“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.