The Secret Power | Page 7

flourish on my soil. So this solitude just suits me. If I were at the 'Plaza' I should have to meet a lot of women--"
"No, you wouldn't," interrupted Manella, suddenly and sharply--"only one woman."
"Only one? You?"
She sighed, and moved impatiently.
"Oh, no! Not me. A stranger."
He looked at her with a touch of inquisitiveness.
"An invalid?"
"She may be. I don't know. She has golden hair."
He gave a gesture of dislike.
"Dreadful! That's enough! I can imagine her,--a die-away creature with a cough and a straw-coloured wig. Yes!--that will do, Manella! You'd better go and wait upon her. I've got all I want for a couple of days at least." He seated himself and took up his note-book. She turned away.
"Stop a minute, Manella!"
She obeyed.
"Golden hair, you said?"
She nodded.
"Old or young?"
"She might be either"--and Manella gazed dreamily at the darkening sky--"There is nobody old nowadays--or so it seems to me."
"An invalid?"
"I don't think so. She looks quite well. She arrived at the Plaza only yesterday."
"Ah! Well, good-night, Manella! And if you want to know anything more about me, I don't mind telling you this,--that there's nothing in the world I so utterly detest as a woman with golden hair! There!"
She looked at him, surprised at his harsh tone. He shook his forefinger at her.
"Fact!" he said--"Fact as hard as nails! A woman with golden hair is a demon--a witch--a mischief and a curse! See? Always has been and always will be! Good-night!"
But Manella paused, meditatively.
"She looks like a witch," she said slowly--"One of those creatures they put in pictures of fairy tales,--small and white. Very small,-- I could carry her."
"I wouldn't try it if I were you"--he answered, with visible impatience--"Off you go! Good-night!"
She gave him one lingering glance; then, turning abruptly picked up her empty milk pail and started down the hill at a run.
The man she left gave a sigh, deep and long of intense relief. Evening had fallen rapidly, and the purple darkness enveloped him in its warm, dense gloom. He sat absorbed in thought, his eyes turned towards the east, where the last stretches of the afternoon's great cloud trailed filmy threads of woolly black through space. His figure seemed gradually drawn within the coming night so as almost to become part of it, and the stillness around him had a touch of awe in its impalpable heaviness. One would have thought that in a place of such utter loneliness, the natural human spirit of a man would instinctively desire movement,--action of some sort, to shake off the insidious depression which crept through the air like a creeping shadow, but the solitary being, seated somewhat like an Aryan idol, hands on knees and face bent forwards, had no inclination to stir. His brain was busy; and half unconsciously his thoughts spoke aloud in words--
"Have we come to the former old stopping place?" he said, as though questioning some invisible companion; "Must we cry 'halt!' for the thousand millionth time? Or can we go on? Dare we go on? If actually we discover the secret--wrapped up like the minutest speck of a kernel in the nut of an electron,--what then? Will it be well or ill? Shall we find it worth while to live on here with nothing to do?--nothing to trouble us or compel us to labour? Without pain shall we be conscious of health?--without sorrow shall we understand joy?"
A sudden whiteness flooded the dark landscape, and a full moon leaped to the edge of the receding cloud. Its rising had been veiled in the drift of black woolly vapour, and its silver glare, sweeping through the darkness flashed over the land with astonishing abruptness. The man lifted his eyes.
"One would think that done for effect!" he said, half aloud--"If the moon were the goddess Cynthia beloved of Endymion, as woman and goddess in an impulse of vanity she would certainly have done that for effect! As it is--"
Here he paused,--an instinctive feeling warned him that some one was looking at him, and he turned his head quickly. On the slope of the hill where Manella had lately stood, there was a figure, white as the white moonlight itself, outlined delicately against the dark background. It seemed to be poised on the earth like a bird just lightly descended; in the stirless air its garments appeared closed about it fold on fold like the petals of an unopened magnolia flower. As he looked, it came gliding towards him with the floating ease of an air bubble, and the strong radiance of the large moon showed its woman's face, pale with the moonbeam pallor, and set in a wave of hair that swept back from the brows and fell in a loosely twisted coil like a shining snake stealthily losing itself in folds of misty drapery. He rose to meet the