“My husband and I were very fond of each other. We were the best of friends and good companions. Of course he had his military duties to attend to and was often absent—”
“And you stayed at home and kept house,” — interpolated Morgana, musingly— “I see! That is what all wives have to do! But I suppose he just adored you?”
Lady Kingswood smiled.
“‘Adore’ is a very strong word to use, my dear!” she said— “I doubt if any married people ‘adore’ each other! If they can be good friends and rub along pleasantly through all the sorrows and joys of life together, they should be satisfied.”
“And you call that LOVE!” said Morgana, with a passionate thrill in her voice— “Love! ‘Love that is blood within the veins of time!’ Just ‘rubbing along pleasantly together!’ Dear ‘Duchess,’ that wouldn’t suit ME!”
Lady Kingswood looked at her with interested, kind eyes.
“But then, what WOULD suit you?” she queried— “You know you mustn’t expect the impossible!”
“What the world calls the impossible is always the possible” — said Morgana— “And only the impossible appeals to me!”
This was going beyond the boundary-line of Lady Kingswood’s brain capacity, so she merely remained agreeably quiescent.
“And when your child was born” — pursued Morgana— “did you feel a wonderful ecstasy? — a beautiful peace and joy? — a love so great that it was as if God had given you something of His Own to hold and keep?”
Lady Kingswood laughed outright.
“My dear girl, you are too idealistic! Having a baby is not at all a romantic business! — quite the reverse! And babies are not interesting till they ‘begin to take notice’ as the nurses say. Then when they get older and have to go to school you soon find out that you have loved THEM far more than they have loved or ever WILL love YOU!”
As she said this her voice trembled a little and she sighed.
“I see! I think I quite understand!” said Morgana— “And it is just what I have always imagined — there is no great happiness in marriage. If it is only a matter of ‘rubbing along pleasantly together’ two friends can always do that without any ‘sex’ attraction, or tying themselves up together for life. And it’s not much joy to bring children into the world and waste treasures of love on them, if after you have done all you can, they leave you without a regret, — like the birds that fly from a nest when once they know how to use their wings.”
Lady Kingswood’s eyes were sorrowful.
“My daughter was a very pretty girl,” — she said— “Her father and I were proud of her looks and her charm of manner. We spared every shilling we could to give her the best and most careful education — and we surrounded her with as much pleasure and comfort at home as possible, — but at the first experience of ‘society,’ and the flattery of strangers, she left us. Her choice of a husband was most unfortunate — but she would not listen to our advice, though we had loved her so much — she thought ‘he’ loved her more.”
Morgana lifted her eyes. The “fey” light was glittering in them.
“Yes! She thought he loved her! That’s what many a woman thinks — that ‘he’ — the particular ‘he’ loves her! But how seldom he does! How much more often he loves himself!”
“You must not be cynical, my dear!” said Lady Kingswood, gently— “Life is certainly full of disappointments, especially in love and marriage — but we must endure our sorrows patiently and believe that God does everything for the best.”
This was the usual panacea which the excellent lady offered for all troubles, and Morgana smiled.
“Yes! — it must be hard work for God!” she said— “Cruel work! To do everything for the best and to find it being turned into the worst by the very creatures one seeks to benefit, must be positive torture! Well, dear ‘Duchess,’ I asked you all these questions about love and marriage just to know if you could say anything that might alter my views — but you have confirmed them. I feel that there is no such thing in the world as the love I want — and marriage without it would be worse than any imagined hell. So I shall not marry.”
Lady Kingswood’s face expressed a mild tolerance.
“You say that just now” — she said— “But I think you will alter your mind some day! You would not like to be quite alone always — not even in the Palazzo d’Oro.”
“YOU are quite alone?”
“Ah, but I am an old woman, my dear! I have lived my day!”
“That’s not true,” said Morgana, decisively— “You have not ‘lived your day’ since you are living NOW! And if you are old, that is just a reason why you should NOT be alone. But you ARE. Your husband is dead, and your daughter has other ties. So even marriage left you high and dry on the rocks as it were till my little boat came along and took you off them!”
“A very welcome little boat!” said Lady Kingswood, with feeling— “A rescue in the nick of time!”
“Never mind that!” and Morgan waved her pretty hand expressively— “My point is that marriage — just marriage — has not done much for you. It is what women clamour for, and scheme for, — and nine out of ten regret the whole business when they have had their way. There are so many more things in life worth winning!”
Lady Kingswood looked at her interestedly. She made a pretty picture just then in her white morning gown, seated in a low basket chair with pale blue silk cushions behind her on which her golden head rested with the brightness of a daffodil.
“So many more things!” she repeated— “My air-ship for instance! — it’s worth all the men and all the marriages I’ve ever heard of! My beloved ‘White Eagle!’ — my own creation — my baby — SUCH a baby!” She laughed. “But I must learn to fly with it alone!”
“I hope you will do nothing rash!” — said Lady Kingswood, mildly; she was very ignorant of modern discovery and invention, and all attempt to explain anything of the kind to her would have been a hope less business— “I understand that it is always necessary to take a pilot and an observer in these terrible sky-machines—”
She was interrupted by a gay little peal of laughter from Morgana.
“Terrible? — Oh, dear ‘Duchess,’ you are too funny! There’s nothing ‘terrible’ about MY ‘sky-machine!’ Do you ever read poetry? No? — Well then you don’t know that lovely and prophetic line of Keats—”
‘Beautiful things made new
For the surprise of the sky-children.’
“Poets are always prophetic, — that is, REAL poets, not modern verse mongers; and I fancy Keats must have imagined something in the far distant future like my ‘White Eagle!’ For it really IS ‘a beautiful thing made new’ — a beautiful natural force put to new uses — and who knows? — I may yet surprise those ‘sky-children!’”
Lady Kingswood’s mind floundered helplessly in this flood of what, to her, was incomprehensibility. Morgana went on in the sweet fluting voice which was one of her special charms.
“If you haven’t read Keats, you must have read at some time or other the ‘Arabian Nights’ and the story of ‘Sindbad the Sailor’? Yes? You think you have? Well, you know how poor Sindbad got into the Valley of Diamonds and waited for an eagle to fly down and carry him off! That’s just like me! I’ve been dropped into a Valley of Diamonds and often wondered how I should escape — but the Eagle has arrived!”
“I’m afraid I don’t quite follow you” — said Lady Kingswood— “I’m rather dense, you know! Surely your Valley of Diamonds — if you mean wealth — has made your ‘Eagle’ possible?”
Morgana nodded.
“Exactly! If there had been no Valley of Diamonds there would have been no Eagle! But, all the same, this little female Sindbad is glad to get out of the valley!”
Lady Kingswood laughed.
“My dear child, if you are making a sort of allegory on your wealth, you are not ‘out of the valley’ nor are you likely to be!”
Morgana sighed.
“My vulgar wealth!” she murmured.
“What? Vulgar?”
“Yes. A man told me it was.”
“A vulgar man himself, I should imagine!” said Lady Kingswood, warmly.
Morgana shrugged her shoulders carelessly.
“Oh, no, he isn’t. He’s eccentric, but not vulgar. He’s aristocratic to the tips of his toes — and English. That accounts for his rudeness. Sometimes, you know — only sometimes — Englishmen can be VERY rude! But I’d rather have them so — it’s a sort of well-bred clumsiness, like the manners of a Newfoundland dog. It’s not the ‘make-a-dollar’ air of American men.”
“You are quite English yourself, aren’t you?” queried her companion.
“No — not English in any sense. I’m pure Celtic of Celt, from the farthest Highlands of Scotland. But I hate to say I’m ‘Scotch,’ as slangy people use that word for whisky! I’m just Highland-born. My father and mother were the same, and I came to life a wild moor, among mists and mountains and stormy seas — I’m always glad of that! I’m glad my eyes did not look their first on a city! There’s a tradition in the part of Scotland where I was born which tells of a history far far back in time when sailors from Phoenicia came to our shores, — men greatly civilised when we all were but savages, and they made love to the Highland women and had children by them, — then when they went away back to Egypt they left many traces of Eastern customs and habits which remain to this day. My father used always to say that he could count his ancestry back to Egypt! — it pleased him to think so and it did nobody any harm!”
“Have you ever been to the East?” asked Lady Kingswood.
“No — but I’m going! My ‘White Eagle’ will take me there in a very short time! But, as I’ve already told you, I must learn to fly alone.”
“What does the Marchese Rivardi say to that?”
“I don’t ask him!” replied Morgana, indifferently— “What I may decide to do is not his business.” She broke off abruptly — then continued— “He is coming to luncheon, — and afterwards you shall see my air-ship. I won’t persuade you to go up in it!”
“I COULDN’T!” said Lady Kingswood, emphatically— “I’ve no nerve for such an adventure.”
Morgana rose from her chair, smiling kindly.
“Dear ‘Duchess’ be quite easy in your mind!” she said— “I want you very much on land, but I shall not want you in the air! You will be quite safe and happy here in the Palazzo d’Oro” — she turned as she saw the shadow of a man’s tall figure fall on the smooth marble pavement of the loggia— “Ah! Here is the Marchese! We were just speaking of you!”
“Tropp’ onore!” he murmured, as he kissed the little hand she held out to him in the Sicilian fashion of gallantry— “I fear I am perhaps too early?”
“Oh no! We were about to go in to luncheon — I know the hour by the bell of the monastery down there — you hear it?”
A soft “ting-ting tong” — rang from the olive and ilex woods below the Palazzo, — and Morgana, listening, smiled.
“Poor Don Aloysius!” she said— “He will now go to his soup maigre — and we to our poulet, sauce bechamel, — and he will be quite as contented as we are!”
“More so, probably!” said Rivardi, as he courteously assisted Lady Kingswood, who was slightly lame, to rise from her chair— “He is one of the few men who in life have found peace.”
Morgana gave him a keen glance.
“You think he has really found it?”
“I think so, — yes! He has faith in God — a great support that has given way for most of the peoples of this world.”
Lady Kingswood looked pained.
“I am sorry to hear you say that!”
“I am sorry myself to say it, miladi, but I fear it is true!” he rejoined— “It is one sign of a general break-up.”
“Oh, you are right! You are very right!” exclaimed Morgana suddenly, and with emphasis— “We know that when even one human being is unable to recognise his best friend we say— ‘Poor man! His brain is gone!’ It’s the same thing with a nation. Or a world! When it is so ailing that it cannot recognise the Friend who brought it into being, who feeds it, keeps it, and gives it all it has, we must say the same thing— ‘Its brain is gone!’”
Rivardi was surprised at the passionate energy she threw into these words.
“You feel that deeply?” he said— “And yet — pardon me! — you do not assume to be religious?”
“Marchese, I ‘assume’ nothing!” she answered— “I cannot ‘pretend’! To ‘assume’ or to ‘pretend’ would hardly serve the Creator adequately. Creative or Natural Force is so far away from sham that one must do more than ‘assume’ — one must BE!”
Her voice thrilled on the air, and Lady Kingswood, who was crossing the loggia, leaning on her stick, paused to look at the eloquent speaker. She was worth looking at just then, for she seemed inspired. Her eyes were extraordinarily brilliant, and her whole personality expressed a singular vitality coupled with an ethereal grace that suggested some thing almost superhuman.
“Yes — one must be!” she repeated— “I have not BEEN A STUDENT OF SCIENCE SO LONG WITHOUT LEARNING that there is no ‘assuming’ anything in the universe. One must SEE straight, and THINK straight too! I could not ‘assume’ religion, because I FEEL it — in the very depths of my soul! As Don Aloysius said the other day, it is marvellous how close we are to the Source of all life, and yet we imagine we are far away! If we could only realise the truth of the Divine Nearness, and work WITH it and IN it, we should make discoveries worth knowing! We work too much WITH ourselves and OF ourselves.” She paused, — then added slowly and seriously— “I have never done any work that way. I have always considered myself Nothing, — the Force I have obeyed was and is Everything.”
“And so — being Nothing — you still made your air-ship possible!” said Rivardi, smiling indulgently at her fantastic speech.
She answered him with unmoved and patient gravity.
“It is as you say, — being Nothing myself, and owning myself to be Nothing; the Force that is Everything made my air-ship possible!”
CHAPTER XV
Two or three hours later the “White Eagle” was high in air above the Palazzo d’Oro. Down below Lady Kingswood stood on the seashore by the aerodrome, watching the wonderful ship of the sky with dazzled, scared eyes — amazed at the lightning speed of its ascent and the steadiness of its level flight. She had seen it spread its great wings as by self-volition and soar out of the aerodrome with Morgana seated inside like an elfin queen in a fairy car — she had seen the Marchese Giulio Rivardi “take the helm” with the assistant Gaspard, now no longer a prey to fear, beside him. Up, up and away they had flown, waving to her till she could see their forms no longer — till the “White Eagle” itself looked no bigger than a dove soaring in the blue. And while she waited, even this faint dove-image vanished! She looked in every direction, but the skies were empty. To her there was something very terrifying in this complete disappearance of human beings in the vast stretches of the air — they had gone so silently, too, for the “White Eagle’s” flight made no sound, and though the afternoon was warm and balmy she felt chilled with the cold of nervous apprehension. Yet they had all assured her there was no cause for alarm, — they were only going on a short trial trip and would be back to dinner.
“Nothing more than a run in a motor-car!” Morgana said, gaily.
Nothing more, — but to Lady Kingswood it seemed much more. She belonged to simple Victorian days — days of quiet home-life and home affections, now voted “deadly dull!” and all the rushing to and fro and gadding about of modern men and women worried and distressed her, for she had the plain common sense to perceive that it did no good either to health or morals, and led nowhere. She looked wistfully out to sea, — the blue Sicilian sea so exquisite in tone and play of pure reflections, — and thought how happy a life lived after the old sweet ways might be for a brilliant little creature like Mo
rgana, if she could win “a good man’s love” as Shakespeare puts it. And yet — was not this rather harking back to mere sentiment, often proved delusive? Her own “good man’s love” had been very precious to her, — but it had not fulfilled all her heart’s longing, though she considered herself an entirely commonplace woman. And what sort of a man would it be that could hold Morgana? As well try to control a sunbeam or a lightning flash as the restless vital and intellectual spirit that had, for the time being, entered into feminine form, showing itself nevertheless as something utterly different and superior to women as they are generally known. Some thoughts such as these, though vague and disconnected, passed through Lady Kingswood’s mind as she turned away from the sea-shore to re-ascend the flower-bordered terraces of the Palazzo d’Oro, — and it was with real pleasure that she perceived on the summit of the last flight of grassy steps, the figure of Don Aloysius. He was awaiting her approach, and came down a little way to meet her.
“I saw the air-ship flying over the monastery,” — he explained, greeting her— “And I was anxious to know whether la Signora had gone away into the skies or was still on earth! She has gone, I suppose?”
“Yes, she has gone!” sighed Lady Kingswood— “and the Marchese with her, and one assistant. Her ‘nerve’ is simply astonishing!”
“You did not think of venturing on a trip with her yourself?” — and the priest smiled kindly, as he assisted her to ascend the last flight of steps to the loggia.
“No indeed! I really could not! I feel I ought to be braver — but I cannot summon up sufficient courage to leave terra firma. It seems altogether unnatural.”
“Then what will you do when you are an angel, dear lady?” queried Aloysius, playfully— “You will have to leave terra firma then! Have you ever thought of that?”
She smiled.
“I’m afraid I don’t think!” she said— “I take my life on trust. I always believe that God who brought me HERE will take care of me THERE! — wherever ‘there’ is. You understand me, don’t you? You speak English so well that I’m sure you do.”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 881