Stella Fregelius | Page 2

and why should it not reach that star? Very likely it does, only there it wastes itself. What would be needed to make it serviceable? Simply this--that on the star there should dwell an Intelligence armed with one of my instruments, when I have perfected them, or the secret of them. Then who knows what might happen?" and he laughed a little to himself at the vagary.
From all of which wandering speculations it may be gathered that Morris Monk was that rather common yet problematical person, an inventor who dreamed dreams.
An inventor, in truth, he was, although as yet he had never really invented anything. Brought up as an electrical engineer, after a very brief experience of his profession he had fallen victim to an idea and become a physicist. This was his idea, or the main point of it--for its details do not in the least concern our history: that by means of a certain machine which he had conceived, but not as yet perfected, it would be possible to complete all existing systems of aerial communication, and enormously to simplify their action and enlarge their scope. His instruments, which were wireless telephones-- aerophones he called them--were to be made in pairs, twins that should talk only to each other. They required no high poles, or balloons, or any other cumbrous and expensive appliance; indeed, their size was no larger than that of a rather thick despatch box. And he had triumphed; the thing was done--in all but one or two details.
For two long years he had struggled with these, and still they eluded him. Once he had succeeded--that was the dreadful thing. Once for a while the instruments had worked, and with a space of several miles between them. But--this was the maddening part of it--he had never been able to repeat the exact conditions; or, rather, to discover precisely what they were. On that occasion he had entrusted one of his machines to his first cousin, Mary Porson, a big girl with her hair still down her back, rather idle in disposition, but very intelligent, when she chose. Mary, for the most part, had been brought up at her father's house, close by. Often, too, she stayed with her uncle for weeks at a stretch, so at that time Morris was as intimate with her as a man of eight and twenty usually is with a relative in her teens.
The arrangement on this particular occasion was that she should take the machine--or aerophone, as its inventor had named it--to her home. The next morning, at the appointed hour, as Morris had often done before, he tried to effect communication, but without result. On the following day, at the same hour, he tried again, when, to his astonishment, instantly the answer came back. Yes, as distinctly as though she were standing by his side, he heard his cousin Mary's voice.
"Are you there?" he said, quite hopelessly, merely as a matter of form --of very common form--and well-nigh fell to the ground when he received the reply:
"Yes, yes, but I have just been telegraphed for to go to Beaulieu; my mother is very ill."
"What is the matter with her?" he asked; and she replied:
"Inflammation of the lungs--but I must stop; I can't speak any more." Then came some sobs and silence.
That same afternoon, by Mary's direction, the aerophone was brought back to him in a dog-cart, and three days later he heard that her mother, Mrs. Porson, was dead.
Some months passed, and when they met again, on her return from the Riviera, Morris found his cousin changed. She had parted from him a child, and now, beneath the shadow of the wings of grief, suddenly she had become a woman. Moreover, the best and frankest part of their intimacy seemed to have vanished. There was a veil between them. Mary thought of little, and at this time seemed to care for no one except her mother, who was dead. And Morris, who had loved the child, recoiled somewhat from the new-born woman. It may be explained that he was afraid of women. Still, with an eye to business, he spoke to her about the aerophone; and, so far as her memory served her, she confirmed all the details of their short conversation across the gulf of empty space.
"You see," he said, trembling with excitement, "I have got it at last."
"It looks like it," she answered, wearily, her thoughts already far away. "Why shouldn't you? There are so many odd things of the sort. But one can never be sure; it mightn't work next time."
"Will you try again?" he asked.
"If you like," she answered; "but I don't believe I shall hear anything now. Somehow--since that last business--everything seems different to me."
"Don't be foolish," he said; "you have nothing to do