CHAPTER III

After a couple of minutes of silence which could be felt, Mrs. Van

Stuyler turned round and said angrily:

"Zaidie, you will excuse me, perhaps, if I say that your conduct is

not--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 to

Europe. 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 only

an earl, and the other is a marquis, but, you see, he's a man, and I

don't quite think the other one is--and that's about all there is to

it."

Their host had just left the deck-saloon, taking the early coffee

apparatus with him, and Miss Zaidie, in the first flush of her pride and

re-found happiness, was taking a promenade of about twelve strides each

way, while Mrs. Van Stuyler, after partially relieving her feelings as

above, had seated herself stiffly in her wicker-chair, and was following

her with eyes which were critical and, if they had been twenty years

younger, might also have been envious.

"Well, at least I suppose I must congratulate you on your ability to

accommodate yourself to most extraordinary circumstances. I must say

that as far as that goes I quite envy you. I feel as though I ought to

choke or take poison, or something of that sort."

"Sakes, Mrs. Van, please don't talk like that!" said Zaidie, stopping in

her walk just in front of her chaperon's chair. "Can't you see that

there's nothing extraordinary about the circumstances except this

wonderful ship? I have told you how Pop and I met Lord Redgrave in our

tour through the Canadian Rockies two or three years ago. No, it's two

years and nine months next June; and how he took an interest in Pop's

theories and ideas about this same ship that we are on now----"

"Oh yes," said Mrs. Van Stuyler rather acidly, "and not only in the

abstract ideas, but apparently in a certain concrete reality."

"Mrs. Van," laughed Zaidie, with a cunning twist on her heel, "I know

you don't mean to be rude, but--well, now did any one ever call _you_ a

concrete reality? Of course it's correct just as a scientific

definition, perhaps--still, anyhow, I guess it's not much good going on

about that. The facts are just this way. I consented to marry that

Byfleet marquis just out of sheer spite and blank ignorance. Lord

Redgrave never actually asked me to marry him when we were in the

Rockies, but he did say when he went back to England that as soon as he

had realised my father's ideal he would come over and try and realise

one of his own. He was looking at me when he said it, and he looked a

good deal more than he said. Then he went away, and poor Pop died. Of

course I couldn't write and tell him, and I suppose he was too proud to

write before he'd done what he undertook to do, and I, like most

girl-fools in the same place would have done, thought that he'd given

the whole thing up and just looked upon the trip as a sort of interlude

in globe-trotting, and thought no more about Pop's ideas and inventions

than he did about his daughter."

"Very natural, of course," said Mrs. Van Stuyler, somewhat mollified by

the subdued passion which Zaidie had managed to put into her commonplace

words; "and so as you thought he had forgotten you and was finding a

wife in his own country, and a possible husband came over from that same

country with a coronet----"

"That'll do, Mrs. Van, thank you," interrupted Miss Zaidie, bringing her

daintily-shod foot down on the deck this time with an unmistakable

stamp. "We'll consider that incident closed if you please. It was a

miserable, mean, sordid business altogether; I am utterly, hopelessly

ashamed of it and myself too. Just to think that I could ever----"

Mrs. Van Stuyler cut short her indignant flow of words by a sudden

uplifting of her eyelids and a swift turn of her head towards the

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."