CHAPTER XVI

That evening Morgana was in one of her most bewitching moods--even the old Highland word "fey" scarcely described her many brilliant variations from grave to gay, from gay to romantic, and from romantic to a kind of humorous-satiric vein which moved her to utter quick little witticisms which might have seemed barbed with too sharp a point were they not so quickly covered with a sweetness of manner which deprived them of all malice. She looked her best, too,--she had robed herself in a garment of pale shimmering blue which shone softly like the gleam of moonbeams through crystal--her wonderful hair was twisted up in a coronal held in place by a band of diamonds,--tiny diamonds twinkled in her ears, and a star of diamonds glittered on her breast.

Her elfin beauty, totally unlike the beauty of accepted standards, exhaled a subtle influence as a lily exhales fragrance--and the knowledge she had of her own charm combined with her indifference as to its effect upon others gave her a dangerous attractiveness. As she sat at the head of her daintily adorned dinner-table she might have posed for a fairy queen in days when fairies were still believed in and queens were envied,--and Giulio Rivardi's thoughts were swept to and fro in his brain by cross-currents of emotion which were not altogether disinterested or virtuous. For years his spirit had been fretted and galled by poverty,--he, the descendant of a long line of proud Sicilian n.o.bles, had been forced to earn a precarious livelihood as an art decorator and adviser to "newly rich" people who had neither taste nor judgment, teaching them how to build, restore or furnish their houses according to the pure canons of art, in the knowledge of which he excelled,--and now, when chance or providence had thrown Morgana in his way,--Morgana with her millions, and an enchanting personality,--he inwardly demanded why he should not win her to have and to hold for his own? He was a personable man, n.o.bly born, finely educated,--was it possible that he had not sufficient resolution and force of character to take the precious citadel by storm? These ideas flitted vaguely across his mind as he watched his fair hostess talking, now to Don Aloysius, now to Lady Kingswood, and sometimes flinging him a light word of badinage to rally him on what she chose to call his "sulks."

"He can't get over it!" she declared, smiling--"Poor Marchese Giulio!

That I should have dared to steer my own air-ship was too much for him, and he can't forgive me!"

"I cannot forgive your putting yourself into danger," said Rivardi--"You ran a great risk--you must pardon me if I hold your life too valuable to be lightly lost."

"It is good of you to think it valuable,"--and her wonderful blue eyes were suddenly shadowed with sadness--"To me it is valueless."

"My dear!" exclaimed Lady Kingswood--"How can you say such a thing!"

"Only because I feel it"--replied Morgana--"I dare say my life is not more valueless than other lives--they are all without ultimate meaning.

If I knew, quite positively, that I was all in all to some ONE being who would be unhappy without me,--to whom I could be helper and inspirer, I dare say I should value my life more,--but unfortunately I have seen too much of the modern world to believe in the sincerity of even that 'one' being, could I find him--or her. I am very positively alone in life,--no woman was ever more alone than I!"

"But--is not that your own fault?" suggested Don Aloysius, gently.

"Quite!" she answered, smiling--"I fully admit it. I am what they call 'difficult' I know,--I do not like 'society' or its amus.e.m.e.nts, which to me seem very vulgar and senseless,--I do not like its conversation, which I find excessively ba.n.a.l and often coa.r.s.e--I cannot set my soul on tennis or golf or bridge--so I'm quite an 'outsider.' But I'm not sorry!--I should not care to be INside the human menagerie. Too much barking, biting, scratching, and general howling among the animals!--it wouldn't suit me!"

She laughed lightly, and continued,--

"That's why I say my life is valueless to anyone but myself. And that's why I'm not afraid to risk it in flying the 'White Eagle' alone."

Her hearers were silent. Indeed there was nothing to be said. Whatever her will or caprice there was no one with any right to gainsay it.

Rivardi was inwardly seething with suppressed irritation--but his handsome face showed no sign of annoyance save in an extreme pallor and gravity of expression.

"I think,"--said Don Aloysius, after a pause--"I think our hostess will do us the grace of believing that whatever she has experienced of the world in general, she has certainly won the regard and interest of those whom she honours with her company at the present moment!"--and his voice had a thrill of irresistible kindness--"And whatever she chooses to do, and however she chooses to do it, she cannot avoid involving such affection and interest as those friends represent--"

"Dear Father Aloysius!" interrupted Morgana, quickly and impulsively--"Forgive me!--I did not think!--I am sure you and the Marchese and Lady Kingswood have the kindest feeling for me!--but--"

"But!"--and Aloysius smiled--"But--it is a little lady that will not be commanded or controlled! Yes--that is so! However this may be, let us not imagine that in the rush of commerce and the marvels of science the world is left empty of love! Love is still the strongest force in nature!"

Morgana's eyes flashed up, then drooped under their white lids fringed with gold.

"You think so?" she murmured--"To me, love leads nowhere!"

"Except to Heaven!" said Aloysius.

There followed a silence.

It was broken by the entrance of a servant announcing that coffee was served in the loggia. They left the dinner-table and went out into the wonder of a perfect Sicilian moonlight. All the gardens were illumined and the sea beyond, with wide strands of silver spreading on all sides, falling over the marble pavements and steps of the loggia and glistening on certain white flowering shrubs with the smooth sheen of polished pearl. The magical loveliness of the scene, made lovelier by the intense silence of the hour, held them as with a binding spell, and Morgana, standing by one of the slender columns which not only supported the loggia but the whole Palazzo d'Oro as with the petrified stems of trees, made a figure completely in harmony with her surroundings.

"Could anything be more enchantingly beautiful!" sighed Lady Kingswood--"One ought to thank G.o.d for eyes to see it!"

"And many people with eyes would not see it at all,"--said Don Aloysius--"They would go indoors, shut the shutters and play Bridge!

But those who can see it are the happiest!"

And he quoted--

"'On such a night as this, When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees And they did make no noise,--on such a night Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls And sighed his soul towards the Grecian tents Where Cressid lay!'"

"You know your Shakespeare!" said Rivardi.

"Who would not know him!" replied Aloysius--"One is not blind to the sun!"

"Ah, poor Shakespeare!" said Morgana--"What a lesson he gives us miserable little moderns in the worth of fame! So great, so unapproachable,--and yet!--doubted and slandered and reviled three hundred years after his death by envious detractors who cannot write a line!"

"But what does that matter?" returned Aloysius. "Envy and detraction in their blackness only emphasise his brightness, just as a star shines more brilliantly in a dark sky. One always recognises a great spirit by the littleness of those who strive to wound it,--if it were not great it would not be worth wounding!"

"Shakespeare might have imagined my air-ship!" said Morgana, suddenly--"He was perhaps dreaming vaguely of something like it when he wrote about--"

'A winged messenger of heaven When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds And sails upon the bosom of the air!'

"The 'White Eagle' sails upon the bosom of the air!"

"Quite true"--said the Marchese Rivardi, looking at her as she stood, bathed in the moonlight, a nymph-like figure of purely feminine charm, as unlike the accepted idea of a "science" scholar as could well be imagined--"And the manner of its sailing is a mystery which you only can explain! Surely you will reveal this secret?--especially when so many rush into the air-craft business without any idea of the scientific laws by which you uphold your great design? Much has been said and written concerning new schemes for air-vessels moved by steam--"

"That is so like men!" interrupted Morgana, with a laugh--"They will think of steam power when they are actually in possession of electricity!--and they will stick to electricity without moving the one step further which would give them the full use of radio-activity! They will 'bungle' to the end!--and their bungling is always brought about by an ineffable conceit of their own so-called 'logical' conclusions!

Poor dears!--they 'get there' at last--and in the course of centuries find out what they could have discovered in a month if they had opened their minds as well as their eyes!"

"Well, then,--help them now," said Rivardi--"Give them the chance to learn your secret!"

Morgana moved away from the column where she had leaned, and came more fully into the broad moonlight.

"My dear Marchese Giulio!" she said, indulgently, "You really are a positive child in your very optimistic look-out on the world of to-day!

Suppose I were to 'give them the chance,' as you suggest, to learn my secret, how do you think I should be received? I might go to the great scientific inst.i.tutions of London and Paris and I might ask to be heard--I might offer to give a 'demonstration,'" here she began to laugh; "Oh dear!--it would never do for a woman to 'demonstrate' and terrify all the male professors, would it! No!--well, I should probably have to wait months before being 'heard,'--then I should probably meet with the chill repudiation dealt out to that wonderful Hindu scientist, Jagadis Bose, by Burdon Sanderson when the brilliant Indian savant tried to teach men what they never knew before about the life of plants. Not only that, I should be met with incredulity and ridicule--'a woman! a WOMAN dares to a.s.sume knowledge superior to ours!' and so forth. No, no! Let the wise men try their steam air-ships and spoil the skies by smoke and vapour, so that agriculture becomes more and more difficult, and sunshine an almost forgotten benediction!--let them go their own foolish way till they learn wisdom of themselves--no one could ever teach them what they refuse to learn, till they tumble into a bog or quicksand of dilemma and have to be forcibly dragged out."

"By a woman?" hinted Don Aloysius, with a smile.

She shrugged her shoulders carelessly.

"Very often! Marja Sklodowska Curie, for example, has pulled many scientists out of the mud, but they are not grateful enough to acknowledge it. One of the greatest women of the age, she is allowed to remain in comparative obscurity,--even Anatole France, though he called her a 'genius,' had not the generosity or largeness of mind to praise her as she deserves. Though, of course, like all really great souls she is indifferent to praise or blame--the notice of the decadent press, noisy and vulgar like the beating of the cheap-jack's drum at a country fair, has no attraction for her. Nothing is known of her private life,--not a photograph of her is obtainable--she has the lovely dignity of complete reserve. She is one of my heroines in this life--she does not offer herself to the cheap journalist like a milliner's mannequin or a film face. She will not give herself away--neither will I!"

"But you might benefit the human race"--said Rivardi--"Would not that thought weigh with you?"

"Not in the least!"--and she smiled--"The human race in its present condition is 'an unweeded garden, things rank and gross in nature possess it merely,' and it wants clearing. I have no wish to benefit it. It has always murdered its benefactors. It deludes itself with the idea that the universe is for IT alone,--it ignores the fact that there are many other sharers in its privileges and surroundings--presences and personalities as real as itself. I am almost a believer in what the old-time magicians called 'elementals'--especially now."

Don Aloysius rose from his chair and put aside his emptied coffee-cup.

His tall fine figure silhouetted more densely black by the whiteness of the moon-rays had a singularly imposing effect.

"Why especially now?" he asked, almost imperatively--"What has chanced to make you accept the idea--an old idea, older than the lost continent of Atlantis!--of creatures built up of finer life-cells than ours?"

Morgana looked at him, vaguely surprised by his tone and manner.

"Nothing has chanced that causes me any wonder," she said--"or that would 'make' me accept any theory which I could not put to the test for myself. But, out in New York while I have been away, a fellow-student of mine--just a boy,--has found out the means of 'creating energy from some unknown source'--that is, unknown to the scientists of rule-and-line. They call his electric apparatus 'an atmospheric generator.' Naturally this implies that the atmosphere has something to 'generate' which has till now remained hidden and undeveloped. I knew this long ago. Had I NOT known it I could not have thought out the secret of the 'White Eagle'!"