CHAPTER V
As this narrative is the story of the personal adventures of LordRedgrave and his bride, and not an account of events at which all theworld has already wondered, there is no necessity to describe in anydetail the extraordinary sequence of circumstances which began when the_Astronef_ dropped without warning from the clouds in front of the WhiteHouse at Washington, and his lordship, after paying his respects to thePresident, proceeded to the British Embassy and placed the copy of theAnglo-American agreement in Lord Pauncefote's hands.
Mrs. Van Stuyler's spirits had risen as the _Astronef_ descended towardsthe lights of Washington, and when the President and Lord Pauncefotepaid a visit to the wonderful craft, the joint product of Americangenius and English capital and constructive skill, she immediatelyassumed, at Redgrave's request, the position of lady of the house _protem._, and described the "change of plans," as she called it, which ledto their transfer from the _St. Louis_ to the _Astronef_ with animaginative fluency which would have done credit to the mostenterprising of American interviewers.
"You see, my dear," she said to Zaidie afterwards, "as everything turnedout so very happily, and as Lord Redgrave behaved in such a splendidway, I thought it was my duty to make everything appear as pleasant tothe President and Lord Pauncefote as I could."
"It was real good of you, Mrs. Van," said Zaidie. "If I hadn't beenparalysed with admiration I believe I should have laughed. Now if you'lljust come with us on our trip, and write a book about it afterwards justas you told--I mean as you described what happened between the _St.Louis_ and Washington, to the President and Lord Pauncefote, you'd makea million dollars out of it. Say now, won't you come?"
"My dear Zaidie," Mrs. Van Stuyler replied, "you know that I am veryfond of you. If I'd only had a daughter I should have wanted her to bejust like you, and I should have wanted her to marry a man just likeLord Redgrave. But there's a limit to everything. You say that you aregoing to the moon and the stars, and to see what the other planets arelike. Well, that's your affair. I hope God will forgive you for yourpresumption, and let you come back safe, but I----No. Ten--twentymillions wouldn't pay me to tempt Providence like that."
The _Astronef_ had landed in front of the White House, as everybodyknows, on the eve of the Presidential election. After dinner in thedeck-saloon, as the Space Navigator lay in the midst of a square oftroops, outside which a huge crowd surged and struggled to get a look atthe latest miracle of constructive science, the President and theBritish Ambassador said goodbye, and as soon as the gangway ladder wasdrawn in the _Astronef_, moved by no visible agency, rose from theground amidst a roar of cheers coming from a hundred thousand throats.She stopped at a height of about a thousand feet, and then her forwardsearchlight flashed out, swept the horizon, and vanished. Then itflashed out again intermittently in the longs and shorts of the MorseCode, and these, when translated, read:
"Vote for sound men and sound money!"
In five minutes the wires of the United States were alive with theterse, pregnant message, and under the ocean in the dark depths of theAtlantic ooze, vivid narratives of the coming of the miracle wentflashing to a hundred newspaper offices in England and on the Continent.The New York correspondent of the London _Daily Express_ added thefollowing paragraph to his account of the strange occurrence:
"The secret of this amazing vessel, which has proved itself capable oftraversing the Atlantic in a day, and of soaring beyond the limits ofthe atmosphere at will, is possessed by one man only, and that man is anEnglish nobleman. The air is full of rumours of universal war. Onevessel such as this could scatter terror over a continent in a few days,demoralise armies and fleets, reduce Society to chaos, and establish aone-man despotism on the ruins of all the Governments of the world. Theman who could build one ship like this could build fifty, and, if hiscountry asked him to do it, no doubt he would. Those who, as we arealmost forced to believe, are even now contemplating a serious attemptto dethrone England from her supreme place among the nations of Europe,will do well to take this latest potential factor in the warfare of theimmediate future into their most serious consideration."
This paragraph was not perhaps as absolutely correct as a proposition inEuclid, but it stopped the war. The _Deutschland_ came in the next day,and again the press was flooded, this time with personal narratives, andbrilliantly imaginative descriptions of the Vision which had descendedfrom the clouds, made rings round the great liner going at her bestspeed, and then vanished in an instant beyond the range of field-glassesand telescopes.
Thus did the creature of Professor Rennick's inventive genius play itsfirst part as the peacemaker of the world.
When the _Astronef's_ message had been duly given and recorded, herpropellers began to revolve, and her head swung round to the north-east.So began, as all the world now knows, the most extraordinaryelectioneering trip that ever was known. First Baltimore, thenPhiladelphia, and then New York saw the flashes in the sky. There wereilluminations, torchlight processions, and all the machinery of Americanelectioneering going at full blast. But when people saw, far away up inthe starlit night, those swiftly-changing beams glittering down, as itwere, out of infinite Space, and when the telegraph operators caught onto the fact that they were signals, a sort of awe seemed to come overboth Republicans and Democrats alike. Even Tammany's thoughts began tolift above the sordid level of boodle. It was almost like a message fromanother world. There was something supernatural about it, and when itwas translated and rushed out in extra editions of the evening papers:"Vote for sound men and sound money" became the watchword of millions.
From New York to Boston, Boston to Albany, and then across country toBuffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, Omaha--then westward to St. Paul andMinneapolis, and northward to Portland and Seattle, southward to SanFrancisco and Monterey, then eastward again to Salt Lake City, and then,after a leap across the Rockies which frightened Mrs. Van Stuyler almostto fainting point and made Zaidie gasp for breath, away southward toSanta Fe and New Orleans.
Then northward again up the Mississippi Valley to St. Louis, and thenceeastward across the Alleghanies back to Washington--such was the famousnight-voyage of the _Astronef_, and so by means of that long silvertongue of light did she spread the message of common-sense andcommercial honesty throughout the length and breadth of the GreatRepublic. The world knows how America received and interpreted it thenext day.
Meanwhile Mr. Russell Rennick had taken train to Washington, and the dayafter the election he willingly took back all that he had intended withregard to the Marquis of Byfleet, accepted Lord Redgrave in his stead,and bestowed his avuncular blessing at the wedding breakfast held in thedeck-chamber of the _Astronef_ poised in mid-air, five hundred feetabove the dome of the Capitol, a week later. To this he added a chequefor a million dollars--payable to the Countess of Redgrave on her returnfrom her wedding trip.
Breakfast over, the wedding party made an inspection of the wonderfulvessel under the guidance of her Commander. After this, while they weredrinking their coffee and liqueurs, and the men were smoking theircigars in the deck-chamber, a score of the most distinguished men andwomen in the United States experienced the novel sensation of sittingquietly in deck-chairs while they were being hurled at the rate of ahundred and fifty miles an hour through the atmosphere.
They ran up to Niagara, dropped to within a few feet of the surface ofthe Falls, passed over them, fell to the Rapids, and drifted down themwithin a couple of yards of the raging waters. Then in an instant theyleapt up into the clouds, dropped again, and took a slanting course forWashington at a speed incredible, but to them quite imperceptible, savefor the blurred rush of the half-visible earth behind them.
That night the _Astronef_ rested again in front of the steps of theWhite House, and Lord and Lady Redgrave were the guests at asemi-official banquet given by the newly re-elected President. Thespeech of the evening was made by the President himself in proposing thehealth of the bride and bridegroom, and this is the way he ended:
"Th
ere is something more in the ceremony which we have been privilegedto witness than the union of a man and a woman in the bonds of holymatrimony. Lord Redgrave, as you know, is the descendant of one of thenoblest and most ancient families in the Motherland of New Nations. LadyRedgrave is the daughter of the oldest and, I hope I may be allowed tosay without offence, the greatest of those nations. It is, perhaps,early days to talk about a formal federation of the Anglo-Saxon people,but I think I am only voicing the sentiments of every good American whenI say that, if the rumours which have drifted over and under theAtlantic, rumours of a determined attempt on the part of certainEuropean powers to assault and, if possible, destroy that magnificentfortress of individual liberty and collective equity which we call theBritish Empire should unhappily prove to be true, then it may be thatthe rest of the world will find that America does not speak English fornothing.
"But I must also remind you that a few yards from the doors of the WhiteHouse there lies the greatest marvel, I had almost said the greatestmiracle, that has ever been accomplished by human genius and humanindustry. That wonderful vessel in which some of us have been privilegedto take the most marvellous journey in the history of mechanicallocomotion was thought out by an American man of science, the man whosedaughter sits on my right hand to-night. In her concrete material formthis vessel, destined to navigate the shoreless Ocean of Space, isEnglish. But she is also the result of the belief and the faith of anEnglishman in an American ideal.... So when she leaves this earth, asshe will do in an hour or so, to enter the confines of other worlds thanthis--and, it may be, to make the acquaintance of peoples other thanthose who inhabit the earth--she will have done infinitely more than shehas already done, incredible as that seems. She will not only haveconvinced this world that the greatest triumph of human genius is ofAnglo-Saxon origin, but she will carry to other worlds than this thetruth which this world will have learnt before the nineteenth centuryends.
"England in the person of Lord Redgrave, and America in the person ofhis Countess, leave this world to-night to tell the other worlds of oursystem, if haply they may find some intelligible means of communication,what this world, good and bad, is like. And it is within the bounds ofpossibility that in doing so they may inaugurate a wider fellowship ofcreated beings than the limits of this world permit; a fellowship, afriendship, and, as the _Astronef_ entitles us to believe, even aphysical communication of world with world which, in the dawn of thetwentieth century, may transcend in sober fact the wildest dreams of allthe philanthropists and the philosophers who have sought to educatehumanity from Socrates to Herbert Spencer."