The Secret Power - Marie Corelli (books to get back into reading TXT) 📗

she wore a broad- brimmed Tuscan straw hat with a fold of blue carelessly twined about it. She made a pretty picture—one of extraordinary youthfulness for any woman out of her ‘teens—so much so that Lady Kingswood wondered if voyages in the air would be found to have a rejuvenating effect.

“They do not admit women into the actual monastery”—she went on— “Feminine frivolities are forbidden! But the ruined cloister is open to visitors and I shall ask to see Don Aloysius there.”

She lightly waved adieu and went, leaving her amiable and contented chaperone to the soothing companionship of a strip of embroidery at which she worked with the leisurely tranquillity which such an occupation engenders.

The ruined cloister looked very beautiful that morning, with its crumbling arches crowned and festooned with roses climbing every way at their own sweet will, and Morgana’s light figure gave just the touch of human interest to the solemn peacefulness of the scene. She waited but two or three minutes before Don Aloysius appeared—he had seen her arrive from the window of his own private library. He approached her slowly—there was a gravity in the expression of his face that almost amounted to coldness, and no smile lightened it as she met his keen, fixed glance.

“So you have come to me at last!” he said—“I have not merited your confidence till now! Why?”

His rich voice had a ring of deep reproach in its tone—and she was for a moment taken aback. Then her native self-possession and perfect assurance returned.

“Dear Father Aloysius, you do not want my confidence! You know all I can tell you!” she said—and drawing close to him she laid her hand on his arm—“Am I not right?”

A tremor shook him—gently he put her hand aside.

“You think I know!” he replied—“You imagine—”

“Oh, no, I imagine nothing!” and she smiled—“I am sure—yes, SURE!- that you have the secret of things that seem fabulous and yet are true! It was you who first told me of the Brazen City in the Great Desert,-you said it was a mere tradition—but you filled my mind with a desire to find it—”

“And you found it?” he interrupted, quickly—“You found it?”

“You know I did!” she replied—“Why ask the question? Messages on a Sound-Ray can reach YOU, as well as me!”

He moved to the stone bench which occupied a corner of the cloister and sat down. He was very pale and his eyes were feverishly bright. Presently he seemed to recover himself, and spoke more in his usual manner.

“Rivardi has been here every day”—he said—“He has talked of nothing but you. He told me that he and Gaspard fell suddenly asleep—for which they were grievously ashamed of themselves—and that you took control of the air-ship and turned it homeward before you had given them any chance to explore the desert—”

“Quite true!” she answered, tranquilly—“And—YOU knew all that before he told you! You knew that I was compelled to turn the ship homeward because it was not allowed to proceed! Dear Father Aloysius, you cannot hide yourself from me! You are one of the few who have studied the secrets of the approaching future,—the ‘change’ which is imminent—the ‘world to come’ which is coming! Yes!—and you are brave to live as you do in the fetters of a conventional faith when you have such a far wider outlook—”

He stopped her by a gesture, rising from where he sat and extending a hand of warning and authority.

“Child, beware what you say!” and his voice had a ring of sternness in its mellow tone—“If I know what you think I know, on what ground do you suppose I have built my knowledge? Only on that faith which you call ‘conventional’—that faith which has never been understood by the world’s majority! That faith which teaches of the God-in-Man, done to death by the Man WITHOUT God in him!—and who, nevertheless, by the spiritual strength of a resurrection from the grave, proves that there is no death but only continuous renewal of life! This is no mere ‘convention’ of faith,—no imaginary or traditional tale—it is pure scientific fact. The virginal conception of divinity in woman, and the transfiguration of manhood, these things are true— and the advance of scientific discovery will prove them so beyond all denial. We have held the faith, AS IT SHOULD BE HELD, for centuries,—and it has led us, and continues to lead us, to all we know.”

“We?” queried Morgana, softly—“WE—of the Church?—or of the Brazen City?”

He looked at her for some moments without speaking. His tall fine figure seemed more than ever stately and imposing—and his features expressed a calm assurance and dignity of thought which gave them additional charm.

“Your question is bold!” he said—“Your enterprising spirit stops at nothing! You have learned much—you are resolved to learn more! Well,—I cannot prevent you,—nor do I see any reason why I should try! You are a resolved student,—you are also a woman:—a woman different to ordinary women and set apart from ordinary womanhood. So I say to you ‘We of the Brazen City’—if you will! For more than three thousand years ‘we’ have existed—‘we’ have studied, ‘we’ have discovered—‘we’ have known. ‘We,’ the selected offspring of all the race that ever were born,—‘we,’ the pure blood of the earth,—‘we,’ the progenitors of the world TO BE,—‘we’ have lived, watching temporary civilisations rise and fall,—seeing generations born and die, because, like weeds, they have grown without any root of purpose save to smother their neighbours and destroy. ‘We’ remain as commanded, waiting for the full declaration and culmination of those forces which are already advancing to the end,—when the ‘Kingdom’ comes!”

Morgana moved close to him, and looked up at his grave, dark face beseechingly.

“Then why are you here?” she asked—“If you know,—if you were ever in the ‘Brazen City’ how did it happen that you left it? How could it happen?”

He smiled down into the jewel-blue of her clear eyes.

“Little child!” he said—“Brilliant soul, that rejoiced in the perception that gave you what you called ‘the inside of a sun-ray,’- you, for whom the things which interest men and women of the moment are mere toys of poor invention-you, of all others, ought to know that when the laws of the universe are understood and followed, there can be no fetters on the true liberty of the subject? IF I were ever in the ‘Brazen City’—mind! I say ‘if’—there could be nothing to prevent my leaving it if I chose—”

She interrupted him by the uplifting of a hand.

“I was told”—she said slowly—“by a Voice that spoke to me—that if I went there I should have to stay there!”

“No doubt!” he answered—“For love would keep you!”

“Love!” she echoed.

“Even so! Such love as you have never dreamed of, dear soul weighted with millions of gold! Love!—the only force that pulls heaven to earth and binds them together!”

“But YOU—you—if you were in the Brazen City—”

“If!” he repeated, emphatically.

“If—yes! if”—she said—“If you were there, love did not hold YOU?”

“No!”

There was a silence. The sunshine burned down on the ancient grey flagstones of the cloister, and two gorgeous butterflies danced over the climbing roses that hung from the arches in festal wreaths of pink and white. A luminance deeper than that of the sun seemed to encircle the figures standing together—the one so elfin, light and delicate,—the other invested with a kind of inward royalty expressing itself outwardly in stateliness of look and bearing. Something mysteriously suggestive of super-humanity environed them; a spirit and personality higher than mortal. After some minutes Aloysius spoke again—

“The city is not a ‘Brazen’ City”—he said—“It has been called so by travellers who have seen its golden towers glistening afar off in a sudden refraction of light lasting but a few seconds. Gold often looks like brass and brass like gold, in human entities as in architectural results.” He paused—then went on slowly and impressively—“Surely you remember,-you MUST remember, that it is written ‘The city lieth four-square, and the length is as large as the breadth. The wall thereof is according to the measure of a man— that is, of the Angel. And the city is of pure gold.’ Does that give you no hint of the measure of a man, that is, of the Angel?—of the ‘new heavens and the new earth,’ the old things being passed away? Dear child, you have studied deeply—you have adventured far and greatly!—continue your quest, but do not forget to take your guiding Light, the Faith which half the world and more ignores!”

She sprang to him impulsively and caught his hands.

“Oh, you must help me!” she cried—“You must teach me—I want to know what YOU know!—”

He held her gently and with reverent tenderness.

“I know no more than you,”—he answered—“you work by Science—I, by Faith, the bed-rock from Which all science proceeds—and we arrive at the same discoveries by different methods. I am a poor priest in the temple of the Divine, serving my turn—but I am not alone in service, for in every corner of the habitable globe there is one member of our ‘City’ who communicates with the rest. One!—but enough! To-day’s commercial world uses old systems of wireless telegraphy and telephony which were known and done with thousands of years ago—but ‘we’ have the sound-ray—the light which carries music on its wings and creates form as it goes.”

Here he released her hands.

“Knowing what you do know you have no need of my help”—he continued—“You have not found happiness yet, because that only comes through one source—Love. But I doubt not that God will give you that in His own good time.” He paused—then went on—“As you go out, enter the chapel for a moment and send a prayer on the Sound- Ray to the Centre of all Knowledge,—the source of all discovery— have no fear but that it will arrive! The rest is for you to decide.”

She hesitated.

“And—the Brazen City?” she queried.

“The Golden City!” he answered—“Well, you have had your experience! Your name is known there—and no doubt you can hear from it when you will.”

“Do YOU hear from it?” she asked, pointedly.

He smiled gravely.

“I may not speak of what I hear”—he answered. “Nor may you!”

She was silent for a space—then looked up at him appealingly.

“The world is changed for me”—she said—“It will never be the same again! I do not seem to belong to it—other influences surround me,- how I live in it?-how shall I work—what shall I do?”

“You will do as you have always done—go your own way”—he replied— “The way which has led you to so much discovery and attainment. You must surely know in your own soul that you have been guided in that way—and your success is the result of allowing yourself to BE guided. In all things you will be guided now—have no fear for yourself! All will be well for you!”

“And for you?” she asked impulsively.

He smiled.

“Why think of me?” he said, gently—“I am nothing in your life—”

“You are!” she replied—“You are more than you imagine. I begin to realise—”

He held up his hand with a warning gesture.

“Hush!” he said—“There are things of which we must not speak!”

At that moment the monastery bell tolled the midday “Angelus.” Don Aloysius bent his head—Morgana instinctively did the same. Within the building the deep voices of the brethren sounded, chanting,—

“Angelus Domini nuntiavit Maria Et concepit de Spiritu sancto.”

As the salutation to heaven finished, the mellow music of