CHAPTER I
MORRIS, MARY, AND THE AEROPHONE
Above, the sky seemed one vast arc of solemn blue, set here and there with points of tremulous fire; below, to the shadowy horizon, stretched the plain of the soft grey sea, while from the fragrances of night and earth floated a breath of sleep and flowers.
A man leaned on the low wall that bordered the cliff edge, and looked at sea beneath and sky above. Then he contemplated the horizon, and murmured some line heard or learnt in childhood, ending âwhere earth and heaven meet.â
âBut they only seem to meet,â he reflected to himself, idly. âIf I sailed to that spot they would be as wide apart as ever. Yes, the stars would be as silent and as far away, and the sea quite as restless and as salt. Yet there must be a place where they do meet. No, Morris, my friend, there is no such place in this world, material or moral; so stick to facts, and leave fancies alone.â
But that night this speculative man felt in the mood for fancies, for presently he was staring at one of the constellations, and saying to himself, âWhy not? Well, why not? Granted force can travel through ether, â whatever ether is â 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 â 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?â 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 â 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 â aerophones he called them â 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 â 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 â that was the dreadful thing. Once for a while the instruments had worked, and with a space of several miles between them. But â this was the maddening part of it â 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 fatherâs 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 â or aerophone, as its inventor had named it â 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 Maryâs voice.
âAre you there?â he said, quite hopelessly, merely as a matter of form â of very common form â and well-nigh fell to the ground when he received the reply:
âYes, yes, but I have just been telegraphed for to go to Beaulieu; my mother is very ill.â
âWhat is the matter with her?â he asked; and she replied:
âInflammation of the lungs â but I must stop; I canât speak any more.â Then came some sobs and silence.
That same afternoon, by Maryâs 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.
âYou see,â he said, trembling with excitement, âI have got it at last.â
âIt looks like it,â she answered, wearily, her thoughts already far away. âWhy shouldnât you? There are so many odd things of the sort. But one can never be sure; it mightnât work next time.â
âWill you try again?â he asked.
âIf you like,â she answered; âbut I donât believe I shall hear anything now. Somehow â since that last business â everything seems different to me.â
âDonât be foolish,â he said; âyou have nothing to do with the hearing; it is my new receiver.â
âI daresay,â she replied; âbut, then, why couldnât you make it work with other people?â
Morris answered nothing. He, too, wondered why.
Next morning they made the experiment. It failed. Other experiments followed at intervals, most of which were fiascos, although some were partially successful. Thus, at times Mary could hear what he said. But except for a word or two, and now and then a sentence, he could not hear her whom, when she was still a child and his playmate, once he had heard so clearly.
âWhy is it?â he said, a year or two later, dashing his fist upon the table in impotent rage. âIt has been; why canât it be?â
Mary turned her large blue eyes up to the ceiling, and reflectively rubbed her dimpled chin with a very pretty finger.
âIsnât that the kind of question they used to ask oracles?â she asked lazilyââOh! no, it was the oracles themselves that were so vague. Well, I suppose because âwasâ is as different from âisâ as âasâ is from âshall be.â We are changed, Cousin; thatâs all.â
He pointed to his patent receiver, and grew angry.
âOh, it isnât the receiver,â she said, smoothing her curling hair; âitâs us. You donât understand me a bit â not now â and thatâs why you canât hear me. Take my advice, Morrisâ â and she looked at him sharplyââwhen you find a woman whom you can hear on your patent receiver, you had better marry her. It will be a good excuse for keeping her at a distance afterwards.â
Then he lost his temper; indeed, he raved, and stormed, and nearly smashed the patent receiver in his fury. To a scientific man, let it be admitted, it was nothing short of maddening to be told that the successful working of his instrument, to the manufacture of which he had given eight years of toil and study, depended upon some pre-existent sympathy between the operators of its divided halves. If that were so, what was the use of his wonderful discovery, for who could ensure a sympathetic correspondent? And yet the fact remained that when, in their playmate days, he understood his cousin Mary, and when her quiet, indolent nature had been deeply moved by the shock of the news of her motherâs peril, the aerophone had worked. Whereas now, when she had become a grown-up young lady, he did not understand her any longer â he, whose heart was wrapped up in his experiments, and who by nature feared the adult members of her sex, and shrank from them; when, too, her placid calm was no longer stirred, work it would not.
She laughed at his temper; then grew serious, and said:
âDonât get angry, Morris. After all, there are lots of things that you and I canât understand, and it isnât odd that you should have tumbled across one of them. If you think of it, nobody understands anything. They know that certain things happen, and how to make them happen; but they donât know why they happen, or why, as in your case, when they ought to happen, they wonât.â
âIt is all very well for you to be philosophical,â he answered, turning upon her; âbut canât you see, Mary, that the thing there is my lifeâs work? It is what I have given all my strength and all my brain to make, and if it fails in the end â why, then I fail too, once and forever. And I have made it talk. It talked perfectly between this place and Seaview, and now you stand there and tell me that it wonât work any more because I donât understand you. Then what am I to do?â
âTry to understand me, if you think it worth while, which I donât; or go on experimenting,â she answered. âTry to find some substance which is less exquisitely sensitive, something a little grosser, more in key with the material world; or to discover someone whom you do understand. Donât lose heart; donât be beaten after all these years.â
âNo,â he answered, âI donât unless I die,â and he turned to go.
âMorris,â she said, in a softer voice, âI am lazy, I know. Perhaps that is why I adore people who can work. So, although you donât think anything of me, I will do my honest best to get into sympathy with you again; yes, and to help in any way I can. No; itâs not a joke. I would give a great deal to see the thing a success.â
âWhy do you say I donât think anything of you, Mary? Of course, it isnât true. Besides, you are my cousin, and we have always been good friends since you were a little thing.â
She laughed. âYes, and I suppose that as you had no brothers or sisters they taught you to pray for your cousin, didnât they? Oh, I know all about it. It is my unfortunate sex that is to blame; while I was a mere tom-boy it was different. No one can serve two masters, can they? You have chosen to serve a machine that wonât go, and I daresay that you are wise. Yes, I think that it is the better part â until you find someone that will make it go â and then you would adore her â by aerophone!â
CHAPTER II
THE COLONEL AND SOME REFLECTIONS
Presently Morris heard a step upon the lawn, and turned to see his father sauntering towards him. Colonel Monk, C.B., was an elderly man, over sixty indeed, but still of an upright and soldierly bearing. His record was rather distinguished. In his youth he had served in the Crimea, and in due course was promoted to the command of a regiment of Guards. After this, certain diplomatic abilities caused him to be sent to one of the foreign capitals as military attache, and in reward of this service, on retiring, he was created a Companion of the Bath. In appearance he was handsome also; in fact, much better looking than his son, with his iron-grey hair, his clear-cut features, somewhat marred in effect by a certain shiftiness of the mouth, and his large dark eyes. Morris had those dark eyes also â they redeemed his face from plainness, for otherwise it showed no beauty, the features being too irregular, the brow too prominent, and the mouth too large. Yet it could boast what, in the case of a man at any rate, is better than beauty â spirituality, and a certain sympathetic charm. It was not the face which was so attractive, but rather the intelligence, the personality that shone through it, as the light shines through the horn panes of some homely, massive lantern. Speculative eyes of the sort that seem to search horizons and gather knowledge there, but shrink from the faces of women; a head of brown hair, short cut but untidy, an athletic, manlike form to which, bizarrely enough, a slight stoop, the stoop of a student, seemed to give distinction, and hands slender and shapely as those of an Eastern â such were the characteristics of Morris Monk, or at least those of them that the observer was apt to notice.
âHullo! Morris, are you star-gazing there?â said Colonel Monk, with a yawn. âI suppose that I must have fallen asleep after dinner â that comes of stopping too long at once in the country and drinking port. I notice you never touch it, and a good thing, too. There, my cigar is out. Nowâs the time for that new electric lighter of yours which I can never make work.â
Morris fumbled in his pocket and produced the lighter. Then he said:
âI am sorry, father; but I believe I forgot to charge it.â
âAh! thatâs just like you, if you will forgive my saying so. You take any amount of trouble to invent and perfect a thing, but when it comes to making use of it, then you forget,â and with a little gesture of impatience the Colonel turned aside to light a match from a box which he had found in the pocket of his cape.
âI am sorry,â said Morris, with a sigh, âbut I am afraid it is true. When oneâs mind is very fully occupied with one thing â ââ and he broke off.
âAh! thatâs it, Morris, thatâs it,â said the Colonel, seating himself upon a garden chair; âthis hobby-horse of yours is carrying you â to the devil, and your family with you. I donât want to be rough, but it is time that I spoke plain. Letâs see, how long is it since you left the London firm?â
âNine years this autumn,â answered Morris, setting his mouth a little, for he knew what was coming. The port drunk after claret had upset his fatherâs digestion and ruffled his temper. This meant that to him â Morris â Fate had appointed a lecture.
âNine years, nine wasted years, idled and dreamt away in a village upon the eastern coast. It is a large slice out of a manâs life, my boy. By the time that I was your age I had done a good deal,â said his father, meditatively. When he meant to be disagreeable it was the Colonelâs custom to become reflective.
âI canât admit that,â answered Morris, in his light, quick voiceââI mean I canât admit that my time has either been idled away or wasted. On the contrary, father,...