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

I do not think it will be possible. There is the woman who loves him— her influence may do something—”

“If he ever loved her—yes”—and Morgana smiled rather sadly—“But if he did not—if the love is all on her side—”

Ardini shrugged his shoulders.

“A great love is always on the woman’s side,”—he said—“Men are too selfish to love perfectly. In this case, of course, there is no emotion, no sentiment of any sort left in the mere hulk of man. But still I will continue my work and do my best.”

He left her then,—and she stood for a while alone, gazing far out to the blue sea and sunlight, scarcely seeing them for the half- unconscious tears that blinded her eyes. Suddenly a Ray, not of the sun, shot athwart the loggia and touched her with a deep gold radiance. She saw it and looked up, listening.

“Morgana!”

The Voice quivered along the Ray like the touched string of an aeolian harp. She answered it in almost a whisper—

“I hear!”

“You grieve for sorrows not your own,” said the Voice—“And we love you for it. But you must not waste your tears on the errors of others. Each individual Spirit makes its own destiny, and no other but Itself can help Itself. You are one of the Chosen and Beloved!— You must fulfil the happiness you have created for your own soul! Come to us soon!” A thrill of exquisite joy ran through her.

“I will!” she said—“When my duties here are done.”

The golden Ray decreased in length and brilliancy, and finally died away in a fine haze mingling with the air. She watched it till it vanished,—then with a sense of relief from her former sadness, she went into the house to see Manella. The girl had risen from her bed, and with the assistance of Lady Kingswood, who tended her with motherly care, had been arrayed in a loose white woollen gown, which, carelessly gathered round her, intensified by contrast the striking beauty of her dark eyes and hair, and ivory pale skin. As Morgana entered the room she smiled, her small even teeth gleaming like tiny pearls in the faint rose of her pretty mouth, and stretched out her hand.

“What has he said to you?” she asked—“Tell me! Is he not glad to see you?—to know he is with you?—safe with you in your home?”

Morgana sat down beside her.

“Dear Manella”—she answered, gently and with tenderest pity—“He does not know me. He knows nothing! He speaks a few words,—but he has no consciousness of what he is saying.”

Manella looked at her wonderingly—

“Ah, that is because he is not himself yet”—she said—“The crash of the rocks—the pouring of the flood—this was enough to kill him— but he will recover in a little while and he will know you!—yes, he will know you, and he will thank God for life to see you!”

Her unselfish joy in the idea that the man she loved would soon recognise the woman he preferred to herself, was profoundly touching, and Morgana kissed the hand she held.

“Dear, I am afraid he will never know anything more in this world”— she said, sorrowfully—“Neither man nor woman! Nor can he thank God for a life which will be long, living death! Unless YOU can help him!”

“I?” and Manella’s eyes dilated with brilliant eagerness; “I will give my life for his! What can I do?”

And then, with patient slowness and gentleness, little by little, Morgana told her all. Lady Kingswood, sitting in an arm-chair near the window, worked at her embroidery, furtive tears dropping now and again on the delicate pattern, as she heard the details of the tragic verdict given by one of Europe’s greatest medical scientists on the hopelessness of ever repairing the damage wrought by the shock which had shaken a powerful brain into ruins. But it was wonderful to watch Manella’s face as she listened. Sorrow, pity, tenderness, love, all in turn flashed their heavenly radiance in her eyes and intensified her beauty, and when she had heard all, she smiled as some lovely angel might smile on a repentant soul. Her whole frame seemed to vibrate with a passion of unselfish emotion.

“He will be my care!” she said—“The good God has heard my prayers and given him to me to be all mine!” She clasped her hands in a kind of ecstasy, “My life is for him and him alone! He will be my little child!—this big, strong, poor broken man!—and I will nurse him back to himself,—I will watch for every little sign of hope!—he shall learn to see through my eyes—to hear through my ears—to remember all that he has forgotten!. . .” Her voice broke in a half sob. Morgana put an arm about her.

“Manella, Manella!” she said—“You do not know what you say—you cannot understand the responsibility—it would make you a prisoner for life—”

“Oh, I understand!” and Manella shook back her dark hair with the little proud, decisive gesture characteristic of her temperament— “Yes!—and I wish to be so imprisoned! If we had not been rescued by you, we should have died together!—now you will help us to live together! Will you not? You are a little white angel—a fairy!— yes!—to me you are!—your heart is full of unspent love! You will let me stay with him always—always?—As his nurse?—his servant?— his slave?”

Morgana looked at her tenderly, touched to the quick by her eagerness and her beauty, now intensified by the glow of excitement which gave a roseate warmth to her cheeks and deeper darkness to her eyes. All ignorant and unsuspecting as she was of the world’s malignity and cruel misjudgments, how could it be explained to her that a woman of such youth and loveliness, electing to dwell alone with a man, even if the man were a hopeless paralytic, would make herself the subject of malicious comment and pitiless scandal! Some reflection of this feeling showed itself in the expression of Morgana’s face while she hesitated to answer, holding the girl’s hand in her own and stroking it affectionately the while. Manella, gazing at her as a worshipper might gaze at a sacred picture, instinctively divined her thought.

“Ah? I know what you would say!” she exclaimed, “That I might bring shame to him by my companionship—always—yes!—that is possible!— wicked people would talk of him and judge him wrongly—”

“Oh, Manella, dear!” murmured Morgana—“Not him—not him—but YOU!”

“Me?” She tossed back her wealth of hair, and smiled—“What am I? Just a bit of dust in his path! I am nothing at all! I do not care what anybody says or thinks of ME!—what should it matter! But see!- to save HIM-let me be his wife!”

“His wife!” Morgana repeated the words in amazement, and Lady Kingswood, laying down her work, gazed at the two beautiful women, the one so spiritlike and fair, the other so human and queenly, in a kind of stupefaction, wondering if she had heard aright.

“His wife! Yes!”. . . Manella spoke with a thrill of exultation in her voice,—and she caught Morgana’s hand and kissed it fondly—“His wife! It is the only way I can be his slave-woman! Let me marry him while he knows nothing, so that I may have the right to wait upon him and care for him! He shall never know! For—if he comes to himself again—please God he will!—as soon as that happens I will go away at once. He will never know!—he shall never learn who it is that has cared for him! You see? I shall never be really his wife— nor he my husband—only in name. And then—when he comes out of the darkness—when he is strong and well once more, he will go to YOU!— you whom he loves—”

Morgana silenced her by a gesture which was at once commanding and sweetly austere.

“Dear girl, he never loved me!” she said, gently—“He has always loved himself. Yes!—you know that as well as I do! Once—I fancied I loved HIM—but now I know my way of love is not his. Let us say no more of it! You wish to be his wife? Do you think what that means? He will never know he is your husband—never recognise you,—your life will be sacrificed to a helpless creature whose brain is gone— who will be unconscious of your care and utterly irresponsive. Oh, sweet, TOO loving Manella!—you must not pledge the best years of your youth and beauty to such a destiny!”

Manella’s dark eyes flashed with passionate ardour and enthusiasm.

“I must—I must!” she said—“It is the work God gives me to do! Do you not see how it is with me? It is my one love—the best of my heart!—the pulse of my life! Youth and beauty!—what are they without him? Ill or well, he is all I care for, and if I may not care for him I will die! It is quite easy to die—to make an end!— but if there is any youth or beauty to spend, it will be better to spend it on love than in death! My white angel, listen and be patient with me! You ARE patient but still be more so!—you know there will be none in the world to care for him!—ah!—when he was well and strong he said that love would weary him—he did not think he would ever be helpless and ill!—ah, no!—but a broken brain is put away—out of sight—to be forgotten like a broken toy! He was at work on some wonderful invention—some great secret!—it will never be known now—not a soul will ever ask what has become of it or of him! The world does not care what becomes of anyone—it has no sympathy. Only those who love greatly have any pity!”

She clasped her hands and lifted them in an attitude of prayer, laying them against Morgana’s breast.

“You will let me have my way—surely you will?” she pleaded—“You are a little angel of mercy, unlike any other woman I ever saw—so white and pure and sweet!—you understand it all! In his dreadful weakness and loneliness, God gives him to ME!—happy me, who am young and strong enough to care for him and attend upon him. I have no money,—perhaps he has none either, but I will work to keep him,- I am clever at my needle-I can embroider quite well—and I will manage to earn enough for us both. “Her voice broke in a sob, and Morgana, the tears falling from her own eyes, drew her into a close embrace.

And she murmured plaintively again—

“His wife!—I must be his wife,—his serving-woman—then no one can forbid me to be with him! You will find some good priest to say the marriage service for us and give us God’s benediction—it will mean nothing to him, because he cannot know or understand,—but to me it will be a holy sacrament!”

Then she broke down and wept softly till the pent-up passion of her heart was relieved, and Morgana, mastering her own emotion, had soothed her into quietude. Leaning back from her arm-chair where she had rested since rising from her bed, she looked up with an anxious appeal in her lovely eyes.

“Let me tell you something before I forget it again”—she said—“It is something terrible—the earthquake.”

“Yes, yes, do not think of it now”—said Morgana, hastily, afraid that her mind would wander into painful mazes of recollection—“That is all over.”

“Ah, yes! But you should know the truth! It was NOT an earthquake!” she persisted—“It was not God’s doing! It was HIS work!”

And she indicated by a gesture the next room where Roger Seaton lay.

A cold horror ran through Morgana’s blood. HIS