The Passion for Life Part 21

"Why not take this up as a hobby?" he said.

"What? Wireless telegraphy?"

"Yes. These things are easy enough to fix up. Any boy with a mechanical turn of mind can manage it. I will give you all the material necessary, and you can make a hobby of it. Of course, it will be no advantage to you, but it will help you to while away the time. When I first came here I didn't care a fig about it, but now my work is a source of ever-increasing interest to me. I am always trying new experiments. Why, you and Prideaux could have all sorts of larks."

"How is that?"

"Why, if you got one of these things at your place, and Prideaux fixed one up at his, you could be sending messages to each other, and you could bewilder people by telling them what is taking place at each other's houses. Don't you see?" And the young fellow laughed boyishly at the prospect which appeared before his mind. "Why, you can have a party at your house and tell your guests how, by your gift of second sight, you know exactly what is going on at Prideaux's house, and then Prideaux, when he comes over, could confirm all you say."

"But I should have to learn the code in order to do this?"

"Of course you would. That is easy enough. I have a book of codes. A chap with a good memory like you could learn everything in half an hour."

I could see that to him his work was at once a plaything and a wonder.

He must have been over twenty, but he talked like a lad of fifteen.

"It is the most wonderful thing in the world," he went on. "See what lives have been saved by the invention. You remember the burning of the _Volturno_? A man I know was on board that s.h.i.+p, and he told me what he felt when it caught fire, and how, in spite of his danger, his heart thrilled with wonder when he saw the vessels which had been summoned by wireless to their aid. Every one would have died an awful death but for this discovery. Besides, supposing we went to war, can't you see the advantage of it?"

"I don't know," I said. "It seems to me that it might be a great disadvantage. Supposing, for example, we went to war with France, and we wanted to send a message to one of our s.h.i.+ps, the French would receive the message at one of their receiving stations, and they would know all our plans."

"I've made a special study of that," he said, with a laugh. "I daren't let you know how; it would be telling; but I believe I know the secret codes of nearly all the countries. Look here, you get one of these things fixed up, and I will come over and see whether you have got it right. I can put you up to all sorts of dodges. You will never be lonely if this thing really grips you."

I must confess that I caught some of the boy's enthusiasm, and when we returned that evening I brought with me the material for fixing up a kind of amateur installation. Although not scientifically inclined, the wonder of the thing appealed to me, and I reflected that during my lonely hours I could occupy myself with this marvellous discovery.

Indeed, for many days afterwards I was engaged in carrying out what the boy had instructed me to do. I found what seemed to me a convenient spot on the cliff, close to my house, yet hidden from the gaze of any pa.s.ser-by, and here I almost forgot my troubles in perfecting it. More than once, too, young Martin--for that was the name of the lad--came over to see me, and told me that I was getting on famously.

"I am afraid your affair is not powerful enough," he said; "but I will try and send a message to you. It will be an awful lark, won't it?"

By the time young Martin and I had met three times we had become quite friendly, and so eager was he about the work I was doing that he gave me a little book, which he himself had compiled, containing secret codes.

"I don't know whether I ought to do this," he laughed, "but really, you know, it is so fine. It is so interesting, too, and it was by the purest chance that I picked them up."

By the end of a fortnight I boasted to myself that I knew practically all young Martin could tell me about wireless telegraphy, and that I had a.s.similated all his boasted knowledge about codes. Although I was not a scientist, I had a voracious memory, and was not long in storing my mind with what, a few weeks before, had but little meaning to me, but was now full of mystery and wonder.

By the end of that time one of my old attacks came on, and I was too ill to care about anything. Indeed, when Prideaux and Lethbridge called on me I was too unwell to see either of them. For that matter, I had lost interest in everything. Day followed day, and I opened neither newspaper nor book, nor did I give a thought to what had so interested me since my first visit to that monument of Marconi's genius. What was going on in the outside world I neither knew nor cared. Once or twice I thought the end had come, and that I should never leave Father Abraham's hut alive.

Presently, however, a turn came for the better, and in what seemed a remarkable way, health and strength returned to me. I knew it was only temporary, and that in a few weeks I should have another attack, possibly worse than this, but I drove the thought from my mind.

"Let me enjoy freedom from pain while I can," I said to myself. "As for morbid thoughts, I will have nothing to do with them."

That was why, when Hugh Lethbridge next came to see me and invited me over to Trecarrel, I accepted the invitation with eagerness. I wanted to live while I was able, and the thought of another conversation with Isabella Lethbridge appealed to me.

At Hugh's request, I went early. I engaged a kind of phaeton to meet me at the end of the copse and take me over. I still felt weak and languid after my lengthened attack, but was much stronger than I had hoped. The thought of strange faces, too, added a new interest to my life, and I looked forward with eagerness to a pleasant evening. As the carriage entered the lodge gates and pa.s.sed under a fine avenue of trees, I could not help reflecting what a fine old place Trecarrel was. It had been built hundreds of years before by the family of Trecarrels, which, like many other old families, had become poor, and had to sell the ancestral acres. Mr. Lethbridge had the good sense to leave the house practically as he found it, and had not attempted to modernize it in any way. It is true he had, as he told me, brought the sanitary arrangements and the fireplaces up to date, but the building, as a whole, remained pretty much as it had been at the time of the Trecarrels. From the front entrance it commanded a fine view of rugged tors, beyond which shone the sea, on the one hand, and of wooded dells and rich meadows on the other.

It was a place to rejoice in--a place of which the possessor could say proudly, "This is my home."

It wanted half an hour to dinner when I entered the house, but I found Isabella Lethbridge already dressed, as if awaiting me. She gave me a warm welcome, and, as I thought, seemed pleased to see me. I had not now seen her for some weeks, and I imagined that the feelings she had awakened in my heart, when we last met, were a thing of the past. Now, however, I knew it was not so. In a way I could not understand she exercised a strange influence over me. I found myself eager to talk to her, anxious to be thought well of by her. I remembered what had been said about her, and I believed it to be true; yet at this time I cared nothing about it. What, after all, did it matter?

If any one should read this, I imagine he will say that I had fallen in love with her, but such was not the case. I realized the barriers between us, that, much as I delighted in her beauty--for she was beautiful that night--that much as I rejoiced in being with her, I felt no love for her. That is, love as I understand it. I knew that she repelled me, even while she fascinated me. That she had a vigorous intelligence, I could not deny. That she possessed a strange charm was just as evident, but something kept Isabella Lethbridge from making that appeal to me which caused me to be what the world calls "in love."

Perhaps this was because I knew my days were numbered. How could a man, who a few weeks before had been given a year to live, think of marriage and giving in marriage? No, no, Isabella Lethbridge was still only a problem to me, and yet I could not understand the strange interest I had in her.

"I hear you have got to know Mr. Ned Prideaux?" she said to me, after we had been talking for a few minutes.

"Yes, I met him one night up at Mr. Trelaske's. Do you know him?"

"I have met him two or three times," was her reply. "What do you think of him?"

"He struck me as a fine specimen of a young Cornishman."

"Have you seen him since that night at the Vicarage?"

"Yes, two or three times; we have become rather friendly."

"He said all sorts of things about me, I expect?" and she looked at me questioningly.

"About you! Why should he?"

"Don't try to deceive me, Mr. Erskine. You cannot succeed in doing it, although you are a lawyer. I can see that he talked to you about me.

What did he say?"

"What could he say?" I laughed, "except that you are very beautiful and very fascinating, and all that sort of thing."

I know it was very clumsy, and that had I been gifted with a ready wit I should have evaded her question with a greater appearance of ease.

"That will not do, Mr. Erskine, and it is not worthy of you. What did he tell you?" There was a look in her eyes, half of curiosity, half of anger, as she spoke. It appeared that she was interested in what Prideaux thought of her, yet angry that he should speak of her.

"What could he tell me?" I asked.

She reflected for a few seconds, then said suddenly:

"Do you believe that any one should be tied down to conventional morality, Mr. Erskine?"

"Conventional morality?" I asked. "I am not sure that I understand."

"Don't you think," she said, "that one has a right to pick the flowers that lie in one's pathway? Rather, don't you think it is one's duty to do so?"

"The question is rather too abstract for me," was my reply; "one has to get down to concrete instances."

Again she reflected for a few seconds.

"I am glad you have come up early," she said. "Glad to have this opportunity of talking with you alone. You have come from a world of ideas. You have met with people who are determined to live their lives at all costs."

"I have met with people, certainly, who have claimed to do this," was my reply; "but, on the whole, the so-called unconventional people, as far as my experience goes, are the most discontented. After all, life doesn't admit of many experiments, and those who make them, as a rule, have to pay very dearly for them."

"Yes, but they have been happy while they have been making them," was her reply. "You confess to that, don't you?"

"I am not sure. For example, I know a man who was determined to do as you say. He said he would live his life untrammelled by conventional ideas, that he would experiment, that he would pick the flowers that grew at his feet, no matter to whom they belonged."

"Yes," she replied eagerly, "and what then?"