The Secret Power by Marie Corelli (the reading strategies book txt) 📕

“Why not?” and Don Aloysius returned her smile. “If old Alison has anything to do with your happiness I should like to hear.”

“Well, you see, you are a priest,” went on Morgana, slowly, “and she is a witch. Oh yes, truly!—a real witch! There is no one in all that part of the Highlands that does not know of her, and the power she has! She is very, very old—some folks say she is more than a hundred. She knew my father and grandfather—she came to my father’s cottage the night I was born, and said strange things about a ‘May child’—I was born in May. We went—as I tell you—to see her, and found her spinning. She looked up from her wheel as we entered—but she did not seem surprised at our coming. Her eyes were very bright- not like the eyes of an old person. She spoke to my father at once her voice was very clear and musical. ‘Is it you, John Royal?’ she said-‘and you have brought your fey lass along with you!’ That was the first time I ever heard the word ‘fey.’ I did not understand it then.”

“And do you understand it now?” asked Aloysius.

“Yes”—she replied,—“I understand it now! It is a wonderful thing to be born ‘fey’! But it is a kind of witchcraft,—and you would be displeased—”

“At what should I be displeased?” and the priest bent his eyes very searchingly upon her—“At the fact,—which none can disprove,—that ‘there are things in heaven and earth’ which are beyond our immediate knowledge? That there are women strangely endowed with premonitory instincts land preternatural gifts? Dear child, there is nothing in all this that can or could displease me! My faith—the faith of my Church—is founded on the preternatural endowment of a woman!”

She lifted her eyes to his, and a little sigh came from her lips.

“Yes, I know what you mean!”—she said—“But I am sure you cannot possibly realise the weird nature of old Alison! She made me stand before her, just where the light of the sun streamed through the open doorway, and she looked at me for a long time with such a steady piercing glance that I felt as if her eyes were boring through my flesh. Then she got up from her spinning and pushed away the wheel, and stretched out both her hands towards me, crying out in quite a strange, wild voice—‘Morgana! Morgana! Go your ways, child begotten of the sun and shower!—go your ways! Little had mortal father or mother to do with your making, for you are of the fey folk! Go your ways with your own people!—you shall hear them whispering in the night and singing in the morning,—and they shall command you and you shall obey!—they shall beckon and you shall follow! Nothing of mortal flesh and blood shall hold you—no love shall bind you,—no hate shall wound you!—the clue is given into your hand,—the secret is disclosed—and the spirits of air and fire and water have opened a door that you may enter in! Hark!—I can hear their voices calling “Morgana! Morgana!” Go your ways, child!— go hence and far!—the world is too small for your wings!’ She looked so fierce and grand and terrible that I was frightened—I was only a girl of sixteen, and I ran to my father and caught his hand. He spoke quite gently to Alison, but she seemed quite beyond herself and unable to listen. ‘Your way lies down a different road, John Royal’—she said—‘You that herded sheep on these hills and that now hoard millions of money—of what use to you is your wealth? You are but the worker,—gathering gold for HER—the “fey” child born in an hour of May moonlight! You must go, but she must stay,—her own folk have work for her to do!’ Then my father said, ‘Dear Alison, don’t frighten the child!’ and she suddenly changed in her tone and manner. ‘Frighten her?’ she muttered. ‘I would not frighten her for the world!’ And my father pushed me towards her and whispered—‘Ask her to bless you before you go.’ So I just knelt before her, trembling very much, and said, ‘Dear Alison, bless me!’—and she stared at me and lifted her old brown wrinkled hands and laid them on my head. Then she spoke some words in a strange language as to herself, and afterwards she said, ‘Spirit of all that is and ever shall be, bless this child who belongs to thee, and not to man! Give her the power to do what is commanded, to the end.’ And at this she stopped suddenly and bending down she lifted my head in her two hands and looked at me hard—‘Poor child, poor child! Never a love for you—never a love! Alone you are, alone you must be! Never a love for a “fey” woman!’ And she let me go, and sat down again to her spinning-wheel, nor would she say another word—neither to me nor to my father.”

“And you call THIS your second experience of happiness?” said Don Aloysius, wonderingly—“What happiness did you gain by your interview with this old Alison?”

“Ah!” and Morgana smiled—“You would not understand me if I tried to explain! Everything came to me!—yes, everything! I began to live in a world of my own—” she paused, and her eyes grew dark and pensive, “and I have lived in it ever since. That is why I say my visit to old Alison was my second experience of happiness. I’ve seen her again many times since then, but not with quite the same impression.”

“She is alive still?”

“Oh, yes! I often fancy she will never die!”

There was a silence of some minutes. Morgana rose, and crossing over to the old well, studied the crimson passion-flowers which twined about it, with almost loving scrutiny.

“How beautiful they are!” she said—“And they seem to serve no purpose save that of simple beauty!”

“That is enough for many of God’s creatures”—said Aloysius—“To give joy and re-create joy is the mission of perfection.”

She looked at him wistfully.

“Alas, poor me!” she sighed—“I can neither give joy nor create it!”

“Not even with all your wealth?”

“Not even with all my wealth!” she echoed. “Surely you—a priest— know what a delusion wealth really is so far as happiness goes?— mere happiness? course you can buy everything with it—and there’s the trouble! When everything is bought there’s nothing left! And if you try to help the poor they resent it—they think you are doing it because you are afraid of them! Perhaps the worst of all things to do is to help artists—artists of every kind!—for THEY say you want to advertise yourself as a ‘generous patron’! Oh, I’ve tried it all and it’s no use. I was just crazy to help all the scientists,— once!—but they argued and quarrelled so much as to which ‘society’ deserved most money that I dropped the whole offer, and started ‘scientising’ myself. There is one man I tried to lift out of his brain-bog,—but he would have none of me, and he is still in his bog!”

“Oh! There is one man!” said Aloysius, with a smile.

“Yes, good father!” And Morgana left the passion-flowers and moved slowly back to her seat on the stone-bench—“There is one man! He was my third and last experience of happiness. When I first met him, my whole heart gave itself in one big pulsation—but like a wave of the sea, the pulsation recoiled, and never again beat on the grim rock of human egoism!” She laughed gaily, and a delicate colour flushed her face. “But I was happy while the ‘wave’ lasted,—and when it broke, I still played on the shore with its pretty foam- bells.”

“You loved this man?” and the priest’s grave eyes dwelt on her searchingly.

“I suppose so—for the moment! Yet no,—it was not love—it was just an ‘attraction’—he was—he IS—clever, and thinks he can change the face of the world. But he is fooling with fire! I tell you I tried to help him—for he is deadly poor. But he would have none of me nor of what he calls my ‘vulgar wealth.’ This is a case in point where wealth is useless! You see?”

Don Aloysius was silent.

“Then”—Morgana went on—“Alison is right. The witchery of the Northern Highlands is in my blood,—never a love for me—alone I am- alone I must be!-never a love for a ‘fey’ woman!”

Over the priest’s face there passed a quiver as of sudden pain.

“You wrong yourself, my child”—he said, slowly—“You wrong yourself very greatly! You have a power of which you appear to be unconscious—a great, a terrible power!—you compel interest—you attract the love of others even if you yourself love no one—you draw the very soul out of a man—”

He paused, abruptly.

Morgana raised her eyes,—the blue lightning gleam flashed in their depths.

“Ah, yes!” she half whispered—“I know I have THAT power!”

Don Aloysius rose to his feet.

“Then,—if you know it,—in God’s name do not exercise it!” he said.

His voice shook—and with his right hand he gripped the crucifix he wore as though it were a weapon of self-defence. Morgana looked at him wonderingly for a moment,—then drooped her head with a strange little air of sudden penitence. Aloysius drew a quick sharp breath as of one in effort,—then he spoke again, unsteadily—

“I mean”—he said, smiling forcedly—“I mean that you should not— you should not break the heart of—of—the poor Giulio for instance!. . . it would not be kind.”

She lifted her eyes again and fixed them on him.

“No, it would not be kind!” she said, softly—“Dear Don Aloysius, I understand! And I will remember!” She glanced at a tiny diamond-set watch-bracelet on her wrist—“How late it is!—nearly all the morning gone! I have kept you so long listening to my talk—forgive me! I will run away now and leave you to think about my ‘intervals’ of happiness,—will you?—they are so few compared to yours!”

“Mine?” he echoed amazedly.

“Yes, indeed Your whole life is an interval of happiness between this world and the next, because you are satisfied in the service of God!”

“A poor service!” he said, turning his gaze away from her elfin figure and shining hair—“Unworthy,—shameful!—marred by sin at every moment! A priest of the Church must learn to do without happiness such as ordinary life can give—and without love,—such as woman may give—but—after all—the sacrifice is little.”

She smiled at him, sweetly—tenderly,

“Very little!” she said—“So little that it is not worth a regret! Good-bye! But not for long! Come and see me soon!”

Moving across the cloister with her light step she seemed to float through the sunshine like a part of it, and as she disappeared a kind of shadow fell, though no cloud obscured the sun. Don Aloysius watched her till she had vanished,—then turned aside into a small chapel opening out on the cloistered square—a chapel which formed part of the monastic house to which he belonged as Superior,—and there, within that still, incense-sweetened sanctuary, he knelt before the noble, pictured Head of the Man of Sorrows in silent confession and prayer.

CHAPTER X

Roger Seaton was a man of many philosophies. He had one for every