Stella Fregelius | Page 2

for
presently he was staring at one of the constellations, and saying to
himself, "Why not? Well, why not? Granted force can travel through
ether,--whatever ether is--why should it stop travelling? Give it time
enough, a few seconds, or a few minutes or a few years, 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