Traffics and Discoveries Part 28

"On its own account?"

"On its own account."

"Then let's see if I've got it correctly. Miles off, at Poole, or wherever it is----"

"It will be anywhere in ten years."

"You've got a charged wire----"

"Charged with Hertzian waves which vibrate, say, two hundred and thirty million times a second." Mr. Cash.e.l.l snaked his forefinger rapidly through the air.

"All right--a charged wire at Poole, giving out these waves into s.p.a.ce.

Then this wire of yours sticking out into s.p.a.ce--on the roof of the house --in some mysterious way gets charged with those waves from Poole----"

"Or anywhere--it only happens to be Poole tonight."

"And those waves set the coherer at work, just like an ordinary telegraph- office ticker?"

"No! That's where so many people make the mistake. The Hertzian waves wouldn't be strong enough to work a great heavy Morse instrument like ours. They can only just make that dust cohere, and while it coheres (a little while for a dot and a longer while for a dash) the current from this battery--the home battery"--he laid his hand on the thing--"can get through to the Morse printing-machine to record the dot or dash. Let me make it clearer. Do you know anything about steam?"

"Very little. But go on."

"Well, the coherer is like a steam-valve. Any child can open a valve and start a steamer's engines, because a turn of the hand lets in the main steam, doesn't it? Now, this home battery here ready to print is the main steam. The coherer is the valve, always ready to be turned on. The Hertzian wave is the child's hand that turns it."

"I see. That's marvellous."

"Marvellous, isn't it? And, remember, we're only at the beginning. There's nothing we sha'n't be able to do in ten years. I want to live--my G.o.d, how I want to live, and see it develop!" He looked through the door at Shaynor breathing lightly in his chair. "Poor beast! And he wants to keep company with f.a.n.n.y Brand."

"f.a.n.n.y _who_?" I said, for the name struck an obscurely familiar chord in my brain--something connected with a stained handkerchief, and the word "arterial."

"f.a.n.n.y Brand--the girl you kept shop for." He laughed, "That's all I know about her, and for the life of me I can't see what Shaynor sees in her, or she in him."

"_Can't_ you see what he sees in her?" I insisted.

"Oh, yes, if _that's_ what you mean. She's a great, big, fat lump of a girl, and so on. I suppose that's why he's so crazy after her. She isn't his sort. Well, it doesn't matter. My uncle says he's bound to die before the year's out. Your drink's given him a good sleep, at any rate." Young Mr. Cash.e.l.l could not catch Mr. Shaynor's face, which was half turned to the advertis.e.m.e.nt.

I stoked the stove anew, for the room was growing cold, and lighted another pastille. Mr. Shaynor in his chair, never moving, looked through and over me with eyes as wide and l.u.s.treless as those of a dead hare.

"Poole's late," said young Mr. Cash.e.l.l, when I stepped back. "I'll just send them a call."

He pressed a key in the semi-darkness, and with a rending crackle there leaped between two bra.s.s k.n.o.bs a spark, streams of sparks, and sparks again.

"Grand, isn't it? _That's_ the Power--our unknown Power--kicking and fighting to be let loose," said young Mr. Cash.e.l.l. "There she goes--kick-- kick--kick into s.p.a.ce. I never get over the strangeness of it when I work a sending-machine--waves going into s.p.a.ce, you know. T.R. is our call.

Poole ought to answer with L.L.L."

We waited two, three, five minutes. In that silence, of which the boom of the tide was an orderly part, I caught the clear "_kiss--kiss--kiss_" of the halliards on the roof, as they were blown against the installation- pole.

"Poole is not ready. I'll stay here and call you when he is."

I returned to the shop, and set down my gla.s.s on a marble slab with a careless clink. As I did so, Shaynor rose to his feet, his eyes fixed once more on the advertis.e.m.e.nt, where the young woman bathed in the light from the red jar simpered pinkly over her pearls. His lips moved without cessation. I stepped nearer to listen. "And threw--and threw--and threw,"

he repeated, his face all sharp with some inexplicable agony.

I moved forward astonished. But it was then he found words--delivered roundly and clearly. These:--

And threw warm gules on Madeleine's young breast.

The trouble pa.s.sed off his countenance, and he returned lightly to his place, rubbing his hands.

It had never occurred to me, though we had many times discussed reading and prize-compet.i.tions as a diversion, that Mr. Shaynor ever read Keats, or could quote him at all appositely. There was, after all, a certain stained-gla.s.s effect of light on the high bosom of the highly-polished picture which might, by stretch of fancy, suggest, as a vile chromo recalls some incomparable canvas, the line he had spoken. Night, my drink, and solitude were evidently turning Mr. Shaynor into a poet. He sat down again and wrote swiftly on his villainous note-paper, his lips quivering.

I shut the door into the inner office and moved up behind him. He made no sign that he saw or heard. I looked over his shoulder, and read, amid half-formed words, sentences, and wild scratches:--

--Very cold it was. Very cold The hare--the hare--the hare-- The birds----

He raised his head sharply, and frowned toward the blank shutters of the poulterer's shop where they jutted out against our window. Then one clear line came:--

The hare, in spite of fur, was very cold.

The head, moving machine-like, turned right to the advertis.e.m.e.nt where the Blaudett's Cathedral pastille reeked abominably. He grunted, and went on:--

Incense in a censer-- Before her darling picture framed in gold-- Maiden's picture--angel's portrait--

"Hs.h.!.+" said Mr. Cash.e.l.l guardedly from the inner office, as though in the presence of spirits. "There's something coming through from somewhere; but it isn't Poole." I heard the crackle of sparks as he depressed the keys of the transmitter. In my own brain, too, something crackled, or it might have been the hair on my head. Then I heard my own voice, in a harsh whisper: "Mr. Cash.e.l.l, there is something coming through here, too. Leave me alone till I tell you."

"But I thought you'd come to see this wonderful thing--Sir," indignantly at the end.

"Leave me alone till I tell you. Be quiet."

I watched--I waited. Under the blue-veined hand--the dry hand of the consumptive--came away clear, without erasure:

And my weak spirit fails To think how the dead must freeze-- he s.h.i.+vered as he wrote--

Beneath the churchyard mould.

Then he stopped, laid the pen down, and leaned back.

For an instant, that was half an eternity, the shop spun before me in a rainbow-tinted whirl, in and through which my own soul most dispa.s.sionately considered my own soul as that fought with an over- mastering fear. Then I smelt the strong smell of cigarettes from Mr.

Shaynor's clothing, and heard, as though it had been the rending of trumpets, the rattle of his breathing. I was still in my place of observation, much as one would watch a rifle-shot at the b.u.t.ts, half-bent, hands on my knees, and head within a few inches of the black, red, and yellow blanket of his shoulder. I was whispering encouragement, evidently to my other self, sounding sentences, such as men p.r.o.nounce in dreams.

"If he has read Keats, it proves nothing. If he hasn't--like causes _must_ beget like effects. There is no escape from this law. _You_ ought to be grateful that you know 'St. Agnes Eve' without the book; because, given the circ.u.mstances, such as f.a.n.n.y Brand, who is the key of the enigma, and approximately represents the lat.i.tude and longitude of f.a.n.n.y Brawne; allowing also for the bright red colour of the arterial blood upon the handkerchief, which was just what you were puzzling over in the shop just now; and counting the effect of the professional environment, here almost perfectly duplicated--the result is logical and inevitable. As inevitable as induction."

Still, the other half of my soul refused to be comforted. It was cowering in some minute and inadequate corner--at an immense distance.

Hereafter, I found myself one person again, my hands still gripping my knees, and my eyes glued on the page before Mr. Shaynor. As dreamers accept and explain the upheaval of landscapes and the resurrection of the dead, with excerpts from the evening hymn or the multiplication-table, so I had accepted the facts, whatever they might be, that I should witness, and had devised a theory, sane and plausible to my mind, that explained them all. Nay, I was even in advance of my facts, walking hurriedly before them, a.s.sured that they would fit my theory. And all that I now recall of that epoch-making theory are the lofty words: "If he has read Keats it's the chloric-ether. If he hasn't, it's the identical bacillus, or Hertzian wave of tuberculosis, _plus_ f.a.n.n.y Brand and the professional status which, in conjunction with the main-stream of subconscious thought common to all mankind, has thrown up temporarily an induced Keats."

Mr. Shaynor returned to his work, erasing and rewriting as before with swiftness. Two or three blank pages he tossed aside. Then he wrote, muttering:

The little smoke of a candle that goes out.