Stella Fregelius by H. Rider Haggard (no david read aloud .TXT) 📕

Curiously enough, indirectly, but in fact, it was the circumstance of Stella’s sudden and mysterious death that made Morris a rich and famous man, and caused his invention of the aerophone to come into common use. Very early on the following morning, but not before, she was missed from the Rectory and sought far and wide. One of the first places visited by those who searched was the Abbey, whither they met Morris returning through the gale, wild-eyed, flying-haired, and altogether strange to see. They asked him if he knew what had become of Miss Fregelius.

“Yes,” he replied, “she has been crushed or drowned in the ruins of the Dead Church, which was swept away by the gale last night.”

Then they stared and asked how he knew this. He answered that, being unable to sleep that night on account of the storm, he had gone into his workshop when his attention was suddenly attracted by the bell of the aerophone, by means of which he learned that Miss Fregelius had been cut off from the shore in the church. He added that he ran as hard as he could to the spot, only to find at dawn that the building had entirely vanished in the gale, and that the sea had encroached upon the land by at least two hundred paces.

Of course these statements concerning the aerophone and its capabilities were reported all over the world and much criticised—very roughly in some quarters. Thereupon Morris offered to demonstrate the truth of what he had said. The controversy proved sharp; but of this he was glad; it was a solace to him, perhaps even it prevented him from plunging headlong into madness. At first he was stunned; he did not feel very much. Then the first effects of the blow passed; a sense of the swiftness and inevitableness of this awful consummation seemed to sink down into his heart and crush him. The completeness of the tragedy, its Greek-play qualities, were overwhelming. Question and answer, seed and fruit—there was no space for thought or growth between them. The curtain was down upon the Temporal, and lo! almost before its folds had shaken to their place, it had risen upon the Eternal. His nature reeled beneath this knowledge and his loss. Had it not been for those suspicions and attacks it might have fallen.

The details of the struggle need not be entered into, as they have little to do with the life-story of Morris Monk. It is enough to say that in the end he more than carried out his promises under the severest conditions, and in the presence of various scientific bodies and other experts.

Afterwards came the natural results; the great aerophone company was floated, in which Morris as vendor received half the shares—he would take no cash—which shares, by the way, soon stood at five and a quarter. Also he found himself a noted man; was asked to deliver an address before the British Association; was nominated on the council of a leading scientific society, and in due course after a year or two received one of the greatest compliments that can be paid to an Englishman, that of being elected to its fellowship, as a distinguished person, by the committee of a famous Club. Thus did Morris prosper greatly—very greatly, and in many different ways; but with all this part of his life we are scarcely concerned.

On the day of his daughter’s death Morris visited Mr. Fregelius, for whom he had a message. He found the old man utterly crushed and broken.

“The last of the blood, Mr. Monk,” he moaned, when Morris, hoarse-voiced and slow-worded, had convinced him of the details of the dreadful fact, “the last of the blood; and I left childless. At least you will feel for me and with me. You will understand.”

It will be seen that although outside of some loose talk in the village, which indirectly had produced results so terrible, no one had ever suggested such a thing, curiously enough, by some intuitive process, Mr. Fregelius who, to a certain extent, at any rate, guessed his daughter’s mind, took it for granted that she had been in love with Morris. He seemed to know also by the same deductive process that he was attached to her.

“I do, indeed,” said Morris, with a sad smile, thinking that if only the clergyman could look into his heart he would perhaps be somewhat astonished at the depth of that understanding sympathy.

“I told you,” went on Mr. Fregelius, “and you laughed at me, that it was most unlucky her having sung that hateful Norse song, the ‘Greeting to Death,’ when you found her upon the steamer Trondhjem.”

“Everything has been unlucky, Mr. Fregelius—or lucky,” he added beneath his breath. “But you will like to know that she died singing it. The aerophone told me that.”

“Mr. Monk,” the old man said, catching his arm, “my daughter was a strange woman, a very strange woman, and since I heard this dreadful news I have been afraid that perhaps she was—unhappy. She was leaving her home, on your account—yes, on your account, it’s no use pretending otherwise, although no one ever told me so—and—that she knew the church was going to be washed away.”

“She thought you might think so,” answered Morris, and he gave him Stella’s last message. Moreover, he told him more of the real circumstances than he revealed to anybody else. He told him what nobody else ever knew, for on that lonely coast none had seen him enter or leave the place, how he had met her in the church—about the removal of the instruments, as he left it to be inferred—and at her wish had come home alone because of the gossip which had arisen. He explained also that according to her own story, from some unexplained cause she had fallen asleep in the church after his departure, and awakened to find herself surrounded by the waters with all hope gone.

“And now she is dead, now she is dead,” groaned Mr. Fregelius, “and I am alone in the world.”

“I am sorry for you,” said Morris simply, “but there it is. It is no use looking backward, we must look forward.”

“Yes, look forward, both of us, since she is hidden from both. You see, almost from the first I knew you were fond of her,” added the clergyman simply.

“Yes,” he answered, “I am fond of her, though of that the less said the better, and because our case is the same I hope that we shall always be friends.”

“You are very kind; I shall need a friend now. I am alone now, quite alone, and my heart is broken.”

Here it may be added that Morris was even better than his word. Out of the wealth that came to him in such plenty, for instance, he was careful to augment the old man’s resources without offending his feelings, by adding permanently and largely to the endowment of the living. Also, he attended to his wants in many other ways which need not be enumerated, and not least by constantly visiting him. Many were the odd hours and the evenings that shall be told of later, which they spent together smoking their pipes in the Rectory study, and talking of her who had gone, and whose lost life was the strongest link between them. Otherwise and elsewhere, except upon a few extraordinary occasions, her name rarely passed the lips of Morris.

Yet within himself he mourned and mourned, although even in the first bitterness not as one without hope. He knew that she had spoken truth; that she was not dead, but only for a while out of his sight and hearing.

Ten days had passed, and for Morris ten weary, almost sleepless, nights. The tragedy of the destruction of the new rector’s daughter in the ruins of the Dead Church no longer occupied the tongues of men and paragraphs in papers.