James Bovell Mackenzie - "A Treatise on the Six Nation Indians"

Hamilton Wright Mabie - "Essays On Work And Culture"

Adam Smith - "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations"

James Russell Lowell - "My Garden Acquaintance"

The Secret Power

M >> Marie Corelli >> The Secret Power




"Your rings!" he said--"Yes--I forgot them! Wonderful rings!--
emblems of your inordinate vanity and vulgar wealth--I forgot them!
How they sparkle in this wide moonlight, don't they? Just a drifting
of nature's refuse matter, turned into jewels for women! Strange
ordinance of strange elements! There!" and he let her hands go free-
-"They are not injured, nor are you."

She was silent pouting her under-lip like a spoilt child, and
rubbing one finger where a ring had dinted her flesh.

"So you actually think I have coma here to get away from YOU?" he
went on--"Well for once your ineffable conceit is mistaken. You
think yourself a personage of importance--but you are nothing,--less
than nothing to me, I never give you a thought--I have come here to
study--to escape from the crazy noise of modern life--the hurtling
to and fro of the masses of modern humanity,--I want to work out
certain problems which may revolutionise the world and its course of
living--"

"Why revolutionise it?" she interrupted--"Who wants it to be
revolutionised? We are all very well as we are--it's a breeding
place and a dying place--voila tout!"

She gave a French shrug of her shoulder and waved her hands
expressively. Then she pushed back her flowing hair,--the moonbeams
trickled like water over it, making a network of silver on gold.

"What did you come here for?" he asked, abruptly.

"To see you!" she answered smilingly--"And to tell you that I'm 'on
the war-path' as they say, taking scalps as I go. This means that
I'm travelling about,--possibly I may go to Europe--"

"To pick up a bankrupt nobleman!" he suggested.

She laughed.

"Dear, no! Nothing quite so stupid! Neither noblemen nor bankrupts
attract me. No! I'm doing a scientific 'prowl,' like you. I believe
I've discovered something with which I could annihilate you--so!"
and she made a round O of her curved fingers and blew through it--
"One breath!--from a distance, too! and hey presto!--the bear-man on
the hills of California eating bread and milk is gone!--a complete
vanishing trick--no more of him anywhere!" The bear-man, as she
called him, gloomed upon her with a scowl.

"You'd better leave such things alone!" he said, angrily--"Women
have no business with science."

"No, of course not!" she agreed--"Not in men's opinion. That's why
they never mention Madame Curie without the poor Monsieur! SHE found
radium and he didn't,--but 'he' is always first mentioned."

He gave an impatient gesture.

"Enough of all this!" he said--"Do you know it's nearly ten o'clock
at night?--I suppose you do know!--and the people at the Plaza--"

"THEY know!"--she interrupted, nodding sagaciously--"They know I am
rich--rich--rich! It doesn't matter what I do, because I am rich! I
might stay out all night with a bear-man, and nobody would say a
word against me, because I am rich! I might sit on the roof of the
Plaza and swing my legs over the visitors' windows and it would be
called 'charming' because I am rich! I can appear at the table
d'hote in a bath-wrap and eat peas with a hair-pin if I like--and my
conduct will be admired, because I am rich! When I go to Europe my
photo will be in all the London pictorials with the grinning chorus-
girls, because I am rich! And I shall be called 'the beautiful,'
'the exquisite'--'the fascinating' by all the unwashed penny
journalists because I am rich! O-ooh!" and she gave a comic little
screw of her mouth and eyes--"It's great fun to be rich if you know
what to do with your riches!"

"Do YOU?" he enquired, sarcastically.

"I think so!" here she put her head on one side like a meditative
bird and her wonderful hair fell aslant like a golden wing--"I amuse
myself--as much as I can. I learn all that can be done with greedy,
stupid humanity for so much cash down! I would,"--here she paused,
and with a sudden feline swiftness of movement came close up to him-
-"I would have married YOU!--if you would have had me! I would have
given you all my money to play with,--you could have got everything
you want for your inventions and experiments, and I would have
helped you,--and then--then--you could have blown up the world and
me with it, so long as you gave me time to look at the magnificent
sight! And I wouldn't have married you for love, mind you!--only for
curiosity!"

He withdrew from her a couple of paces,--a glimmer of white teeth
between his dark moustache and beard gave his face the expression of
a snarl more than a smile.

"For curiosity!" she repeated, stretching out a hand and touching
his arm--"To see what the thing that calls itself a man is made of!
I did my very best with you, didn't I?--uncouth as you always were
and are!--but I did my best! And all Washington thought it was
settled! Why wouldn't you do what Washington expected?"

The light of the moon fell full on her upturned face. It was a
wonderful face,--not beautiful according to the monotonous press-
camera type, but radiant with such a light of daring intelligence as
to make beauty itself seem cheap and meretricious in comparison with
its glowing animation. He moved away from her another step, and
shook his arm free from her touch.

"Why wouldn't you?" she reiterated softly; then with a sudden ripple
of laughter, she clasped her hands and uplifted them in an attitude
of prayer--"Why wouldn't he? Oh, big moon of California, why? Oh,
pagan gods and goddesses and fauns and fairies, tell me why? Why
wouldn't he?"

He gave her a glance of cool contempt.

"You should have been on the stage!" he said.

"'All the world's a stage,'" she quoted, letting her upraised arms
fall languidly at her sides--"And ours is a real comedy! Not 'As You
Like It' but 'As You Don't Like It!' Poor Shakespeare!--he never
imagined such characters as we are! Now, suppose you had satisfied
the expectations of all Washington City and married me, of course we
should have bored each other dreadfully--but with plenty of money we
could have run away from each other whenever we liked--they all do
it nowadays!"

"Yes--they all do it!" he repeated, mechanically.

"They don't 'love' you know!" she went on--"Love is too much of a
bore. YOU would find it so!"

"I should, indeed!" he said, with sudden energy--"It would be worse
than any imaginable torture!--to be 'loved' and looked after, and
watched and coddled and kissed--"

"Oh, surely no woman would want to kiss you!" she exclaimed--"Never!
THAT would be too much of a good thing!"

And she gave a little peal of laughter, merry as the lilt of a sky-
lark in the dawn. He stared at her angrily, moved by an insensate
desire to seize her and throw her down the hill like a bundle of
rubbish.

"To kiss YOU," she said, "one would have to wear a lip-shield of
leather! As well kiss a bunch of nettles! No, no! I have quite a
nice little mouth--soft and rosy! I shouldn't like to spoil it by
scratching it against yours! It's curious how all men imagine women
LIKE to kiss them! They never grasp an idea of the frequent
unpleasantness of the operation! Now I'm going!"

"Thank God!" he ejaculated fervently.

"And don't worry yourself"--she continued, airily--"I shall not stay
long at the Plaza."

"Thank God again!" he interpolated.

"It would be too dull,--especially as I'm not shamming to be ill,
like you. Besides, I have work to do!--wonderful work! and I don't
believe in doing it shut up like a hermit. Humanity is my crucible!
Good-night,--good-bye!"

He checked her movement by a quick, imperious gesture.

"Wait!" he said--"Before you go I want you to know a bit of my mind-
-"

"Is it necessary?" she queried.

"I think so," he answered--"It will save you the trouble of ever
trying to see me again, which will be a relief to me, if not to you.
Listen!--and look at yourself with MY eyes--"

"Too difficult!" she declared--"I can look at nothing with your eyes
any more than you can with mine!"

"Madam--"

She uttered a little laughing "Oh!" and put her hand to her ears.

"Not 'Madam' for heaven's sake!" she exclaimed; "It sounds as if I
were either a queen or a dressmaker!"

His sombre eyes had no smile in them.

"How should you be addressed?" he demanded, "A woman of such wealth
and independence as you possess can hardly be called 'Miss' as if
she were in parental leading-strings!"

She looked up at the clear dark sky where the moon hung like a huge
silver air-ball.

"No, I suppose not!" she replied--"The old English word was
'Mistress.' So quaint and pretty, don't you think?"

'Oh mistress mine, where are you roaming?
Oh stay and hear! your true love's coming!'

She sang the two lines in a deliciously entrancing voice, full of
youth and tenderness. With one quick stride he advanced upon her and
caught her by the shoulders.

"My God, I could shake the life out of you!" he said, fiercely--"I
wonder you are not afraid of me!"

She laughed, careless of his grasp.

"Why should I be? You couldn't kill me if you tried--and if you
could--"

"If I could--ah, if I could!" he muttered, fiercely.

"Why then there would be another murderer added to the general world
of murderers!" she said--"That's all! It's not worth it!"

Still he held her in his grip.

"See here!" he said--"Before you go I want yon to know a thing or
two,--you may as well learn once for all my views on women. They're
brief, but they're fixed. And they're straight! Women are nothing--
just necessary for the continuation of the race--no more. They may
be beautiful or homely--it's all one--they serve the same purpose.
I'm under no delusions about them. Without men they are utterly
useless,--mere waste on the wind! To idealise them is a stupid
mistake. To think that they can do anything original, intellectual
or imaginative is to set one's self down an idiot. YOU,--you the
spoilt only child of one of the biggest rascal financiers in New
York,--YOU, left alone in the world with a fortune so vast as to be
almost criminal--you think you are something superlative in the way
of women,--you play the Cleopatra,--you are convinced you can draw
men after you--but it's your money that draws them,--not YOU! Can't
you see that?--or are you too vain to see it? And you've no mercy on
them,--you make them believe you care for them and then you throw
them over like empty nutshells! That's your way! But you never
fooled ME,--and you never will!"

He released her as suddenly as he had grasped her,--she drew her
white draperies round her shoulders with a statuesque grace, and
lifted her head, smiling.

"Empty nutshells are a very good description of men who come after a
woman for her money"--she observed, placidly--"and it's quite
natural that the woman should throw them over her shoulder. There's
nothing in them--not even a flavour! No--never fooled you,--you
fooled yourself--you are fooling yourself now, only you don't know
it. But there!--let's finish talking! I like the romance of the
situation--you in your shirt-sleeves on a hill in California, and I
in silken stuff and diamonds paying you a moonlight visit--it's
really quite novel and charming!--but it can't go on for ever! Just
now you said you wanted me to know a thing or two, and I presume you
have explained yourself. What you think or what you don't think
about women doesn't interest me. I'm one of the 'wastes on the
wind!' _I_ shall not aid in the continuation of the race,--heaven
forbid! The race is too stupid and too miserable to merit
continuance. Everything has been done for it that can be done, over
and over again, from the beginning--till now,--and now--NOW!" She
paused, and despite himself the tone of her voice sent a thrill
through his blood of something like fear.

"NOW?--well! What NOW?" he demanded.

She lifted one hand and pointed upwards. Her face in the moonbeams
looked austere and almost spectral in outline.

"Now--the Change!" she answered--"The Change when all things shall
be made new!"

A silence followed her words,--a strange and heavy silence.

It was broken by her voice hushed to an extreme softness, yet
clearly audible.

"Good-night!--good-bye!"

He turned impatiently away to avoid further leave-taking--then, on a
sudden impulse, his mood changed.

"Morgana!"

The call echoed through emptiness. She was gone. He called again,--
the long vowel in the strange name sounding like "Mor-ga-ar-na" as a
shivering note on the G string of a violin may sound at the
conclusion of a musical phrase. There was no reply. He was--as he
had desired to be,--alone.




CHAPTER III


"She left New York several weeks ago,--didn't you know it? Dear me!-
-I thought everybody was convulsed at the news!"

The speaker, a young woman fashionably attired and seated in a
rocking chair in the verandah of a favourite summer hotel on Long
Island, raised her eyes and shrugged her shoulders expressively as
she uttered these words to a man standing near her with a newspaper
in his hand. He was a very stiff-jointed upright personage with iron
grey hair and features hard enough to suggest their having been
carved out of wood.

"No--I didn't know it"--he said, enunciating his words in the
deliberate dictatorial manner common to a certain type of American--
"If I had I should have taken steps to prevent it."

"You can't take steps to prevent anything Morgana Royal decides to
do!" declared his companion. "She's a law to herself and to nobody
else. I guess YOU couldn't stop her, Mr. Sam Gwent!"

Mr. Sam Gwent permitted himself to smile. It was a smile that merely
stretched the corners of his mouth a little,--it had no geniality.

"Possibly not!" he answered--"But I should have had a try! I should
certainly have pointed out to her the folly of her present
adventure."

"Do you know what it is?"

He paused before replying.

"Well,--hardly! But I have a guess!"

"Is that so? Then I'll admit you're cleverer than I am!"

"Thats a great compliment! But even Miss Lydia Herbert, brilliant
woman of the world as she is, doesn't know EVERYTHING!"

"Not quite!" she replied, stifling a tiny yawn--"Nor do you! But
most things that are worth knowing I know. There's a lot one need
never learn. The chief business of life nowadays is to have heaps of
money and know how to spend it. That's Morgana's way."

Mr. Sam Gwent folded up his newspaper, flattened it into a neat
parcel, and put it in his pocket.

"She has a great deal too much money"--he said, "and-to my thinking-
-she does NOT know how to spend it,--not in the right womanly way.
She has gone off in the midst of many duties to society at a time
when she should have stayed--"

Miss Herbert opened her brown, rather insolent eyes wide at this and
laughed.

"Does it matter?" she asked. "The old man left his pile to her
'absolutely and unconditionally'--without any orders as to society
duties. And I don't believe YOU'VE any authority over her, have you?
Or are you suddenly turning up as a trustee?"

He surveyed her with a kind of admiring sarcasm.

"No. I'm only an uncle,"--he said--"Uncle of the boy that shot
himself this morning for her sake!"

Miss Herbert uttered a sharp cry. She was startled and horrified.

"What!. . . Jack?. . . Shot himself?. . . Oh, how dreadful!--I'm--
I'm sorry--!"

"You're not!"--retorted Gwent--"So don't pretend. No one is sorry
for anybody else nowadays. There's no time. And no inclination. Jack
was always a fool--perhaps he's best out of it. I've just seen him--
dead. He's better-looking so than when alive."

She sprang up from her rocking chair in a blaze of indignation.

"You are brutal!" she exclaimed, with a half sob--"Positively
brutal!"

"Not at all!" he answered, composedly--"Only commonplace. It is you
advanced women that are brutal,--not we left-behind men. Jack was a
fool, I say--he staked the whole of his game on Morgana Royal, and
he lost. That was the last straw. If he could have married her he
would have cleared all his debts over and over--and that's what he
had hoped for. The disappointment was too much for him."

"But--didn't he LOVE her?" Lydia Herbert put the question almost
imperatively.

Mr. Sam Gwent raised his eyebrows quizzically. "I guess you came out
of the Middle Ages!" he observed--"What's 'love'? Did you ever know
a woman with millions of money who got 'loved'? Not a bit of it! Her
MONEY is loved--but not herself. She's the encumbrance to the cash."

"Then--then--you mean to tell me Jack was only after the money--?"

"What else should he be after? The woman? There are thousands of
women,--all to be had for the asking--they pitch themselves at men
headlong--no hesitation or modesty about them nowadays! Jack's
asking would never have been refused by any one of them. But the
millions of Morgana Royal are not to be got every day!"

Miss Herbert's rather thin lips tightened into a close line,--she
flicked some light tear-drops away from her eyes with a handkerchief
as fine as a cobweb delicately perfumed, and stood silently looking
out on the view from the verandah.

"You see," pursued Gwent, in his cold, deliberate accents, "Jack was
ruined financially. And he has all but ruined ME. Now he has taken
himself out of the way with a pistol shot, and left me to face the
music for him. Morgana Royal was his only chance. She led him on,--
she certainly led him on. He thought he had her,--then--just as he
was about to pin the butterfly to his specimen card, away it flew!"

"Cute butterfly!" interjected Miss Herbert.

"Maybe. Maybe not. We shall see. Anyway Jack's game is finished."

"And I suppose this is why, as you say, Morgana has gone off 'in the
midst of many social duties'? Was Jack one of her social duties?"

Gwent gazed at her with an unrevealing placidity.

"No. Not exactly," he replied--"I give her credit for not knowing
anything of his intention to clear out. Though I don't think she
would have tried to alter his intention if she had."

Miss Herbert still surveyed the scenery.

"Well,--I don't feel so sorry for him now you tell me it was only
the money he was after"--she said--"I thought he was a finer
character--"

"You're talking 'Middle Ages' again,"--interrupted Gwent--"Who wants
fine characters nowadays? The object of life is to LIVE, isn't it?
And to 'live' means to get all you can for your own pleasure and
profit,--take care of Number One!--and let the rest of the world do
as it likes. It's quite YOUR method,--though you pretend it isn't!"

"You're not very polite!" she said.

"Now, why should I be?" he pursued, argumentatively--"What's
politeness worth unless you want to flatter something for yourself
out of somebody? I never flatter, and I'm never polite. I know just
how you feel,--you haven't got as much money as you want and you're
looking about for a fellow who HAS. Then you'll marry him--if you
can. You, as a woman, are doing just what Jack did as a man. But,--
if you miss your game, I don't think you'll commit suicide. You're
too well-balanced for that. And I think you'll succeed in your aims-
-if you're careful!"

"If I'm careful?" she echoed, questioningly.

"Yes--if you want a millionaire. Especially the old rascal you're
after. Don't dress too 'loud.' Don't show ALL your back--leave some
for him to think about. Don't paint your face,--let it alone. And
be, or pretend to be, very considerate of folks' feelings. That'll
do!"

"Here endeth the first lesson!" she said. "Thanks, preacher Gwent! I
guess I'll worry through!"

"I guess you will!"--he answered, slowly. "I wish I was as certain
of anything in the world as I am of THAT!"

She was silent. The corners of her mouth twitched slightly as though
she sought to conceal a smile. She watched her companion furtively
as he took a cigar from a case in his pocket and lit it.

"I must go and fix up the funeral business"--he said, "Jack has
gone, and his remains must be disposed of. That's my affair. Just
now his mother's crying over him,--and I can't stand that sort of
thing. It gets over me."

"Then you actually HAVE a heart?" she suggested.

"I suppose so. I used to have. But it isn't the heart,--that's only
a pumping muscle. I conclude it's the head."

He puffed two or three rings of smoke into the clear air.

"You know where she's gone?" he asked, suddenly.

"Morgana?"

"Yes."

Lydia Herbert hesitated.

"I THINK I know," she replied at last--"But I'm not sure."

"Well, I'M sure"--said Gwent--"She's after the special quarry that
has given her the slip,--Roger Seaton. He went to California a month
ago."

"Then she's in California?"

"Certain!"

Mr. Gwent took another puff at his cigar.

"You must have been in Washington when every one thought that he and
she were going to make a matrimonial tie of it"--he went on--"Why,
nothing else was talked of!"

She nodded.

"I know! I was there. But a man who has set his soul on science
doesn't want a wife."

"And what about a woman who has set her soul in the same direction?"
he asked.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh, that's all popcorn! Morgana is not a scientist,--she's hardly a
student. She just 'imagines' she can do things. But she can't."

"Well! I'm not so sure!" and Gwent looked ruminative--"She's got a
smart way of settling problems while the rest of us are talking
about them."

"To her own satisfaction only"--said Miss Herbert, ironically,--
"Certainly not to the satisfaction of anybody else! She talks the
wildest nonsense about controlling the world! Imagine it! A world
controlled by Morgana!" She gave an impatient little shake of her
skirts. "I do hate these sorts of mysterious, philosophising women,
don't you? The old days must have been ever so much better! When it
was all poetry and romance and beautiful idealism! When Dante and
Beatrice were possible!"

Gwent smiled sourly.

"They never WERE possible!" he retorted--"Dante was, like all poets,
a regular humbug. Any peg served to hang his stuff on,--from a child
of nine to a girl of eighteen. The stupidest thing ever written is
what he called his 'New Life' or 'Vita Nuova.' I read it once, and
it made me pretty nigh sick. Think of all that twaddle about
Beatrice 'denying him her most gracious salutation'! That any
creature claiming to be a man could drivel along in such a style
beats me altogether!"

"It's perfectly lovely!" declared Miss Herbert--"You've no taste in
literature, Mr. Gwent!"

"I've no taste for humbug"--he answered--"That's so! I guess I know
the difference between tragedy and comedy, even when I see them side
by side." He flicked a long burnt ash from his cigar. "I've had a
bit of comedy with you this morning--now I'm going to take up
tragedy! I tell you there's more written in Jack's dead face than in
all Dante!"

"The tragedy of a lost gamble for money!" she said, with a scornful
uplift of her eyebrows.

He nodded.

"That's so! It upsets the mental balance of a man more than a lost
gamble for love!"

And he walked away.

Lydia Herbert, left to herself, played idly with the leaves of the
vine that clambered about the high wooden columns of the verandah
where she stood, admiring the sparkle of her diamond bangle which,
like a thin circlet of dewdrops, glittered on her slim wrist. Now
and then she looked far out to the sea gleaming in the burning sun,
and allowed her thoughts to wander from herself and her elegant
clothes to some of the social incidents in which she had taken part
during the past couple of months. She recalled the magnificent ball
given by Morgana Royal at her regal home, when all the fashion and
frivolity of the noted "Four Hundred" were assembled, and when the
one whispered topic of conversation among gossips was the
possibility of the marriage of one of the richest women in the world
to a shabbily clothed scientist without a penny, save what he earned
with considerable difficulty. Morgana herself played the part of an
enigma. She laughed, shook her head, and moved her daintily attired
person through the crowd of her guests with all the gliding grace of
a fairy vision in white draperies showered with diamonds, but gave
no hint of special favour or attention to any man, not even to Roger
Seaton, the scientist in question, who stood apart from the dancing
throng, in a kind of frowning disdain, looking on, much as one might
fancy a forest animal looking at the last gambols of prey It
purposed to devour. He had taken the first convenient interval to
disappear, and as he did not return, Miss Herbert had asked her
hostess what had become of him? Morgana, her cheeks flushed prettily
by a just-finished dance, smiled in surprise at the question.

"How should I know?" she replied--"I am not his keeper?"

"But--but--you are interested in him?" Lydia suggested.

"Interested? Oh, yes! Who would not be interested in a man who says
he can destroy half the world if he wants to! He assumes to be a
sort of deity, you know!--Jove and his thunderbolts in the shape of
a man in a badly cut suit of modern clothes! Isn't it fun!" She gave
a little peal of laughter. "And every one in the room to-night
thinks I am going to marry him!"

"And are you not?"

"Can you imagine it! ME, married? Lydia, Lydia, do you take me for a
fool!" She laughed again--then grew suddenly serious. "To think of
such a thing! Fancy ME!--giving my life into the keeping of a
scientific wizard who, if he chose, could reduce me to a little heap
of dust in two minutes, and no one any the wiser! Thank you! The
sensational press has been pretty full lately of men's brutalities
to women,--and I've no intention of adding myself to the list of
victims! Men ARE brutes! They were born brutes, and brutes they will
remain!"

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.