A Honeymoon in Space
what he wanted to do just then was to shake hands with Lilla Zaidie
Rennick, and so he went straight towards her, raised his cap, and held
out his hand saying, first with a glance into her eyes, and then with
one upward at the _Astronef_:
"Good morning again, Miss Rennick! You see it is done."
"Good morning, Lord Redgrave!" she replied, he thought, a little
awkwardly. "Yes, I see you have kept your promise. What a pity it is too
late! But I hope you will be able to stop long enough to tell us all
about it. This is Mrs. Van Stuyler, who has taken me under her
protection on my journey to Europe."
His lordship returned the bow of a tall, somewhat hard-featured matron
who looked dignified even in the somewhat nondescript costume which most
of the ladies were wearing. But her eyes were kindly, and he said:
"Very pleased to meet, Mrs. Van Stuyler. I heard you were coming, and I
was in hopes of catching you on the other side before you left. And now,
if you will excuse me, I must go and have a chat with the Skipper." He
raised his cap again and presently vanished from the curious eyes of the
excited crowd, through the door of the Captain's apartment.
Captain Hawkins closed the door of his sitting-room as he entered, and
said:
"Now, my Lord, I'm not going to ask you any questions to begin with,
because if I once began I should never stop; and besides, perhaps you'd
like to have your own say right away."
"Perhaps that will be the shortest way," said his lordship. "The fact
is, we've not only the remains of this Boer business on our hands, but
we've had what is practically a declaration of war from France and
Russia. Briefly it's this way. A few weeks ago, while the Allies thought
they were fighting the Boxers, it came to the knowledge of my brother,
the Foreign Secretary, that the Tsung-li-Yamen had concluded a secret
treaty with Russia which practically annulled all our rights over the
Yang-tse Valley, and gave Russia the right to bring her Northern Railway
right down through China.
"As you know, we've stood a lot too much in that part of the world
already, but we couldn't stand this; so about ten days ago an ultimatum
was sent declaring that the British Government would consider any
encroachment on the Yang-tse Valley as an unfriendly act.
"Meanwhile France chipped in with a notification that she was going to
occupy Morocco as a compensation for Fashoda, and added a few nasty
things about Egypt and other places. Of course we couldn't stand that
either, so there was another ultimatum, and the upshot of it all was
that I got a wire late last night from my brother telling me that war
would almost certainly be declared to-day, and asking me for the use of
this craft of mine as a sort of dispatch-boat if she was ready. She is
intended for something very much better than fighting purposes, so he
couldn't ask me to use her as a war-ship; besides, I am under a solemn
obligation to her inventor--her creator, in fact, for I've only built
her--to blow her to pieces rather than allow her to be used as a
fighting machine except, of course, in sheer personal self-defence.
"There is the telegram from my brother, so you can see there's no
mistake, and just after it came a messenger asking me, if the machine
was a success, to bring this with me across the Atlantic as fast as I
could come. It is the duplicate of an offensive and defensive alliance
between Great Britain and the United States, of which the details had
been arranged just as this complication arose. Another is coming across
by a fast cruiser, and, of course, the news will have got to Washington
by cable by this time.
"By the time you get to the entrance of the Channel you will probably
find it swarming with French cruisers and torpedo-destroyers, so if
you'll be advised by me, you'll leave Queenstown out and get as far
north as possible."
"Lord Redgrave," said the Captain, putting out his hand, "I'm
responsible for a good bit right here, and I don't know how to thank you
enough. I guess that treaty's been given away back to France by some of
our Irish statesmen by now, and it'd be mighty unhealthy for the _St.
Louis_ to fall in with a French or Russian cruiser----"
"That's all right, Captain," said Lord Redgrave, taking his hand. "I
should have warned any other British or American ship. At the same time,
I must confess that my motives in warning you were not entirely
unselfish. The fact is, there's some one on board the _St. Louis_ whom I
should decidedly object to see taken off to France as a prisoner of
war."
"And may I ask who that is?" said Captain Hawkins.
"Why not?" replied his lordship. "It's the young lady I spoke to on deck
just now, Miss Rennick. Her father was the inventor of that craft of
mine. No one would believe his theories. He was refused patents both in
England and America on the ground of lack of practical utility. I met
him about two years ago, that is to say rather more than a year before
his death, when I was stopping at Banff up in the Canadian Rockies. We
made a travellers' acquaintance, and he told me about this idea of his.
I was very much interested, but I'm afraid I must confess that I might
not have taken it up practically if the Professor hadn't happened to
possess an exceedingly beautiful daughter. However, of course I'm pretty
glad now that I did do it; though the experiments cost nearly five
thousand pounds and the craft herself close on a quarter of a million.
Still, she is worth every penny of it, and I was bringing her over to
offer to Miss Rennick as a wedding present, that is to say if she'd have
it--and me."
Captain Hawkins looked up and said rather seriously:
"Then, my Lord, I presume you don't know----"
"Don't know what?"
"That Miss Rennick is crossing in the care of Mrs. Van Stuyler, to be
married in London next month."
"The devil she is! And to whom, may I ask?" exclaimed his lordship,
pulling himself up very straight.
"To the Marquis of Byfleet, son of the Duke of Duncaster. I wonder you
didn't hear of it. The match was arranged last fall. From what people
say she's not very desperately in love with him, but--well, I fancy it's
like rather too many of these Anglo-American matches. A couple of
million dollars on one side, a title on the other, and mighty little
real love between them."
"But," said Redgrave between his teeth, "I didn't understand that Miss
Rennick ever had a fortune; in fact I'm quite certain that if her father
had been a rich man he'd have worked out his invention himself."
"Oh, the dollars aren't his. In fact they won't be hers till she
marries," replied the Captain. "They belong to her uncle, old Russell
Rennick. He got in on the ground floor of the New York and Chicago ice
trusts, and made millions. He's going to spend some of them on making
his niece a Marchioness. That's about all there is to it."
"Oh, indeed!" said Redgrave, still between his teeth. "Well, considering
that Byfleet is about as big a wastrel as ever disgraced the English
aristocracy, I don't think either Miss Rennick or her uncle will make a
very good bargain. However, of course that's no affair of mine now. I
remember that this Russell Rennick refused to finance his brother when
he really wanted the money. He made a particularly bad bargain, too,
then, though he didn't know it; for a dozen crafts like that, properly
armed, would simply smash up the navies of the world, and make sea-power
a private trust. After all, I'm not particularly sorry, because then it
wouldn't have belonged to me. Well now, Captain, I'm going to ask you to
give me a bit of breakfast when it's ready, and then I must be off. I
want to be in Washington to-night."
"To-night! What, twenty-one hundred miles!"
"Why not?" said Redgrave; "I can do about a hundred and fifty an hour
through the atmosphere, and then, you see, if that isn't fast enough I
can rise outside the earth's attraction, let it spin round, and then
come down where I want to."
"Great Scott!" remarked Captain Hawkins inadequately, but with emphasis.
"Well, my Lord, I guess we'll go down to breakfast."
But breakfast was not quite ready, and so Lord Redgrave rejoined Miss
Rennick and her chaperon on deck. All eyes and a good many glasses were
still turned on the _Astronef_, which had now moved a few feet away from
the liner's side, and was running along, exactly keeping pace with her.
"It's so wonderful, that even seeing doesn't seem believing," said the
girl, when they had renewed their acquaintance of two years before.
"Well," he replied, "it would be very easy to convince you. She shall
come alongside again, and if you and Mrs. Van Stuyler will honour her by
your presence for half an hour while breakfast is getting ready, I think
I shall be able to convince you that she is not the airy fabric of a
vision, but simply the realisation in metal and glass and other things
of visions which your father saw some years ago."
There was no resisting an invitation put in such a way. Besides, the
prospect of becoming the wonder and envy of every other woman on board
was altogether too dazzling for words.
Mrs. Van Stuyler looked a little aghast at the idea at first, but she
too had something of the same feeling as Zaidie, and besides, there
could hardly be any impropriety in accepting the invitation of one of
the wealthiest and most distinguished noblemen in the British Peerage.
So, after a little demur and a slight manifestation of nervousness, she
consented.
Redgrave signalled to the man at the steering wheel. The _Astronef_
slackened pace a little, dropped a yard or so, and slid up quite close
to the bridge-rail again. Lord Redgrave got in first and ran a light
gangway down on to the bridge. Zaidie and Mrs. Van Stuyler were
carefully handed up. The next moment the gangway was drawn up again, the
sliding glass doors clashed to, the _Astronef_ leapt a couple of
thousand feet into the air, swept round to the westward in a magnificent
curve, and vanished into the gloom of the upper mists.
CHAPTER I
The situation was one which was absolutely without parallel in all the
history of courtship from the days of Mother Eve to those of Miss Lilla
Zaidie Rennick. The nearest approach to it would have been the
old-fashioned Tartar custom which made it lawful for a man to steal his
best girl, if he could get her first, fling her across his horse's
crupper and ride away with her to his tent.
But to the shocked senses of Mrs. Van Stuyler the present adventure
appeared a great deal more terrible than that. Both Zaidie and herself
had sprung to their feet as soon as the upward rush of the _Astronef_
had slackened and they were released from their seats. They looked down
through the glass walls of what may be called the hurricane deck-chamber
of the _Astronef_, and saw below them a snowy sea of clouds just
crimsoned by the rising sun.
In this cloud-sea, which spread like a wide-meshed veil between them and
the earth, there were great irregular rifts which looked as big as
continents on a map. These had a blue-grey background, or it might be
more correct to say under-ground, and in the midst of one of these they
saw a little black speck which after a moment or two took the shape of a
little toy ship, and presently they recognised it as the
eleven-thousand-ton liner which a few moments ago had been their ocean
home.
Mrs. Van Stuyler was shaking in every muscle, afflicted by a sort of St.
Vitus' dance induced by physical fear and outraged propriety. Quite
apart from these, however, she experienced a third sensation which made
for a nameless inquietude. She was a woman of the world, well versed in
most of its ways, and she fully recognised that that single bound from
the bridge-rail of the _St. Louis_ to the other side of the clouds had