waited. She was a big handsome creature, sun-browned and black-
haired, with flashing dark eyes lit by a spark that was not
originally caught from heaven. Presently, becoming conscious of her
presence, he threw his book aside and looked up.

"Well! So you've come after all! Yesterday you said you wouldn't."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"I do not wish you to starve."

"Very kind of you! But nothing can starve me."

"If you had no food--"

"I should find some"--he said--"Yes!--I should find some,--
somewhere! I want very little."

He rose, stretching his arms lazily above his head,--then, stooping,
he lifted the pail of milk and carried it into his cabin.
Disappearing for a moment, he returned, bringing back the pail
empty.

"I have enough for two days now," he said--"and longer. What you
brought me at the beginning of the week has turned beautifully
sour,--a 'lovely curd' as our cook at home used to say--, and with
that 'lovely curd' and plenty of fruit I'm living in luxury." Here
he felt in his pockets and took out a handful of coins. "That's
right, isn't it?"

She counted them over as he gave them to her--bit one with her
strong white teeth and nodded.

"You don't pay ME"--she said, emphatically--"It's the Plaza you
pay."

"How many times will you remind me of that!" he replied, with a
laugh--"Of course I know I don't pay YOU! Of course I know I pay the
Plaza!--that amazing hotel and 'sanatorium' with a tropical garden
and no comfort--"

"It is more comfortable than this"--she said, with a disparaging
glance at his log dwelling.

"How do YOU know?" and he laughed again--"What have YOU ever
experienced in the line of hotels? You are employed at the Plaza to
fetch and carry;--to wait on the wretched invalids who come to
California for a 'cure' of diseases incurable--"

"YOU are not an invalid!" she said with a slight accent of contempt.

"No! I only pretend to be!"

"Why do you pretend?"

"Oh, Manella! What a question! Why do we all pretend?--all!--every
human being from the child to the dotard! Simply because we dare not
face the truth! For example, consider the sun! It is a furnace with
flames five thousand miles high, but we 'pretend' it is our
beautiful orb of day! We must pretend! If we didn't we should go
mad!"

Manella knitted her black brows perplexedly.

"I do not understand you"--she said--"Why do you talk nonsense about
the sun? I suppose you ARE ill after all,--you have an illness of
the head."

He nodded with mock solemnity.

"That's it! You're a wise woman, Manella! That's why I'm here. Not
tubercles on the lungs,--tubercles on the brain! Oh, those
tubercles! They could never stand the Plaza!--the gaiety, the
brilliancy--the--the all-too dazzling social round!. . ." he paused,
and a gleam of even white teeth under his dark moustache gave the
suggestion of a smile--"That's why I stay up here."

"You make fun of the Plaza"--said Manella, biting her lips vexedly--
"And of me, too. I am nothing to you!"

"Absolutely nothing, dear! But why should you be any thing?"

A warm flush turned her sunburnt skin to a deeper tinge.

"Men are often fond of women"--she said.

"Often? Oh, more than often! Too often! But what does that matter?"

She twisted the ends of her rose-coloured neckerchief nervously with
one hand.

"You are a man"--she replied, curtly--"You should have a woman."

He laughed--a deep, mellow, hearty laugh of pleasure.

"Should I? You really think so? Wonderful Manella? Come here!--come
quite close to me!"

She obeyed, moving with the soft tread of a forest animal, and, face
to face with him, looked up. He smiled kindly into her dark fierce
eyes, and noted with artistic approval the unspoiled beauty of
natural lines in her form, and the proud poise of her handsome head
on her full throat and splendid shoulders.

"You are very good-looking, Manella"--he then remarked, lazily--
"Quite the model for a Juno. Be satisfied with yourself. You should
have scores of lovers!"

She stamped her foot suddenly and impatiently.

"I have none!" she said--"And you know it! But you do not care!"

He shook a reproachful forefinger at her.

"Manella, Manella, you are naughty! Temper, temper! Of course I do
not care! Be reasonable! Why should I?"

She pressed both hands tightly against her bosom, seeking to control
her quick, excited breathing.

"Why should you? I do not know! But _I_ care! I would be your woman!
I would be your slave! I would wait upon you and serve you
faithfully! I would obey your every wish. I am a good servant,--I
can cook and sew and wash and sweep--I can do everything in a house
and you should have no trouble. You should write and read all day,--
I would not speak a word to disturb you. I would guard you like a
dog that loves his master!"

He listened, with a strange look in his eyes,--a look of wonder and
something of compassion. There was a pause. The silence of the hills
was, or seemed more intense and impressive--the great white cloud
still spread itself in large leisure along the miles of slowly
darkening sky. Presently he spoke. "And what wages, Manella? What
wages should I have to pay for such a servant?--such a dog?"

Her head drooped, she avoided his steady, searching gaze.

"What wages, Manella? None, you would say, except--love! You tell me
you would be my woman,--and I know you mean it. You would be my
slave--you mean that, too. But you would want me to love you!
Manella, there is no such thing as love!--not in this world! There
is animal attraction,--the magnetism of the male for the female, the
female for the male,--the magnetism that pulls the opposite sexes
together in order to keep this planet supplied with an ever new crop
of fools,--but love! No, Manella! There is no such thing!"

Here he gently took her two hands away from their tightly folded
position on her bosom and held them in his own.

"No such thing, my dear!" he went on, speaking softly and
soothingly, as though to a child--"Except in the dreams of poets,
and you--fortunately!--know nothing about poetry! The wild animal in
you is attracted to the tame, ruminating animal in me,--and you
would be my woman, though I would not be your man. I quite believe
that it is the natural instinct of the female to select her mate,--
but, though the rule may hold good in the forest world, it doesn't
always work among the human herd. Man considers that he has the
right of selection--quite a mistake of his I'm sure, for he has no
real sense of beauty or fitness, and generally selects most vilely.
All the same he is an obstinate brute, and sticks to his brutish
ideas as a snail sticks to its shell. _I_ am an obstinate brute!--I
am absolutely convinced that I have the right to choose my own
woman, if I want one--which I don't,--or if ever I do want one--
which I never shall!"

She drew her hands quickly from his grasp. There were tears in her
splendid dark eyes.

"You talk, you talk!" she said, with a kind of sob in her voice--"It
is all talk with you--talk which I cannot understand! I don't WANT
to understand!--I am only a poor, ignorant girl. I cannot talk--but
I can love! Ah yes, I can love! You say there is no such thing as
love! What is it then, when one prays every night and morning for a
man?--when one would work one's fingers to the bone for him?--when
one would die to keep him from sickness and harm? What do you call
it?"

He smiled.

"Self-delusion, Manella! The beautiful self-delusion of every
nature-bred woman when her fancy is attracted by a particular sort
of man. She makes an ideal of him in her mind and imagines him to be
a god, when he is nothing but a devil!"

Something sinister and cruel in his look startled her,--she made the
sign of the cross on her bosom.

"A devil?" she murmured--"a devil--?"

"Ah, now you are frightened!" he said, with a flash of amusement in
his eyes--"You are a good Catholic, and you believe in devils. So
you make the sign of the cross as a protection. That's right! That's
the way to defend yourself from my evil influence! Wise Manella!"

The light mockery of his tone roused her pride,--that pride which
had been suppressed in her by the force of a passionate emotion she
could not restrain. She lifted her head and regarded him with an air
of sorrow and scorn.

"After all, I think you must be a wicked man!" she said--"You have
no heart! You are not worthy to be loved!"

"Quite true, Manella! You've hit the bull's eye in the very middle
three times! I am a wicked man,--I have no heart,--I'm not worthy to
be loved. No I'm not. I should find it a bore!"

"Bore?" she echoed--"What is that?"

"What is that? It is itself, Manella! 'Bore' is just 'bore.' It
means tiredness--worn-out-ness--a state in which you wish yourself
in a hot bath or a cold one, so that nobody can come near you. To be
'loved' would finish me off in a month!"

Her big eyes opened more widely than their wont in piteous
perplexity.

"But how?" she asked.

"How? Why, just as you have put it,--to be prayed for night and
morning,--to be worked for and waited on till fingers turned to
bones,--to be guarded from sickness and harm,--heavens!--think of
it! No more adventures in life,--no more freedom!--just love, love,
love, which would not be love at all but the chains of a miserable
wretch in prison!"

She flushed an angry crimson.

"Who is it that would chain you?" she demanded, "Not I! You could do
as you liked with me--you know it!--and when you go away from this
place, you could leave me and forget me,--I should never trouble you
or remind you that I lived!! I should have had my happiness,--enough
for my day!"

The pathos in her voice moved him though he was not easily moved. On
a sudden impulse he put an arm about her, drew her to him and kissed
her. She trembled at his caress, while he smiled at her emotion.

"A kiss is nothing, Manella!" he said--"We kiss children as I kiss
you! You are a child,--a child-woman. Physically you are a Juno,--
mentally you are an infant! By and by you will grow up,--and you
will be glad I did no more than kiss you! It's getting late,--you
must go home."

He released her and put her gently away from him. Then, as he saw
her eyes still uplifted questioningly to his face, he laughed.

"Upon my word!" he exclaimed--"I am making a nice fool of myself!
Actually wasting time on a woman. Go home, Manella, go home! If you
are wise you won't stop here another minute! See now! You are full
of curiosity--all women are! You want to know why I stay up here in
this hill cabin by myself instead of staying at the 'Plaza.' You
think I'm a rich Englishman. I'm not. No Englishman is ever rich,--
not up to his own desires. He wants the earth and all that therein
is--does the Englishman, and of course he can't have it. He rather
grudges America her large slice of rich plum-pudding territory,
forgetting that he could have had it himself for the price of tea.
But I don't grudge anybody anything--America is welcome to the whole
bulk as far as I'm concerned--Britain ditto,--let them both eat and
be filled. All _I_ want is to be left alone. Do you hear that,
Manella? To be left alone! Particularly by women. That's one reason
why I came here. This cabin is supposed to be a sort of tuberculosis
'shelter,' where a patient in hopeless condition comes with a
special nurse to die. I don't want a nurse, and I'm not going to
die. Tubercles don't touch me--they don't flourish on my soil. So
this solitude just suits me. If I were at the 'Plaza' I should have
to meet a lot of women--"

"No, you wouldn't," interrupted Manella, suddenly and sharply--"only
one woman."

"Only one? You?"

She sighed, and moved impatiently.

"Oh, no! Not me. A stranger."

He looked at her with a touch of inquisitiveness.

"An invalid?"

"She may be. I don't know. She has golden hair."

He gave a gesture of dislike.

"Dreadful! That's enough! I can imagine her,--a die-away creature
with a cough and a straw-coloured wig. Yes!--that will do, Manella!
You'd better go and wait upon her. I've got all I want for a couple
of days at least." He seated himself and took up his note-book. She
turned away.

"Stop a minute, Manella!"

She obeyed.

"Golden hair, you said?"

She nodded.

"Old or young?"

"She might be either"--and Manella gazed dreamily at the darkening
sky--"There is nobody old nowadays--or so it seems to me."

"An invalid?"

"I don't think so. She looks quite well. She arrived at the Plaza
only yesterday."

"Ah! Well, good-night, Manella! And if you want to know anything
more about me, I don't mind telling you this,--that there's nothing
in the world I so utterly detest as a woman with golden hair!
There!"

She looked at him, surprised at his harsh tone. He shook his
forefinger at her.

"Fact!" he said--"Fact as hard as nails! A woman with golden hair is
a demon--a witch--a mischief and a curse! See? Always has been and
always will be! Good-night!"

But Manella paused, meditatively.

"She looks like a witch," she said slowly--"One of those creatures
they put in pictures of fairy tales,--small and white. Very small,--
I could carry her."

"I wouldn't try it if I were you"--he answered, with visible
impatience--"Off you go! Good-night!"

She gave him one lingering glance; then, turning abruptly picked up
her empty milk pail and started down the hill at a run.

The man she left gave a sigh, deep and long of intense relief.
Evening had fallen rapidly, and the purple darkness enveloped him in
its warm, dense gloom. He sat absorbed in thought, his eyes turned
towards the east, where the last stretches of the afternoon's great
cloud trailed filmy threads of woolly black through space. His
figure seemed gradually drawn within the coming night so as almost
to become part of it, and the stillness around him had a touch of
awe in its impalpable heaviness. One would have thought that in a
place of such utter loneliness, the natural human spirit of a man
would instinctively desire movement,--action of some sort, to shake
off the insidious depression which crept through the air like a
creeping shadow, but the solitary being, seated somewhat like an
Aryan idol, hands on knees and face bent forwards, had no
inclination to stir. His brain was busy; and half unconsciously his
thoughts spoke aloud in words--

"Have we come to the former old stopping place?" he said, as though
questioning some invisible companion; "Must we cry 'halt!' for the
thousand millionth time? Or can we go on? Dare we go on? If actually
we discover the secret--wrapped up like the minutest speck of a
kernel in the nut of an electron,--what then? Will it be well or
ill? Shall we find it worth while to live on here with nothing to
do?--nothing to trouble us or compel us to labour? Without pain
shall we be conscious of health?--without sorrow shall we understand
joy?"

A sudden whiteness flooded the dark landscape, and a full moon
leaped to the edge of the receding cloud. Its rising had been veiled
in the drift of black woolly vapour, and its silver glare, sweeping
through the darkness flashed over the land with astonishing
abruptness. The man lifted his eyes.

"One would think that done for effect!" he said, half aloud--"If the
moon were the goddess Cynthia beloved of Endymion, as woman and
goddess in an impulse of vanity she would certainly have done that
for effect! As it is--"

Here he paused,--an instinctive feeling warned him that some one was
looking at him, and he turned his head quickly. On the slope of the
hill where Manella had lately stood, there was a figure, white as
the white moonlight itself, outlined delicately against the dark
background. It seemed to be poised on the earth like a bird just
lightly descended; in the stirless air its garments appeared closed
about it fold on fold like the petals of an unopened magnolia
flower. As he looked, it came gliding towards him with the floating
ease of an air bubble, and the strong radiance of the large moon
showed its woman's face, pale with the moonbeam pallor, and set in a
wave of hair that swept back from the brows and fell in a loosely
twisted coil like a shining snake stealthily losing itself in folds
of misty drapery. He rose to meet the advancing phantom.

"Entirely for effect!" he said, "Well planned and quite worthy of
you! All for effect!"




CHAPTER II


A laugh, clear and cold as a sleigh-bell on a frosty night rang out
on the silence.

"Why did you run away from me?"

He replied at once, and brusquely.

"Because I was tired of you!"

She laughed again. A strange white elf as she looked In the
spreading moonbeams she was woman to the core, and the disdainful
movement of her small uplifted head plainly expressed her utter
indifference to his answer.

"I followed you"--she said--"I knew I should find you! What are you
doing up here? Shamming to be ill?"

"Precisely! 'Sham' is as much in my line as yours. I have to
'pretend' in order to be real!"

"Paradoxical as usual!" and she shrugged her shoulders--"Anyway
you've chosen a good place to do your shamming in. It's quite lovely
up here,--much better than the Plaza. I am at the Plaza."

"Automobile and all I suppose!" he said, sarcastically--"How many
servants?--how many boxes with how many dresses?"

She laughed again.

"That's no concern of yours!" she replied--"I am my own mistress."

"More's the pity!" he retorted.

They faced each other. The moon, now soaring high in clear space,
shed a luminous rain of silver over all the visible breadth of wild
country, and their two figures looked mere dark silhouettes half
drowned in the pearly glamour.

"It's worth travelling all the long miles to see!" she declared,
stretching her arms out with an enthusiastic gesture--"Oh, beautiful
big moon of California! I'm glad I came!"

He was silent.

"You are not glad!" she continued--"You are a bear-man in hiding,
and the moon says nothing to you!"

"It says nothing because it IS nothing"--he answered, impatiently--
"It is a dead planet without heart,--a mere shell of extinct
volcanoes where fire once burned, and its light is but the
reflection of the sun on its barren surface. It is like all women,--
but mostly like YOU!"

She made him a sweeping curtsy so exquisitely graceful that the
action resembled nothing so much as the sway of a lily in a light
wind.

"Thanks, gentle Knight!--flower of chivalry!" she said--"I see you
love me in spite of yourself!"

He made a quick stride towards her,--then stopped. "Love you!" he
echoed,--then laughed loudly and derisively-"Great God! Love you?
YOU? If I did I should be mad! When will you learn the truth of
me?--that women are less in my estimation than the insects crawling
on a blade of grass or spawning in a stagnant pond?--that they have
no power to move me to the smallest pulse of passion or desire?--and
that you, of all your sex, seem to my mind the most--"

"Hateful?" she suggested, smilingly.

"No--the most complete and unmitigated bore!"

"Dreadful!" and she made a face at him like that of a naughty
child,--then she sank down on the sun-baked turf in an easy half-
reclining attitude--"It's certainly much worse to be a bore than to
be hated. Hate is quite a live sentiment,--besides it always means,
or HAS meant--love! You can't hate anything that is quite
indifferent to you, but of course you CAN be bored! YOU are bored by
me and I am bored by YOU!--and we are absolutely indifferent to each
other! What a comedy it is! Isn't it?"

He stood still and sombre, gazing down at the figure resting on the
ground at his feet, its white garments gathering about it as though
they were sentiently aware that they must keep the line of classic
beauty in every fold.

"Boredom is the trouble"--she went on--"No one escapes it. The very
babies of to-day are bored. We all know too much. People used to be
happy because they were ignorant--they had no sort of idea why they
were born, or what they came into the world for. Now they've learned
the horrid truth that they are only here just as the trees and
flowers are here--to breed other trees and flowers and then go out
of it--for no purpose, apparently. They are 'disillusioned.' They
say 'what's the use?' To put up with so much trouble and labour for
the folks coining after us whom we shall never see,--it seems
perfectly foolish and futile. They used to believe in another life
after this--but that hope has been knocked out of them. Besides it's
quite open to question whether any of us would care to live again.
Probably it might mean more boredom. There's really nothing left.
That's why so many of us go reckless--it's just to escape being
bored."

He listened in cold silence. After a pause--

"Have you done?" he said.

She looked up at him. The moonbeams set tiny frosty sparkles in her
eyes.

"Have I done?" she echoed--"No,--not quite! I love talking--and it's
a new and amusing sensation for me to talk to a man in his shirt-
sleeves on a hill in California by the light of the moon! So wild
and picturesque you know! All the men I've ever met have been
dressed to death! Have you had your dinner?"

"I never dine," he replied.

"Really! Don't you eat and drink at all?"

"I live simply,"--he said--"Bread and milk are enough for me, and I
have these."

She laughed and clapped her hands.

"Like a baby!" she exclaimed--"A big bearded baby! It's too
delicious! And you're doing all this just to get away from ME! What
a compliment!"

With angry impetus he bent over her reclining figure and seized her
two hands.

"Get up!" he said harshly--"Don't lie there like a fallen angel!"

She yielded to his powerful grasp as he pulled her to her feet--then
looked at him still laughing.

"Plenty of muscle!" she said--"Well?"

He held her hands still and gripped them fiercely. She gave a little
cry.

"Don't! You forget my rings,--they hurt!"

At once he loosened his hold, and gazed moodily at her small fingers
on which two or three superb diamond circlets glittered like drops
of dew.

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