The Secret Power Part 7

"I do not know what I am! I do everything I am asked to do as well as I can."

"Obliging creature! And are you well paid?"

"As much as I want"--Manella answered, indifferently. "But there is no pleasure in the work."

"Is there pleasure in ANY work?"

"If one works for a person one loves,--surely yes!" the girl murmured as if she were speaking to herself, "The days would be too short for all the work to be done!"

Morgana glanced at her, and the flash of her eyes had the grey-blue of lightning. Then she poured out the coffee and tasted it.

"Not bad!" she commented--"Did you make it?"

Manella nodded, and went on talking at random.

"I daresay it's not as good as it ought to be"--she said--"If you had brought your own maid I should have asked HER to make it. Women of your cla.s.s like their food served differently to us poor folk, and I don't know their ways."

Morgana laughed.

"You quaint, handsome thing! What do you know about it? What, in your opinion, IS my cla.s.s?"

Manella pulled nervously at the ends of the bright coloured kerchief she wore knotted across her bosom, and hesitated a moment.

"Well, for one thing you are rich"--she said, at last--"There is no mistaking that. Your lovely clothes--you must spend a fortune on them!

Then--all the people here wonder at your automobile--and your chauffeur says it is the most perfect one ever made! And all these riches make you think you ought to have everything just as you fancy it. I suppose you ought--I'm not sure! I don't believe you have much feeling,--you couldn't, you know! It is not as if you wanted something very badly and there was no chance of your getting it,--your money would buy all you could desire. It would even buy you a man!"

Morgana paused in the act of pouring out a second cup of coffee, and her face dimpled with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Buy me a man!" she echoed--"You think it would?"

"Of course it would!" Manella averred--"If you wanted one, which I daresay you don't. For all I know, you may be like the man who is living in the consumption hut on the hill,--he ought to have a woman, but he doesn't want one."

Morgana b.u.t.tered her little breakfast roll very delicately.

"The man who lives in the consumption hut on the hill!" she repeated, slowly, and with a smile--"What man is that?"

"I don't know--" and Manella's large dark eyes filled with a strangely wistful perplexity. "He is a stranger--and he's not ill at all. He is big and strong and healthy. But he has chosen to live in the 'house of the dying,' as it is sometimes called--where people from the Plaza go when there's no more hope for them. He likes to be quite alone--he thinks and writes all day. I take him milk and bread,--it is all he orders from the Plaza. I would be his woman. I would work for him from morning till night. But he will not have me."

Morgana raised her eyes, glittering with the "fey" light in them that often bewildered and rather scared her friends.

"You would be his woman? You are in love with him?" she said.

Something in her look checked Manella's natural impulse to confide in one of her own s.e.x.

"No, I am not!"--she answered coldly--"I have said too much."

Morgana smiled, and stretching out her small white hand, adorned with its sparkling rings, laid it caressingly on the girl's brown wrist.

"You are a dear!"--she murmured, lazily--"Just a dear! A big, beautiful creature with a heart! That's the trouble--your heart! You've found a man living selfishly alone, scribbling what he perhaps thinks are the most wonderful things ever put on paper, when they are very likely nothing but rubbish, and it enters into your head that he wants mothering and loving! He doesn't want anything of the sort! And YOU want to love and mother him! Oh heavens!--have you ever thought what loving and mothering mean?"

Manella drew a quick soft breath.

"All the world, surely!" she answered, with emotion--"To love!--to possess the one we love, body and soul!--and to mother a life born of such love!--THAT must be heaven!"

The smile flitted away from Morgana's lips, and her expression became almost sorrowful.

"You are like a trusting animal!" she said--"An animal all innocent of guns and steel-traps! You poor girl! I should like you to come with me out of these mountain solitudes into the world! What is your name?"

"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--

"Under the walls of Monterey At dawn the bugles began to play Come forth to thy death Victor Galbraith."

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 quant.i.ty, 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 gla.s.s.

"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 n.o.bler 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-gla.s.s.

"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!"