The Secret Power

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!"

"Then you don't like him?" persisted Lydia, moved, in spite of herself, by curiosity, and also by a vague wonder at the strange brilliancy of complexion and eyes which gave to Morgana a beauty quite unattainable by features only—"You're not set on him?"

Morgana held up a finger.

"Listen!" she said—"Isn't that a lovely valse? Doesn't the music seem to sweep round and tie us all up in a garland of melody! How far, far above all these twirling human microbes it is!—as far as heaven from earth! If we could really obey the call of that music we should rise on wings and fly to such wonderful worlds!—as it is, we can only hop round and round like motes in a sunbeam and imagine we are enjoying ourselves for an hour or two! But the music means so much more!" She paused, enrapt;—then in a lighter tone went on—"And you think I would marry? I would not marry an emperor if there were one worth having—which there isn't!—and as for Roger Seaton, I certainly am not 'set' on him as you so elegantly put it! And he's not 'set' on me. We're both 'set' on something else!"

She was standing near an open window as she spoke, and she looked up at the dark purple sky sprinkled with stars. She continued slowly, and with emphasis—

"I might—possibly I might—have helped him to that something else—if I had not discovered something more!"

She lifted her hand with a commanding gesture as though unconsciously,—then let it drop at her side. Lydia Herbert looked at her perplexedly.

"You talk so very strangely!" she said.

Morgana smiled.

"Yes, I know I do!" she admitted—"I am what old Scotswomen call 'fey'! You know I was born away in the Hebrides,—my father was a poor herder of sheep at one time before he came over to the States. I was only a baby when I was carried away from the islands of mist and rain—but I was 'fey' from my birth—"

"What is fey?" interrupted Miss Herbert.

"It's just everything that everybody else is NOT"—Morgana replied—"'Fey' people are magic people; they see what no one else sees,—they hear voices that no one else hears—voices that whisper secrets and tell of wonders as yet undiscovered—" She broke off suddenly. "We must not stay talking here"—she resumed-"All the folks will say we are planning the bridesmaids' dresses and that the very day of the ceremony is fixed! But you can be sure that I am not going to marry anybody—least of all Roger Seaton!"

"You like him though! I can see you like him!"

"Of course I like him! He's a human magnet,—he 'draws'! You fly towards him as if he were a bit of rubbed sealing-wax and you a snippet of paper! But you soon drop off! Oh, that valse! Isn't it entrancing!"

And, swinging herself round lightly like a bell-flower in a breeze she danced off alone and vanished in the crowd of her guests.

Lydia Herbert recalled this conversation now, as she stood looking from the vine-clad verandah of her hotel towards the sea, and again saw, as in a vision, the face and eyes of her "fey" friend,—a face by no means beautiful in feature, but full of a sparkling attraction which was almost irresistible.

"Nothing in her!" had declared New York society generally—"Except her money! And her hair—but not even that unless she lets it down!"

Lydia had seen it so "let down," once, and only once, and the sight of such a glistening rope of gold had fairly startled her.

"All your own?" she had gasped.

And with a twinkling smile, and comic hesitation of manner Morgana had answered.

"I—I THINK it is! It seems so! I don't believe it will come off unless you pull VERY hard!"

Lydia had not pulled hard, but she had felt the soft rippling mass falling from head to far below the knee, and had silently envied the owner its possession.

"It's a great bother," Morgana declared—"I never know what to do with it. I can't dress it 'fashionably' one bit, and when I twist it up it's so fine it goes into nothing and never looks the quantity it is. However, we must all have our troubles!—with some it's teeth—with others it's ankles—we're never QUITE all right! The thing is to endure without complaining!"

"And this curious creature who talked "so very strangely," possessed millions of money! Her father, who had arrived in the States from the wildest north of Scotland with practically not a penny, had so gathered and garnered every opportunity that came in his way that every investment he touched seemed to turn to five times its first value under his fingers. When his wife died very soon after his wealth began to accumulate, he was beset by women of beauty and position eager to take her place, but he was adamant against all their blandishments and remained a widower, devoting his entire care to the one child he had brought with him as an infant from the Highland hills, and to whom he gave a brilliant but desultory and uncommon education. Life seemed to swirl round him in a glittering ring of gold of which he made himself the centre,—and when he died suddenly "from overstrain" as the doctors said, people were almost frightened to name the vast fortune his daughter inherited, accustomed as they were to the counting of many millions. And now—-?"

"California!" mused Lydia—"Sam Gwent thinks she has gone there after Roger Seaton. But what can be her object if she doesn't care for him? It's far more likely she's started for Sicily—she's having a palace built there for her small self to live in 'all by her lonesome'! Well! She can afford it!"

And with a short sigh she let go her train of thought and left the verandah,—it was time to change her costume and prepare "effects" to dazzle and bewilder the uncertain mind of a crafty old Croesus who, having freely enjoyed himself as a bachelor up to his present age of seventy-four, was now looking about for a young strong woman to manage his house and be a nurse and attendant for him in his declining years, for which service, should she be suitable, he would concede to her the name of "wife" in order to give stability to her position. And Lydia Herbert herself was privately quite aware of his views. Moreover she was entirely willing to accommodate herself to them for the sake of riches and a luxurious life, and the "settlement" she meant to insist upon if her plans ripened to fulfilment. She had no great ambitions; few women of her social class have. To be well housed, well fed and well clothed, and enabled to do the fashionable round without hindrance—this was all she sought, and of romance, sentiment, emotion or idealism she had none. Now and again she caught the flash of a thought in her brain higher than the level of material needs, but dismissed it more quickly than it came as—"Ridiculous! Absolute nonsense! Like Morgana!"

And to be like Morgana, meant to be like what cynics designate "an impossible woman,"—independent of opinions and therefore "not understood of the people."