Stella Fregelius

૪Stella Fregelius

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Stella Fregelius, by H. Rider Haggard #44 in our series by H. Rider Haggard
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Title: Stella Fregelius
Author: H. Rider Haggard
Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6051] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on October 28, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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Etext prepared by John Bickers, [email protected] and Dagny, [email protected]

STELLA FREGELIUS By H. Rider Haggard
First Published 1904.

STELLA FREGELIUS
A TALE OF THREE DESTINIES
BY
H. RIDER HAGGARD

"Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, Atque metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum Subjecit pedibus; strepitumque Acherontis avari."

DEDICATION
My Dear John Berwick,
When you read her history in MS. you thought well of "Stella Fregelius" and urged her introduction to the world. Therefore I ask you, my severe and accomplished critic, to accept the burden of a book for which you are to some extent responsible. Whatever its fate, at least it has pleased you and therefore has not been written quite in vain.
H. Rider Haggard.
Ditchingham, 25th August, 1903.

AUTHOR'S NOTE
The author feels that he owes some apology to his readers for his boldness in offering to them a modest story which is in no sense a romance of the character that perhaps they expect from him; which has, moreover, few exciting incidents and no climax of the accustomed order, since the end of it only indicates its real beginning.
His excuse must be that, in the first instance, he wrote it purely to please himself and now publishes it in the hope that it may please some others. The problem of such a conflict, common enough mayhap did we but know it, between a departed and a present personality, of which the battle-ground is a bereaved human heart and the prize its complete possession; between earthly duty and spiritual desire also; was one that had long attracted him. Finding at length a few months of leisure, he treated the difficult theme, not indeed as he would have wished to do, but as best he could.
He may explain further that when he drafted this book, now some five years ago, instruments of the nature of the "aerophone" were not so much talked of as they are to-day. In fact this aerophone has little to do with his characters or their history, and the main motive of its introduction to his pages was to suggest how powerless are all such material means to bring within mortal reach the transcendental and unearthly ends which, with their aid, were attempted by Morris Monk.
These, as that dreamer learned, must be far otherwise obtained, whether in truth and spirit, or perchance, in visions only.
1903.

STELLA FREGELIUS

CHAPTER I
MORRIS, MARY, AND THE AEROPHONE
Above, the sky seemed one vast arc of solemn blue, set here and there with points of tremulous fire; below, to the shadowy horizon, stretched the plain of the soft grey sea, while from the fragrances of night and earth floated a breath of sleep and flowers.
A man leaned on the low wall that bordered the cliff edge, and looked at sea beneath and sky above. Then he contemplated the horizon, and murmured some line heard or learnt in childhood, ending "where earth and heaven meet."
"But they only seem to meet," he reflected to himself, idly. "If I sailed to that spot they would be as wide apart as ever. Yes, the stars would be as silent and as far away, and the sea quite as restless and as salt. Yet there must be a place where they do meet. No, Morris, my friend, there is no such place in this world, material or moral; so stick to facts, and leave fancies alone."
But that night this speculative man felt in the mood for fancies, for presently he was staring at one of the constellations, and saying to himself, "Why not? Well, why not? Granted force can travel through ether,--whatever ether is--why should it stop travelling? Give it time enough, a few seconds, or a few minutes or a few years,