A Honeymoon in Space | Page 8

I think are working on my
side. Besides, I do know all the circumstances, or at least the most
important of them. That knowledge is, in fact, my principal excuse for
bringing you so unceremoniously above the clouds."
As he said this he took a sideway glance at Miss Zaidie. She dropped
her eyelids and went on eating her bread and butter; but there was a
little deepening of the flush on her cheeks which was to him as the first
flush of sunrise to a benighted wanderer.
There was a rather awkward silence after this. Miss Zaidie stirred the
coffee in her cup with a dainty Queen Anne spoon, and seemed to
concentrate the whole of her attention upon the operation. Then Mrs.
Van Stuyler took a sip out of her cup and said:
"But really, Lord Redgrave, I feel that I must ask you whether you
think that what you have done during the last few minutes (which
already, I assure you, seem hours to me) is--well, quite in accordance
with the--what shall I say--ah, the rules that we have been accustomed
to live under?"
Lord Redgrave looked at Miss Zaidie again. She didn't even raise her
eyelids, only a very slight tremor of her hand as she raised her cup to
her lips told that she was even listening. He took courage from this sign,
and replied:
"My dear Mrs. Van Stuyler, the only answer that I can make to that just
now is to remind you that, by the sanction of ages, everything is
supposed to be fair under two sets of circumstances, and, whatever is

happening on the earth down yonder, we, I think, are not at war."
The next moment Miss Zaidie's eyelids lifted a little. There was a
tremor about her lips almost too faint to be perceptible, and the
slightest possible tinge of colour crept upwards towards her eyes. She
put her cup down and got up, walked towards the glass walls of the
deck-chamber, and looked out over the cloud-scape.
The shortness of her steamer skirt made it possible for Lord Redgrave
and Mrs. Van Stuyler to see that the sole of her right boot was swinging
up and down on the heel ever so slightly. They came simultaneously to
the conclusion that if she had been alone she would have stamped, and
stamped pretty hard. Possibly also she would have said things to herself
and the surrounding silence. This seemed probable from the almost
equally imperceptible motion of her shapely shoulders.
Mrs. Van Stuyler recognised in a moment that her charge was getting
angry. She knew by experience that Miss Zaidie possessed a very
proper spirit of her own, and that it was just as well not to push matters
too far. She further recognised that the circumstances were
extraordinary, not to say equivocal, and that she herself occupied a
distinctly peculiar position.
She had accepted the charge of Miss Zaidie from her Uncle Russell for
a consideration counted partly by social advantages and partly by
dollars. In the most perfect innocence she had permitted not only her
charge but herself to be abducted--for, after all, that was what it came
to--from the deck of an American liner, and carried, not only beyond
the clouds, but also beyond the reach of human law, both criminal and
conventional.
Inwardly she was simply fuming with rage. As she said afterwards, she
felt just like a bottled volcano which would like to go off and daren't.
About two minutes of somewhat surcharged silence passed. Mrs. Van
Stuyler sipped her coffee in ostentatiously small sips. Lord Redgrave
took his in slower and longer ones, and helped himself to bread and
butter. Miss Zaidie appeared perfectly contented with her

contemplation of the clouds.
CHAPTER II
At length Mrs. Van Stuyler, being a woman of large experience and
some social deftness, recognised that a change of subject was the
easiest way of retreat out of a rather difficult situation. So she put her
cup down, leant back in her chair, and, looking straight into Lord
Redgrave's eyes, she said with purely feminine irrelevance:
"I suppose you know, Lord Redgrave, that, when we left, the machine
which we call in America Manhood Suffrage--which, of course, simply
means the selection of a government by counting noses which may or
may not have brains above them--was what some of our orators would
call in full blast. If you are going to New York after Washington, as
you said on the boat, we might find it a rather inconvenient time to
arrive. The whole place will be chaos, you know; because when the
citizen of the United States begins electioneering, New York is not a
very nice place to stop in except for people who want excitement, and
so if you will