A Honeymoon in Space

  CHAPTER III

  After a couple of minutes of silence which could be felt, Mrs. VanStuyler turned round and said angrily:

  "Zaidie, you will excuse me, perhaps, if I say that your conduct isnot--I mean has not been what I should have expected--what I did,indeed, expect from your uncle's niece when I undertook to take you toEurope. I must say----"

  "If I were you, Mrs. Van, I don't think I'd say much more about that,because, you see, it's fixed and done. Of course, Lord Redgrave's onlyan earl, and the other is a marquis, but, you see, he's a man, and Idon't quite think the other one is--and that's about all there is toit."

  Their host had just left the deck-saloon, taking the early coffeeapparatus with him, and Miss Zaidie, in the first flush of her pride andre-found happiness, was taking a promenade of about twelve strides eachway, while Mrs. Van Stuyler, after partially relieving her feelings asabove, had seated herself stiffly in her wicker-chair, and was followingher with eyes which were critical and, if they had been twenty yearsyounger, might also have been envious.

  "Well, at least I suppose I must congratulate you on your ability toaccommodate yourself to most extraordinary circumstances. I must saythat as far as that goes I quite envy you. I feel as though I ought tochoke or take poison, or something of that sort."

  "Sakes, Mrs. Van, please don't talk like that!" said Zaidie, stopping inher walk just in front of her chaperon's chair. "Can't you see thatthere's nothing extraordinary about the circumstances except thiswonderful ship? I have told you how Pop and I met Lord Redgrave in ourtour through the Canadian Rockies two or three years ago. No, it's twoyears and nine months next June; and how he took an interest in Pop'stheories and ideas about this same ship that we are on now----"

  "Oh yes," said Mrs. Van Stuyler rather acidly, "and not only in theabstract ideas, but apparently in a certain concrete reality."

  "Mrs. Van," laughed Zaidie, with a cunning twist on her heel, "I knowyou don't mean to be rude, but--well, now did any one ever call _you_ aconcrete reality? Of course it's correct just as a scientificdefinition, perhaps--still, anyhow, I guess it's not much good going onabout that. The facts are just this way. I consented to marry thatByfleet marquis just out of sheer spite and blank ignorance. LordRedgrave never actually asked me to marry him when we were in theRockies, but he did say when he went back to England that as soon as hehad realised my father's ideal he would come over and try and realiseone of his own. He was looking at me when he said it, and he looked agood deal more than he said. Then he went away, and poor Pop died. Ofcourse I couldn't write and tell him, and I suppose he was too proud towrite before he'd done what he undertook to do, and I, like mostgirl-fools in the same place would have done, thought that he'd giventhe whole thing up and just looked upon the trip as a sort of interludein globe-trotting, and thought no more about Pop's ideas and inventionsthan he did about his daughter."

  "Very natural, of course," said Mrs. Van Stuyler, somewhat mollified bythe subdued passion which Zaidie had managed to put into her commonplacewords; "and so as you thought he had forgotten you and was finding awife in his own country, and a possible husband came over from that samecountry with a coronet----"

  "That'll do, Mrs. Van, thank you," interrupted Miss Zaidie, bringing herdaintily-shod foot down on the deck this time with an unmistakablestamp. "We'll consider that incident closed if you please. It was amiserable, mean, sordid business altogether; I am utterly, hopelesslyashamed of it and myself too. Just to think that I could ever----"

  Mrs. Van Stuyler cut short her indignant flow of words by a suddenuplifting of her eyelids and a swift turn of her head towards thecompanion way. Zaidie stamped again, this time more softly, and walkedaway to have another look at the clouds.

  "Why, what on earth is the matter?" she exclaimed, shrinking back fromthe glass wall. "There's nothing--we're not anywhere!"

  "Pardon me, Miss Rennick, you are on board the _Astronef_," said LordRedgrave, as he reached the top of the companion way, "and the_Astronef_ is at present travelling at about a hundred and fifty milesan hour above the clouds towards Washington. That is why you don't seethe clouds and sea as you did after we left the _St. Louis_. At a speedlike this they simply make a sort of grey-green blur. We shall be inWashington this evening, I hope."

  "To-night, sir--I beg your pardon, my Lord!" gasped Mrs. Van Stuyler. "Ahundred 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. Infact, since I have had the honour of realising some of ProfessorRennick's ideas it has been relegated to the domain of mathematics. Noteven he could make two and two more or less than four, but--well, wouldyou like to come into the conning-tower and see for yourselves? I canshow you a few experiments that will, at any rate, help to pass the timebetween here and Washington."

  "Lord Redgrave," said Mrs. Van Stuyler, dropping gracefully back intoher wicker armchair, "if I may say so, I have seen quite enoughimpossibilities, and--er, well--other things since we left the deck ofthe _St. Louis_ to keep me quite satisfied until, with your lordship'spermission, I set foot on solid ground again, and I should also like toremind 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 wantfor nothing while you are on board the _Astronef_, and that you shall bereleased from your durance----"

  "Now don't say vile, Lenox--I mean----"

  "It is perfectly plain what you mean, Zaidie," said Mrs. Van Stuyler, ina 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. Youdon't suppose I'd have----"

  "My dear girl, there's no need to go into details," interrupted Mrs. VanStuyler, inspired by fond memories of her own youth; "we will take thatfor granted, and as we are beyond the social region in which chaperonsare 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 hetook Zaidie by the arm and led her towards the forward end of thedeck-chamber. "Meanwhile, _au revoir_! If you want anything, touch thebutton at your right hand, just as you would on board the _St. Louis_."

  "I thank your lordship," said Mrs. Van Stuyler, half melting and halficy still. "I shall be quite content to wait until you come back. ReallyI 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 stairwaywhich led to the glass-domed conning-tower, in which in days to come shewas destined to pass some of the most delightful and the most terriblemoments of her life.

  "Then why doesn't it affect me that way?" said Zaidie, as she took herplace in the little chamber, steel-walled and glass-roofed, and halffilled 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 absolutelyunnecessary observation; and in the second place, perhaps you werethinking 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 thatthere immediately ensued a gap in the conversation, and a silence whichwas 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 notto----"

  "Not to take advantage of the first real opportunity of tasting some ofthe dearest delights that mortal man ever stole from earth or sea? Doyou remember that day when we were com
ing down from the bigglacier--when your foot slipped and I just caught you and saved asprained ankle?"

  "Yes, you wretch, and went away next day and left something like abroken heart behind you! Why didn't you--Oh what idiots you men can bewhen you put your minds to it!"

  "It wasn't quite that, Zaidie. You see, I'd promised your father the daybefore--of course I was only a younger son then--that I wouldn't sayanything about realising _my_ ideal until I had realised his, andso----"

  "And so I might have gone to Europe with Uncle Russell's millions to buythat man Byfleet's coronet, and pay the price----"

  "Don't, Zaidie, don't! That is quite too horrible to think of, and asfor 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 athing 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 afterthat I didn't care. I was mad right through, and I'd made up my mind todo what others did--take a title and a big position, and have theoutside 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 womanat 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 toearth. You won't want any coronets then, although you'll have one, forall the lands of earth won't hold another woman like yourself--your ownsweet 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 theSolar System, so to say, and----"

  "And I think, dear, that is about promise of wonders enough, and ofother things too--no, you are really quite too exacting. I thought youbrought me here to show me some of the wonders that this marvellous shipof yours can work."

  "Then just one more and I'll show you. Now you stand up there on thatstep 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."