Then a hitch arose, the inevitable hitch; it was found that, in certain states of the atmosphere, and sometimes at fixed hours of the day, the sounds coming from the receiver were almost inaudible. At other times again the motive force seemed to be so extraordinarily active that, the sound deflector notwithstanding, the instrument captured and transmitted a thousand noises which are not to be heard by the unobservant listener, or in some cases by any human ear.
Weird enough these noises were at times. Like great sighs they came, like the moan of the breeze brought from an infinite distance, like mutterings and groanings arisen from the very bowels of the earth. Then there were the splash or boom of the waves, the piping of the sea-wind, the cry of curlew, or black-backed gulls, all mingled in one great and tangled skein of sound that choked the voice of the speaker, and in their aggregate, bewildered him who hearkened.
These, and others which need not be detailed, were problems that had to be met, necessitating many more experiments. Thus it came about that through most of the short hours of winter daylight Morris and Stella found themselves at their respective positions, corresponding, or trying to correspond, through the aerophones. If the weather was very bad, or very cold, Morris went to the dead Church, otherwise that post was allotted to Stella, both because it was more convenient that Morris should stay in his laboratory, and by her own choice.
Two principal reasons caused her to prefer to pass as much of her time as was possible in this desolate and unvisited spot. First, because Mr. Layard was less likely to find her when he called, and secondly, that for her it had a strange fascination. Indeed, she loved the place, clothed as it was with a thousand memories of those who had been human like herself, but now—were not. She would read the inscriptions upon the chancel stones and study the coats-of-arms and names of those departed, trying to give to each lost man and woman a shape and character, till at length she knew all the monuments by appearance as well as by the names inscribed upon them.
One of these dead, oddly enough, had been named Stella Ethel Smythe, daughter of Sir Thomas Smythe, whose family lived at the old hall now in the possession of the Layards. This Stella had died at the age of twenty-five in the year 1741, and her tombstone recorded that in mind she was clean and sweet, and in body beautiful. Also at the foot of it was a doggerel couplet, written probably by her bereaved father, which ran:
“Though here my Star seems set,
I know ‘twill light me yet.”
Stella, the live Stella, thought these simple words very touching, and pointed them out to Morris. He agreed with her, and tried in the records of the parish and elsewhere to discover some details about the dead girl’s life, but quite without avail.
“That’s all that’s left,” he said one day, nodding his head at the tombstone. “The star is quite set.”
“‘I know ‘twill light me yet,’” murmured his companion, as she turned away to the work in hand. “Sometimes,” she went on, “as I sit here at dusk listening to all the strange sounds which come from that receiver, I fancy that I can hear Stella and her poor father talking while they watch me; only I cannot understand their language.”
“Ah!” said Morris, “if that were right we should have found a means of communication from the dead and with the unseen world at large.”