A Honeymoon in Space
companion way. Zaidie stamped again, this time more softly, and walked
away to have another look at the clouds.
"Why, what on earth is the matter?" she exclaimed, shrinking back from
the glass wall. "There's nothing--we're not anywhere!"
"Pardon me, Miss Rennick, you are on board the _Astronef_," said Lord
Redgrave, as he reached the top of the companion way, "and the
_Astronef_ is at present travelling at about a hundred and fifty miles
an hour above the clouds towards Washington. That is why you don't see
the clouds and sea as you did after we left the _St. Louis_. At a speed
like this they simply make a sort of grey-green blur. We shall be in
Washington this evening, I hope."
"To-night, sir--I beg your pardon, my Lord!" gasped Mrs. Van Stuyler. "A
hundred and fifty miles an hour! Surely that's impossible."
"My dear Mrs. Van Stuyler," said Redgrave, with a side-look at Zaidie,
"nowadays 'impossible' is hardly an English or even an American word. In
fact, since I have had the honour of realising some of Professor
Rennick's ideas it has been relegated to the domain of mathematics. Not
even he could make two and two more or less than four, but--well, would
you like to come into the conning-tower and see for yourselves? I can
show you a few experiments that will, at any rate, help to pass the time
between here and Washington."
"Lord Redgrave," said Mrs. Van Stuyler, dropping gracefully back into
her wicker armchair, "if I may say so, I have seen quite enough
impossibilities, and--er, well--other things since we left the deck of
the _St. Louis_ to keep me quite satisfied until, with your lordship's
permission, I set foot on solid ground again, and I should also like to
remind you that we have left everything behind us on the _St. Louis_,
everything except what we stand up in, and--and----"
"And therefore it will be a point of honour with me to see that you want
for nothing while you are on board the _Astronef_, and that you shall be
released from your durance----"
"Now don't say vile, Lenox--I mean----"
"It is perfectly plain what you mean, Zaidie," said Mrs. Van Stuyler, in
a tone which seemed to send a chill through the deck-chamber. "Really,
the American girl----"
"Just wants to tell the truth," laughed Zaidie, going towards Redgrave.
"Lord Redgrave, if you like it better, says he wants to marry me, and,
peer or peasant, I want to marry him, and that's all there is to it. You
don't suppose I'd have----"
"My dear girl, there's no need to go into details," interrupted Mrs. Van
Stuyler, inspired by fond memories of her own youth; "we will take that
for granted, and as we are beyond the social region in which chaperons
are supposed to be necessary, I think I will have a nap."
"And we'll go to the conning-tower, eh?"
"Breakfast will be ready in about half an hour," said Redgrave, as he
took Zaidie by the arm and led her towards the forward end of the
deck-chamber. "Meanwhile, _au revoir_! If you want anything, touch the
button at your right hand, just as you would on board the _St. Louis_."
"I thank your lordship," said Mrs. Van Stuyler, half melting and half
icy still. "I shall be quite content to wait until you come back. Really
I feel quite sleepy."
"That's the effect of the elevation on the dear old lady's nerves,"
Redgrave whispered to Zaidie as he helped her up the narrow stairway
which led to the glass-domed conning-tower, in which in days to come she
was destined to pass some of the most delightful and the most terrible
moments of her life.
"Then why doesn't it affect me that way?" said Zaidie, as she took her
place in the little chamber, steel-walled and glass-roofed, and half
filled with instruments of which she, Vassar girl and all as she was,
could only guess the use.
"Well, to begin with, you are younger, which is an absolutely
unnecessary observation; and in the second place, perhaps you were
thinking about something else."
"By which I suppose you mean your lordship's noble self."
This was said in such a tone and with such an indescribable smile that
there immediately ensued a gap in the conversation, and a silence which
was a great deal more eloquent than any words could have made it.
When Miss Zaidie had got free again she put her hands up to her hair,
and while she was patting it into something like shape again she said:
"But I thought you brought me here to show me some experiments, and not
to----"
"Not to take advantage of the first real opportunity of tasting some of
the dearest delights that mortal man ever stole from earth or sea? Do
you remember that day when we were coming down from the big
glacier--when your foot slipped and I just caught you and saved a
sprained ankle?"
"Yes, you wretch, and went away next day and left something like a
broken heart behind you! Why didn't you--Oh what idiots you men can be
when you put your minds to it!"
"It wasn't quite that, Zaidie. You see, I'd promised your father the day
before--of course I was only a younger son then--that I wouldn't say
anything about realising _my_ ideal until I had realised his, and
so----"
"And so I might have gone to Europe with Uncle Russell's millions to buy
that man Byfleet's coronet, and pay the price----"
"Don't, Zaidie, don't! That is quite too horrible to think of, and as
for the coronet, well, I think I can give you one about as good as his,
and one that doesn't want re-gilding. Good Lord, fancy you married to a
thing like that! What could have made you think of it?"
"I didn't think," she said angrily; "I didn't think and I didn't feel.
Of course I thought that I'd dropped right out of your life, and after
that I didn't care. I was mad right through, and I'd made up my mind to
do what others did--take a title and a big position, and have the
outside as bright as I could get it, whatever the inside might be like.
I'd made up my mind to be a society queen abroad, and a miserable woman
at home--and, Lenox, thank God and you, that I wasn't!"
Then there was another interlude, and at the end of it Redgrave said:
"Wait till we've finished our honeymoon in space, and come back to
earth. You won't want any coronets then, although you'll have one, for
all the lands of earth won't hold another woman like yourself--your own
sweet self! Of course it doesn't now, but--there, you know what I mean.
You'll have been to other worlds, you'll have made the round trip of the
Solar System, so to say, and----"
"And I think, dear, that is about promise of wonders enough, and of
other things too--no, you are really quite too exacting. I thought you
brought me here to show me some of the wonders that this marvellous ship
of yours can work."
"Then just one more and I'll show you. Now you stand up there on that
step so that you can see all round, and watch with all your eyes,
because you are going to see something that no woman ever saw before."
CHAPTER IV
Above a tiny little writing-desk fixed to the wall of the conning-tower
there was a square mahogany board with six white buttons in pairs. On
one side of the board hung a telephone and on the other a speaking-tube.
To the right hand opposite where Zaidie stood were two nickel-plated
wheels and behind each of them a white disc, one marked off into 360
degrees, and the other into 100 with subdivisions of tens. Overhead hung
an ordinary tell-tale compass, and compactly placed on other parts of
the wall were barometers, thermometers, barographs, and, in fact,
practically every instrument that the most exacting of aeronauts or
Space-explorers could have asked for.
"You see, Zaidie, this is what one might call the cerebral chamber of
the _Astronef_, and, granted that my engines worked all right, I could
make her do anything I wanted without moving out of here, but as a rule,
of course, Murgatroyd is in the engine-room. If he wasn't the most
whole-souled Wesleyan that Yorkshire ever produced, I believe he'd
become an idolater and worship the _Astronef's_ engines."
"And who is Murgatroyd, please?"
"In the first place he is what I might call an hereditary retainer of
the House of Redgrave. His ancestors have served mine for the last seven
hundred years. When my ancestors were burglar-barons, his were
men-at-arms. When we went on the Crusades they went too; when we raised
a regiment for the King against the Parliament they were naturally the
first to enlist in it; and as we gradually settled down into peaceful
respectability they did the same. Lastly, when we went into trade as
ironmasters and engineers they went in too. This Murgatroyd, for
instance, was master-foreman of my works at Smeaton, and he was the only
man I dared trust with the secrets of the _Astronef_, and the only one I
would trust myself on board her with, and that's why we're a crew of
two. You see the command of a vessel like this is a fairly big business,
and if it got into the wrong sort of hands----"
"Yes, I see," said Zaidie with a little nod. "It would be just too awful
to think about. Why you might keep the world in terror with it; but I
know you wouldn't do that, because, for one thing, I wouldn't let you."
"Gently, gently, Ma'm'selle; permit me most humbly to remind you that
you are still my prisoner, and that I am still Commander of the
_Astronef_."
"Oh, very well then," said Zaidie, interrupting him with a pretty little
gesture of impatience, "and now suppose you let me see what the
_Astronef's_ commander can do with her."
"Certainly," replied Redgrave, "and with the greatest pleasure--but, by
the way, that reminds me you haven't paid your footing yet."
When due payment had been given and taken, or perhaps it would be more
correct to say taken and given, Redgrave put his finger on one of the
buttons.
Immediately Zaidie heard the swish of the air past the smooth wall of
the conning-tower grow fainter and fainter. Then there came a little
check which nearly upset her balance, and presently the clouds beneath
them began to take shape and great white continents of them with grey
oceans in between went sweeping silently and swiftly away behind them.
Redgrave turned the wheel in front of the 100-degree disc a little to
the left. The next instant the clouds rose up. For a moment Zaidie could
see nothing but white mist on all sides. Then the atmosphere cleared
again, and she saw far below her what looked like a vast expanse of
ocean that had been suddenly frozen solid.
There were the long Atlantic rollers tipped with snowy foam. Here and
there at wide intervals were little black dots, some of them with brown
trails behind them, others with little patches of white which showed up
distinctly against the dark grey-blue of the sea. Every moment they grew
bigger. Then the white-crested waves began to move, and the big ocean
steamers and full-rigged sailing ships looked less and less like toys.
Just under them there was a very big one with four funnels pouring out
dense volumes of black smoke. Redgrave took up a pair of glasses, looked
at her for a moment and said:
"That's the _Deutschland_, the new Hamburg-American record-breaker.
Suppose we go down and have a lark with her. I wonder if she's taking
news of the war. We're in with Germany, and they may know something
about it."
"That would be just too lovely!" said Zaidie. "Let's go and show them
how _we_ can break records. I suppose they've seen us by this time and
are just wondering with all their wits what we are. I guess they'll feel
pretty tired about poor Count Zeppelin's balloon when they see _us_."
Redgrave noted the "we" and the "us" with much secret satisfaction.
"All right," he said, "we'll go and give them a bit of a startler."
In front of the conning-tower there was a steel flagstaff about ten feet