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

“Manella.”

“Manella—what?”

“Manella Soriso”—the girl answered—“I am Spanish by both parents,- -they are dead now. I was born at Monterey.”

Morgana began to hum softly—

She broke off,—then said—

“You have not seen many men?”

“Oh, yes, I have!” and Manella tossed her head airily—“Men all more or less alike—greedy for dollars, fond of smoke and cinema women,— I do not care for them. Some have asked me to marry, but I would rather hang myself than be wife to one of them!”

Morgana slid off the edge of her bed and stood upright, her white silk nightgown falling symmetrically round her small figure. With a dexterous movement she loosened the knot into which she had twisted her hair for the night, and it fell in a sinuous coil like a golden snake from head to knee. Manella stepped back in amazement.

“Oh!” she cried—“How beautiful! I have quite as much in quantity, but it is black and heavy—ugly!—no good. And he,—that man who lives in the hut on the hill—says there is nothing he hates so much as a woman with golden hair! How can he hate such a lovely thing!”

Morgana shrugged her shoulders.

“Each one to his taste!” she said, airily—“Some like black hair— some red—some gold—some nut-brown. But does it matter at all what men think or care for? To me it is perfectly indifferent! And you are quite right to prefer hanging to marriage—I do, myself!”

Fascinated by her wonderful elfin look as she stood like a white iris in its silken sheath, her small body’s outline showing dimly through the folds of her garment, Manella drew nearer, somewhat timidly.

“Ah, but I do not mean that I prefer hanging to real, true marriage!” she said—“When one loves, it is different! In love I would rather hang than not give myself to the man I love—give myself in all I am, and all I have! And YOU—you who look so pretty and wonderful—almost like a fairy!—do YOU not feel like that too?”

Morgana laughed—a little laugh sweet and cold as rain tinkling on glass.

“No, indeed!” she answered—“I have never felt like THAT! I hope I shall never feel like THAT! To feel like THAT is to feel like the female beasts of the field who only wait and live to be used by the males, giving ‘all they are and all they have,’ poor creatures! The bull does not ‘love’ the cow—he gives her a calf. When the calf is born and old enough to get along by itself, it forgets its mother just as its mother forgets IT, while the sire is blissfully indifferent to both! It’s really the same thing with human animals,- especially nowadays-only we haven’t the honesty to admit it! No, Manella Soriso!—with your good looks you ought to be far above ‘feeling like THAT!—you are a nobler creature than a cow! No wonder men despise women who are always on the cow level!”

She laughed again, and tripped lightly to the looking-glass.

“I must dress;”—she said—“And you can take a message to my chauffeur and tell him to get everything ready to start. I’ve had a lovely night’s rest and am quite fit for a long run.”

“Oh, are you going?” and Manella gave a little cry of pain—“I am sorry! I do want you to stay!”

Morgana’s eyes flashed mingled humour and disdain. “You quaint creature! Why should I stay? There’s nothing to stay for!”

“If there’s nothing to stay for, why did you come?”

This was an unexpected question, the result of a subconscious suggestion in Manella’s mind which she herself could not have explained.

Morgana seemed amused.

“What did I come for? Really, I hardly know! I am full of odd whims and fancies, and I like to humour myself in my various ways. I think I wanted to see a bit of California,—that’s all!”

“Then why not see more of it?” persisted Manella.

“Enough is better than too much!” laughed Morgana—“I am easily bored! This Plaza hotel would bore me to death! What do you want me to stay for? To see your man on the mountain?”

“No!” Manella replied with sudden sharpness—“No! I would not like you to see him! He would either hate you or love you!”

The grey-blue lightning flash glittered in Morgana’s eyes.

“You ARE a curious girl!” she said, slowly—“You might be a tragic actress and make your fortune on the stage, with that voice and that look! And yet you stay here as ‘help’ in a Sanatorium! Well! It’s a dull, dreary way of living, but I suppose you like it!”

“I DON’T like it!” declared Manella, vehemently, “I hate it! But what am I to do? I have no home and no money. I must earn my living somehow.”

“Will you come away with me?” said Morgana—“I’ll take you at once if you like!”

Manella stared in a kind of child-like wonderment,—her big dusky eyes grew brilliant,—then clouded with a sombre sadness.

“Thank you, Senora!” she answered, pronouncing the Spanish form of address with a lingering sweetness, “It is very good of you! But I should not please you. I do not know the world, and I am not quick to learn. I am better where I am.”

A little smile, dreamy and mysterious, crept round Morgana’s lips.

“Yes!perhaps you are!” she said-“I understand! You would not like to leave HIM! I am sure that is so! You want to feed your big bear regularly with bread and milk—yes, you poor deluded child! Courage! You may still have a chance to be, as you say, ‘his woman!’ And when you are I wonder how you will like it!”

She laughed, and began to brush her shining hair out in two silky lengths on either side. Manella gazed and gazed at the glittering splendour till she could gaze no more for sheer envy, and then she turned slowly and left the room.

Alone, Morgana continued brushing her hair meditatively,—then, twisting it up in a great coil out of her way, she proceeded with her toilette. Everything of the very finest and daintiest was hers to wear, from the silken hose to the delicate lace camisole, and when she reached the finishing point in her admirably cut summer serge gown and becoming close-fitting hat, she studied herself from head to foot in the mirror with fastidious care to be sure that every detail of her costume was perfect. She was fully aware that she was not a newspaper camera “beauty” and that she had subtle points of attraction which no camera could ever catch, and it was just these points which she knew how to emphasise.

“I hate untidy travellers!”—she would say—“Horrors of men and women in oil-skins, smelling of petrol! No goblin ever seen in a nightmare could be uglier than the ordinary motorist!”

She had no luggage with her, save an adaptable suitcase which, she declared “held everything.” This she quickly packed and locked, ready for her journey. Then she stepped to the window and waved her hand towards the near hill and the “hut of the dying.”

“Fool of a bear man!” she said, apostrophising the individual she chose to call by that name—“Here you come along to a wild place in California running away from ME,—and here you find a sort of untutored female savage eager and willing to be your ‘woman!’ Well, why not? She’s just the kind of thing you want—to fetch wood, draw water, cook food, and—bear children! And when the children come they’ll run about the hill like savages themselves, and yell and dance and be greedy and dirty—and you’ll presently wonder whether you are a civilised man or a species of unthinking baboon! You will be living the baboon life,—and your brain will grow thicker and harder as you grow older,—and your great scientific discovery will be buried in the thickness and hardness and never see the light of day! All this, IF she is ‘your woman!’ It’s a great ‘if’ of course!- but she’s big and handsome, with a beautiful body and splendid strength, and I never heard of a man who could resist beauty and strength together. As for ME and my ‘vulgar wealth’ as you call it, I’m a little wisp of straw not worth your thought!-or so you assume—no, good Bear!—not till we come to a tussle—if we ever do!”

She took up her gloves and hand-bag and went downstairs, entering the broad, airy flower-bordered lounge of the Plaza with a friendly nod and smile to the book-keeper in the office where she paid her bill. Her chauffeur, a smart Frenchman in quiet livery, was awaiting her with an assistant groom or page beside him.

“We go on to-day, Madame?” he enquired.

“Yes,—we go on”—she replied—“as quickly and as far as possible. Just fetch my valise—it’s ready packed in my room.”

The groom hurried away to obey this order, and Morgana glancing around her saw that she was an object of intense curiosity to some of the hotel inmates who were in the lounge—men and women both. Her grey-blue eyes flashed over them all carelessly and lighted on Manella who stood shrinking aside in a corner. To her she beckoned smilingly.

“Come and see me off!” she said—“Take a look at my car and see how you’d like to travel in it!”

Manella pursed her lips and shook her head.

“I’d rather not!” she murmured—“It’s no use looking at what one can never have!”

Morgana laughed.

“As you please!” she said—“You are an odd girl, but you are quite beautiful! Don’t forget that! Tell the man on the mountain that I said so!—quite beautiful! Good-bye!”

She passed through the lounge with a swift grace of movement and entered her sumptuous limousine, lined richly in corded rose silk and fitted with every imaginable luxury like a queen’s boudoir on wheels, while Manella craned her neck forward to see the last of her. Her valise was quickly strapped in place, and in another minute to the sound of a high silvery bugle note (which was the only sort of “hooter” she would tolerate) the car glided noiselessly away down the broad, dusty white road, its polished enamel and silver points glittering like streaks of light vanishing into deeper light as it disappeared.

“There goes the richest woman in America!” said the hotel clerk for the benefit of anyone who might care to listen to the announcement,- -“Morgana Royal!”

“Is that so?” drawled a sallow-faced man, reclining in an invalid chair—“She’s not much to look at!”

And he yawned expansively.

He was right. She was not much to look at. But she was more than looks ever made. So, with sorrow and with envy, thought Manella, who instinctively felt that though she herself might be something to look at and “quite beautiful,” she was nothing else. She had never heard the word “fey.” The mystic glamour of the Western Highlands was shut away from her by the wide barrier of many seas and curtains of cloud. And therefore she did not know that “fey” women are a race apart from all other women in the world.

CHAPTER V

That evening at sunset Manella made her way towards the hill and the “House of the Dying,” moved by she knew not what strange impulse. She had no excuse whatever for going; she knew that the man living up there in whom she was so much interested had as much food for three days as he