A brilliant morning broke over the flower-filled gardens of the Palazzo
d'Oro, and the sea, stretched out in a wide radiance of purest blue
shimmered with millions of tiny silver ripples brushed on its surface
by a light wind as delicate as a bird's wing. Morgana stood in her
rose-marble loggia, looking with a pathetic wistfulness at the beauty
of the scene, and beside her stood Marco Ardini, scientist, surgeon and
physician, looking also, but scarcely seeing, his whole thought being
concentrated on the "case" with which he had been dealing.
"It is exactly as I at first told you,"--he said--"The man is strong in
muscle and sinew,--but his brain is ruined. It can no longer control or
command the body's mechanism,--therefore the body is practically
useless. Power of volition is gone,--the poor fellow will never be able
to walk again or to lift a hand. A certain faculty of speech is
left,--but even this is limited to a few words which are evidently the
result of the last prevailing thoughts impressed on the brain-cells. It
is possible he will repeat those words thousands of times!--the oftener
he repeats them the more he will like to say them."
"What are they?" Morgana asked in a tone of sorrow and compassion.
"Strange enough for a man in his condition"--replied Ardini--"And
always the same. 'THERE SHALL BE NO MORE WARS! THERE CAN BE NONE! I SAY
IT!--_I_ ONLY! IT IS MY GREAT SECRET! _I_ AM MASTER OF THE WORLD!' Poor
devil! What a 'master of the world' is there!"
Morgana shuddered as with cold, shading her eyes from the radiant
sunshine.
"Does he say nothing else?" she murmured--"Is there no name--no
place--that he seems to remember?"
"He remembers nothing--he knows nothing"--answered Ardini--"He does not
even realize me as a man--I might be a fish or a serpent for all his
comprehension. One glance at his moveless eyes is enough to prove that.
They are like pebbles in his head--without cognisance or expression. He
mutters the words 'Great Secret' over and over again, and tacks it on
to the other phrase of 'No more wars' in a semi-conscious sort of
gabble,--this is, of course, the disordered action of the brain working
to catch up and join together hopelessly severed fragments."
Morgana lifted her sea-blue eyes and looked with grave appeal into the
severely intellectual, half-frowning face of the great Professor.
"Is there no hope of an ultimate recovery?" she asked--"With time and
rest and the best of unceasing care, might not this poor brain right
itself?"
"Medically and scientifically speaking, there is no hope,--none
whatever"--he replied--"Though of course we all know that Nature's
remedial methods are inexhaustible, and often, to the wisest of us,
seem miraculous, because as yet we do not understand one tithe of her
processes. But--in this case,--this strange and terrible case"--and he
uttered the words with marked gravity,--"It is Nature's own force that
has wrought the damage,--some powerful influence which the man has been
testing has proved too much for him--and it has taken its own
vengeance."
Morgana heard this with strained interest and attention.
"Tell me just what you mean,"--she said--"There is something you do not
quite express--or else I am too slow to understand--"
Ardini took a few paces up and down the loggia and then halted, facing
her in the attitude of a teacher preparing to instruct a pupil.
"Signora,"--he said--"When you began to correspond with me some years
ago from America, I realised that I was in touch with a highly
intelligent and cultivated mind. I took you to be many years older than
you are, with a ripe scientific experience. I find you young,
beautiful, and pathetic in the pure womanliness of your nature, which
must be perpetually contending with an indomitable power of
intellectuality and of spirituality,--spirituality is the strongest
force of your being. You are not made like other women. This being so I
can say to you what other women would not understand. Science is my
life-subject, as it is yours,--it is a window set open in the universe
admitting great light. But many of us foolishly imagine that this light
emanates from ourselves as a result of our own cleverness, whereas it
comes from that Divine Source of all things, which we call God. We
refuse to believe this,--it wounds our pride. And we use the
discoveries of science recklessly and selfishly--without gratitude,
humbleness or reverence. So it happens that the first tendency of
godless men is to destroy. The love of destruction and torture shows
itself in the boy who tears off the wing of an insect, or kills a bird
for the pleasure of killing. The boy is father of the man. And we come,
after much ignorant denial and obstinacy, back to the inexorable truth
that 'they who take the sword shall perish with the sword.' If we
consider the 'sword' as a metaphor for every instrument of destruction,
we shall see the force of its application--the submarine, for example,
built for the most treacherous kind of sea-warfare--how often they that
undertake its work are slain themselves! And so it is through the whole
gamut of scientific discovery when it is used for inhuman and unlawful
purposes. But when this same 'sword' is lifted to put an end to
torture, disease, and the manifold miseries of life, then the Power
that has entrusted it to mankind endows it with blessing and there are
no evil results. I say this to you by way of explaining the view I am
forced to take of this man whose strange case you ask me to deal
with,--my opinion is that through chance or intention he has been
playing recklessly with a great natural force, which he has not
entirely understood, for some destructive purpose, and that it has
recoiled on himself."
Morgana looked him steadily in the eyes.
"You may be right,"--she said--"He is--or was--one of the most
brilliant of our younger scientists. You know his name--I have sent you
from New York some accounts of his work--He is Roger Seaton, whose
experiments in the condensation of radioactivity startled America some
four or five years ago--"
"Roger Seaton!" he exclaimed--"What! The man who professed to have
found a new power which would change the face of the world? ...
He,--this wreck?--this blind, deaf lump of breathing clay? Surely he
has not fallen on so horrible a destiny!"
Tears rushed to Morgana's eyes,--she could not answer. She could only
bend her head in assent.
Profoundly moved, Ardini took her hand, and kissed it with sympathetic
reverence.
"Signora," he said--"This is indeed a tragedy! You have saved this life
at I know not what risk to yourself--and as I am aware what a life of
great attainment it promised to be, you may be sure I will spare no
pains to bring it back to normal conditions. But frankly 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 work!--the widespread
ruin of villages and townships,--the devastation of a vast tract of
country--the deaths of hundreds of men, women and little children--HIS
work? Could it be possible? She stood transfixed,--while Manella went
on--
"I know it was his work!" she said--"I was warned by a friend of his
who came to 'la Plaza' that he was working at something which might
lose him his life. And so I watched. I told you how I followed him that
morning--how I saw him looking at a box full of shining things that
glittered like the points of swords,--how he put this box in a case and
then in a basket, and slung the basket over his shoulder, and went down
into the canon, and then to the cave where I found him. I called
him--he heard, and held up a miner's lamp and saw me!--then--then, oh,
dear God!--then he cursed me for following him,--he raised his arm to
strike me, and in his furious haste to reach me he slipped on the wet,
mossy stones. Something fell from his hand with a great crash like
thunder--and there was a sudden glare of fire!--oh, the awfulness of
that sound and that flame!--and the rocks rose up and split
asunder--the ground shook and broke under me--and I remember no
more--no more till I found myself here!--here with you!"
Morgana roused herself from the stupefaction of horror with which she
had listened to this narration.
"Do not think of it any more!" she said in a low sad voice--"Try to
forget it all. Yes, dear!--try to forget all the mad selfishness and
cruelty of the man you love! Poor, besotted soul!--he has a bitter
punishment!"
She could say no more then,--stooping, she kissed the girl on the white
forehead between the rippling waves of dark hair, and strove to meet
the searching eyes with a smile.
"Dear, beautiful angel, you will help me?" Manella pleaded--"You will
help me to be his wife?"
And Morgana answered with pitiful tenderness.
"I will!"
And with a sign to Lady Kingswood to come nearer and sit by the girl as
she lay among her pillows more or less exhausted, she herself left the
room. As she opened the door on her way out, the strong voice of Roger
Seaton rang out with singularly horrible harshness--
"There shall be no more wars! There can be none! I say it! My great
secret! I am master of the world!"
Shuddering as she heard, she pressed her hands over her ears and
hurried along the corridor. Her thoughts paraphrased the saying of
Madame Roland on Liberty--"Oh, Science! what crimes are committed in
thy name!" She was anxious to see and speak with Professor Ardini, but
came upon the Marchese Rivardi instead, who met her at the door of the
library and caught her by both hands.
"What is all this?" he demanded, insistently--"I MUST speak to you! You
have been weeping! What is troubling you?"
She drew her hands gently away from his.
"Nothing, Giulio!" and she smiled kindly--"I grieve for the griefs of
others--quite uselessly!--but I cannot help it!"
"There is no hope, then?" he said.
"None--not for the man"--she replied--"His body will live,--but his
brain is dead."
Rivardi gave an expressive gesture.
"Horrible! Better he should die!"
"Yes, far better! But the girl loves him. She is an ardent Spanish
creature--warm-hearted and simple as a child,--she believes"--and
Morgana's eyes had a pathetic wistfulness--"she believes,--as all women
believe when they love for the first time,--that love has a divine
power next to that of God!--that it will work miracles of recovery when
all seems lost. The disillusion comes, of course, sooner or later,--but
it has to come of itself--not through any other influence. She--Manella
Soriso--has resolved to be his wife."
"Gran' Dio!" Rivardi started back in utter amazement--"His wife?--That
girl? Young, beautiful? She will chain herself to a madman? Surely you
will not allow it!"
Morgana looked at him with a smile.
"Poor Giulio!" she said, softly--"You are a most unfortunate descendant
of your Roman ancestors as far as we women are concerned! You fall in
love with me--and you find I am not for you!--then you see a perfectly
lovely woman whom you cannot choose but admire--and a little stray
thought comes flying into your head--yes!--quite involuntarily!--that
perhaps--only perhaps--her love might come your way! Do not be angry,
my friend!--it was only a thought that moved you when you saw her the
other day--when I called you to look at her as she recovered
consciousness and lay on her bed like a sleeping figure of the
loveliest of pagan goddesses! What man could have seen her thus without
a thrill of tenderness!--and now you have to hear that all that beauty
and warmth of youthful life is to be sacrificed to a stone idol!--(for
the man she worships is little more!) ah, yes!--I am sorry for you,
Giulio!--but can do nothing to prevent the sacrifice,--indeed, I have
promised to assist it!"
Rivardi had alternately flushed and paled while she spoke,--her keen,
incisive probing of his most secret fancies puzzled and vexed him,--but
with a well-assumed indifference he waved aside her delicately pointed
suggestions as though he had scarcely heard them, and said--
"You have promised to assist? Can you reconcile it to your conscience
to let this girl make herself a prisoner for life?"
"I can!" she answered quietly--"For if she is opposed in her desire for
such imprisonment she will kill herself. So it is wisest to let her
have her way. The man she loves so desperately may die at any moment,
and then she will be free. But meanwhile she will have the consolation
of doing all she can for him, and the hope of helping him to recover;
vain hope as it may be, there is a divine unselfishness in it. For she
says that if he is restored to health she will go away at once and
never let him know she is his wife."
Rivardi's handsome face expressed utter incredulity.
"Will she keep her word I wonder?"
"She will!"
"Marvellous woman!" and there was bitterness in his tone--"But women
are all amazing when you come to know them! In love? in hate, in good,
in evil, in cleverness and in utter stupidity, they are wonderful
creatures! And you, amica bella, are perhaps the most wonderful of them
all! So kind and yet so cruel!"
"Cruel?" she echoed.
"Yes! To me!"
She looked at him and smiled. That smile gave such a dreamy, spiritlike
sweetness to her whole personality that for the moment she seemed to
float before him like an aerial vision rather than a woman of flesh and
blood, and the bold desire which possessed him to seize and clasp her
in his arms was checked by a sense of something like fear. Her eyes
rested on his with a full clear frankness.
"If I am cruel to you, my friend"--she said, gently, "it is only to be
more kind!"
She left him then and went out. He saw her small, elfin figure pass
among the chains of roses which at this season seemed to tie up the
garden in brilliant knots of colour, and then go down the terraces, one
by one, towards the monastic retreat half buried among pine and olive,
where Don Aloysius governed his little group of religious brethren.
He guessed her intent.
"She will tell him all"--he thought--"And with his strange
semi-religious, semi-scientific notions, it will be easy for her to
persuade him to marry the girl to this demented creature who fills the
house with his shouting 'There shall be no more wars!' I should never
have thought her capable of tolerating such a crime!"
He turned to leave the loggia,--but paused as he perceived Professor
Ardini advancing from the interior of the house, his hands clasped
behind his back and his furrowed brows bent in gloomy meditation.
"You have a difficult case?" he queried.
"More than difficult!" replied Ardini--"Beyond human skill! Perhaps not
beyond the mysterious power we call God."
Rivardi shrugged his shoulders. He was a sceptic of sceptics and his
modern-world experiences had convinced him that what man could not do
was not to be done at all.
"The latest remedy proposed by the Signora is--love!" he said,
carelessly--"The girl who is here,--Manella Soriso--has made up her
mind to be the wife of this unfortunate--"
Ardini gave an expressive gesture.
"Altro! If she has made up her mind, heaven itself will not move her!
It will be a sublime sacrifice of one life for another,--what would
you? Such sacrifices are common, though the world does not hear of
them. In this instance there is no one to prevent it."
"You approve--you tolerate it?" exclaimed Rivardi angrily.
"I have no power to approve or to tolerate"--replied the scientist,
coldly--"The matter is not one in which I have any right to interfere.
Nor,--I think,--have YOU!--I have stated such facts as exist--that the
man's brain is practically destroyed--but that owing to the strength of
the life-centres he will probably exist in his present condition for a
full term of years. To keep him so alive will entail considerable care
and expense. He will need a male nurse--probably two--food of the best
and absolutely tranquil surroundings. If the Signora, who is rich and
generous, guarantees these necessities, and the girl who loves him
desires to be his wife under such terrible conditions, I do not see how
anyone can object to the marriage."
"Then he poor devil of a man will be married without his knowledge, and
probably (if he had his senses) against his will!" said Rivardi.
Ardini bent his brows yet more frowningly.
"Just so!" he answered--"But he has neither knowledge nor will--nor is
he likely ever to have them again. These great attributes of the god in
man have been taken from him. Power and Will!--Will and Power!--the two
wings of the Soul!--they are gone, probably for ever. Science can do
nothing to bring them back, but I will not deny the possibility of
other forces which might work a remedy on this ruin of a 'master of the
world' as he calls himself! Therefore I say let the love-woman try her
best!"