Stella Fregelius by H. Rider Haggard (books to read now TXT) 📖

“Stella,” he whispered, “come to me, Stella!” But no Stella came; no wings rustled, no breath stirred; the empty room was as the room had been. Its silence seemed to mock him. Those who slept beneath its marble floor were not more silent.

Was he mad that he should claim the power to work this miracle—to charm the dead back through the Gates of Death as Orpheus charmed Eurydice? Yet Stella did this thing—but how? He turned to the volume and page of her diary which dealt with the drawing down of Gudrun. Yes, here she spoke of continual efforts and of “that long, long preparation”—of prayer and fasting also. Here, too, was the whole secret summed up in a dozen words: “To see a spirit one must grow akin to spirits.” Well, it could be done, and he would do it. But look further on where she said: “I shall call her back no more, lest the thing should get the mastery of me, and I become unfitted for my work on earth. . . . I will stop while there is yet time, while I am still mistress of my mind, and have the strength to deny myself this awful joy.”

Was there not a warning in these words, and in those other words: “No, do not search, but wait.” Surely they told of risk to him who, being yet on earth, dared to lift a corner of the veil which separates flesh and spirit. “Should get the mastery of me.” If he saw her once would he be able to do as Stella did, and by an effort of his will separate himself from a communion so fearful yet so sweet? “Unfitted for my work.” Supposing that it did get the mastery of him, would he not also be unfitted for his work on earth?

His work? What work had he now? It seemed to be done; for attending scientific meetings, receiving dividends, playing the country squire’s only son and the wealthy host whilst awaiting the title which Mary wished for—these things are not work, and somehow his days were so arranged that he was never allowed to go beyond them. All further researches and experiments were discouraged. What did it matter if he were unfitted for that which he could no longer do? His work was finished. There it stood before him in that box, stamped “Monk’s aerophone. The Twin. No. 3412.”

No; he had but one ambition left. To pierce the curtain of thick night and behold her who was lost to him; her who loved him as man had been seldom loved.

The fierce temptation struck him as a sudden squall strikes a ship with all her canvas spread. For a moment mast and rigging stood the strain, then they went by the board. He would do it if it killed him; but the task must be undertaken properly, deliberately, and above all in secret. To-morrow he would begin. When he had satisfied himself; when he had seen; then he could always stop.

A few minutes later Morris stood beside his wife’s bed. There she lay, in the first perfection of young motherhood and beauty, a lovely, white-wrapped vision with straying golden hair; her sweet, rounded face pink with the flush of sleep, and the long lashes lying like little shadows on her cheek.

Morris looked at her, and his doubts returned. What would Stella say? he thought to himself. It almost seemed to him that he could hear her voice, bidding him forbear; bidding him render unto his wife those things which were his wife’s: all honour, loyalty, and devotion. If he entered on this course could he still render them? Was there not such a thing as moral infidelity, and did not such exercises as he proposed partake of its nature? Perhaps, perhaps. On the whole it might be well to put all this behind him.

It was three o’clock, he was tired out, and must sleep. The morning would be a more fitting time to ponder such weighty questions of the unwritten matrimonial law.

In due course, the morning came—indeed, it was not far off—and with it wiser counsels. Mary woke early and talked about the baby, which was teething; indeed, so soon as the nurse was up she sent for it that the three of them might hold a consultation over a swollen gum. Also she discussed the date of their departure to Beaulieu, for again Christmas was near at hand; adding, however, somewhat to Morris’s relief, that unless the baby’s teeth went on better she really did not think that they could go, as it would be most unwise to take her out of the care of Dr. Charters and trust her to the tender mercies of foreign leeches. Morris agreed that it might be risky, and mentioned that in a letter which he had received from the concierge at Beaulieu a few days before, that functionary said that the place was overrun with measles and scarlatina.

“Morris!” ejaculated Mary, sitting bolt upright in bed, “and you never told me! What is more, had it not been for baby’s teeth, which brought it to your mind, I believe you never would have told me, and I might have taken those unprotected little angels and—Oh! goodness, I can’t bear to think of it.”

Morris muttered some apologies, whereon Mary, looking at him suspiciously through her falling hair, asked:

“Why did you forget to show me the letter? Did you suppress it because you wanted to go to Beaulieu?”

“No,” answered Morris with energy; “I hate Beaulieu. I forgot, that is all; because I have so much to think about, I suppose.”

“So much? I thought that things were arranged now so that you had nothing at all to think about except how to spend your money and be happy with me, and adore the dear angels—Yes, I think that perhaps the nurse had better take her away. Touch the bell, will you? There, she’s gone. Keep her well wrapped up, and mind the draught, nurse.

“No, don’t get up yet, Morris; I want to talk to you. You have been very gloomy of late, just like you used to be before you married, mooning about and staring at nothing. And what on earth do you do sitting up to all hours of the morning in that ghosty old chapel, where I wouldn’t be alone at twelve o’clock for a hundred pounds?”

“I read,” said Morris.

“Read? Read what? Novels?”

“Sometimes,” answered Morris.

“Oh, how can you tell such fibs? Why, that last book by Lady What’s-her-name which came in the Mudie box—the one they say is so improper—has been lying on your table for over two months, and you can’t tell me yet what it was the heroine did wrong. Morris, you are not inventing anything more, are you?”

Here was an inspiration. “I admit that I am thinking of a little thing,” he said with diffidence, as though he were a budding poet with a sonnet on his mind.

“A little thing? What little thing?”

“Well, a new kind of aerophone designed to work uninfluenced by its twin.”

“Well, and why shouldn’t it? Everything can’t have a twin—only I suppose there would be nothing to hear.”

“That’s just the point,” replied Morris in his old professional manner. “I think there would be plenty to hear if only I could make the machine sensitive to the sounds and capable of reproducing them.”

“What sounds?” asked Mary.

“Well, if, for instance, one could successfully insulate it from the earth noises, the sounds which permeate space, and even those that have their origin upon the surfaces of the planets and perhaps of the more distant stars.”

“Great heavens!” exclaimed Mary, “imagine a man who can want to let loose upon our poor little world every horrible noise that happens in the stars. Why, what under heaven would be the use of it?”

“Well, one might communicate with them. Conceivably even one might hear the speech of their inhabitants, if they have any; always presuming that such an instrument could be made, and that it can be successfully insulated.”

“Hear the speech of their inhabitants! That is your old idea, but you will never succeed, that’s one blessing. Morris, I suspect you; you want to stop at home here to work at this horrible new machine; to work for years, and years, and years without the slightest result. I suppose that you didn’t invent that about the measles and the scarlatina, did you? The two of them together sound rather clumsy, as though you might have done so.”

“Not a bit, upon my honour,” answered Morris. “I will go and get the letter,” and, not sorry to escape from further examination, he went.

Whether the cause were Mary’s doubts and reproaches, or the infant’s gums, or the working of his own conscience,—he felt that a man with a teething baby has no right to cultivate the occult. For quite a long period, a whole fortnight, indeed, Morris steadily refrained from any attempt to fulfil his dangerous ambition to “pierce the curtain of thick night.” Only he read and re-read Stella’s diary—that secret, fascinating work which in effect was building a wall between him and the healthy, common instincts of the world—till he knew whole pages of it by heart. Also he began a series of experiments whereof the object was to produce an improved and more sensitive aerophone.

That any instrument which the intellect of man could produce would really succeed in conveying sounds which, if they exist at all, are born in the vast cosmic areas that envelope our earth and its atmosphere, he believed to be most improbable. Still, such a thing was possible, for what is not? Moreover, the world itself as it rushes on its fearful journey across the depths of space has doubtless many voices that have not yet been heard by the ears of men, some of which he might be able to discover and record. At the least he stood upon the threshold of a new knowledge, and now a great desire arose in him to pass its doors, if so he might, for who could tell what he would learn or see behind them? And by degrees, as he worked, always with one ulterior object in his mind, his scruples vanished or were mastered by the growth of his longing, till this became his ruling passion—to behold the spirit of Stella. Now he no longer reasoned with himself, but openly, nakedly, in his own heart gave his will over to the achievement of this monstrous and unnatural end.

How was it to be done? That was now the sole dilemma which tormented him—as the possible methods of obtaining the drink he craves, or the drug that gives him peace and radiant visions, torment the dipsomaniac or the morphia victim in his guarded prison. He thought of his instruments, those magic machines with the working of which Stella had been familiar in her life. He even poured petitions into them in the hope that these might be delivered far beyond the ken of man, only to learn that he was travelling a road which led to a wall impassable; the wall that, for the lack of a better name, we call Death, which bars the natural from the spiritual.

Wonderful as were his electrical appliances, innumerable as might be their impalpable emanations, insoluble as seemed the mystery of their power of catching and transmitting sounds by the agency of ether, they were still physical appliances producing physical effects in obedience to the laws of nature. But what he sought lay beyond nature and was subject to some rule of which he did not even know the elements, and much less the axioms. Herein his instruments, or indeed, any that man could make, were as futile and as useless as would be the prayers of an archbishop addressed to a Mumbo-jumbo in a fetish house. The link was wanting; there was, and could be, no communication between