Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli

by Marie Corelli

  Here she shook herself out of her meditations impatiently. What was Claude Ferrers about? She watched him with ill-concealed impatience. He had turned on the switch of his electric lamp and appeared to be studying a chart. Presently she saw him take a large silver flask from his pocket and put it to his mouth. A sudden sick terror seized her.

  “Claude!” she exclaimed, “Claude!”

  He was too busy with the flask to answer her at once. It seemed glued to his lips, and he drank and drank till he had drained it.

  “Claude!” she cried again.

  He peered round at her with a fatuous smile.

  “‘How silver sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night!’” he said—”’Like softest music to attending ears!’ Well, my Magic Crystal! What would you have with me?”

  Tears of vexation started to her eyes. She saw that it would now be difficult either to argue with, or persuade him. She caught up her cloak of sables and gathered it about her shiveringly. Then she moved round to him.

  “Are you descending?” she asked.

  “Into the sea?” he rejoined— “No, dear lady! I am not so unwise! We are too close to the coast for a safe descent.”

  “What are you going to do then?”

  Her voice quivered as she spoke, and his glassy blue eyes turned round upon her in questioning wonder.

  “You are crying?” he said— “You are crying like a child! What for?”

  “I am cold,” — she answered, with a little sob— “And tired. And you worry me.”

  “I? I worry you? My angel!”

  He made an amorous grab at her cloak — she drew it away from him.

  “You know I only meant to come up with you for two or three hours,” she said— “I wanted to be at home by eleven at the latest. You have taken me much further than you ought. And I don’t believe you know where you are.”

  “I do — I do know where I am!” he declared, with some excitement— “Why should you think I do not?”

  She flashed a contemptuous glance at him.

  “You have been drinking again!”

  He laughed foolishly.

  “Drinking? No! I have simply fortified myself for emergencies! The merest drop! — and I needed it, dear lady! I want all my nerve!”

  The angry tears still glittered in her eyes.

  “Your nerve!” she echoed, scornfully.

  “Yes! My nerve!” he repeated, and he rose from the seat where he had been studying the chart, and stood up unsteadily. “My nerve must carry us across the sea!”

  She uttered a sharp cry.

  “No, no! Not across the sea!”

  At that moment a white mystical glory flooded the heavens. In all directions, — at about the same level as that in which the balloon was floating, — there arose masses of fleecy clouds like Alpine snow-peaks, and out of these sprang the moon, round and bright as a silver shield. The sudden effect was weird, startling and unspeakably magnificent, but Jacynth had no eyes for it. Her gaze was turned below, where now, plainly discernible, was the sea, troubled by some threat of storm, for the opaline gleams of the moon could be seen sparkling on the crests of rising and falling waves. For a moment she was dumb with terror, — the next she quickly controlled herself and turned to Ferrers.

  “What now?” she asked, low and breathlessly.

  He did not answer. He was throwing out ballast in reckless haste. In obedience to his action the balloon soared rapidly higher and higher till it seemed to wander like a will-o’-the-wisp among the shining masses of moonlit clouds which now rose in the sky like mountains from a plain, with summits of dazzling whiteness, shadowing into vast ravines and valleys, among which the ‘Shooting Star’ appeared to glide swiftly, till rising far above them, it floated over what seemed like a double sea. Jacynth, faint and giddy with fear, sat down crouchingly, covering her eyes. She dared not move nor speak. Ferrers had also seated himself, and his hand was on the mechanical contrivance he had designed for steering, and on the faith of which he had proudly announced himself to the world as a ‘conqueror of the air.’ Presently he looked up and said, in quiet tones:

  “Darling! There is no danger!”

  She was silent. She was too angry with him to reply. She felt herself outraged by the extent of this voyage in the air, and its threatening peril — peril which surely, if he had kept all his senses about him, he could have averted.

  “When we get back to town to-morrow,” she thought, “I will tell him just what I think of him! That he is a drunkard — unfit to be trusted—”

  On this her mind appeared to pause. ‘A drunkard — unfit to be trusted.’ That was the character of Dan Kiernan, her first lover. Then was Claude Ferrers, the poet, the voluptuary, the ‘soul’ of a decadent society, the ‘gentleman’ of education and position, on the same level of weak incapability as the rustic boor? Shuddering, she drew herself more closely into the soft folds of her sables. She still kept her eyes covered. For it frightened her to look at the gigantic moving scenery of the clouds — at the moon that seemed so near and large and terrible. All she longed for now was the safe descent of the balloon in some accessible spot; and the only way to this desirable end was, she felt, to leave Ferrers to himself and his own independent action. For, after all, he was no more anxious to lose his life than she was; and he had said there was no danger.

  So she sat still and waited. The minutes passed slowly till nearly another hour had ebbed away. Throbbing pains in her head began to trouble her, and every now and then she felt as if she could scarcely breathe. Her heart beat violently; its pulsations were distinctly audible.

  “We must be traveling at an immense height!” — she thought, suddenly— “There is no sound now — not even the murmur of the sea!”

  She uncovered her eyes and looked at Ferrers. He was sitting quite motionless — his hand on his steering appliance as before. The electric lamp was burning, and shone brightly above the open chart, while all around the balloon the clouds were grouping in massive and wonderful forms. Some of them were like huge trees growing up from a flat swamp of white mist, their tops inky black against the starry sky. The force of the wind constantly blew these asunder and changed them into the semblance of deep dark lakes surrounded by frosted hills, so that the effect “was as though great forests should be at one moment standing upright and at another bent down and broken into chaotic masses. This cloud confusion was inexpressibly frightful in its grandeur, — appalling for human eyes to contemplate, — and Jacynth’s brain whirled with the whirling lights and shadows till she began to feel uncertain of her own existence, and such a sense of suffocation overcame her that she almost fainted.

  “Claude! Claude!” she cried, gaspingly— “I cannot stand this! Claude!” —

  He made no answer. Sitting rigidly under the electric lamp, with the open chart before him, his hand was on his steering apparatus in precisely its former position. She leaned towards him — surely he looked strange! A sudden horror gripped her nerves.

  “Claude!” she cried again.

  Then she sprang up trembling violently — she felt sick and giddy — her throat and lips went suddenly dry. Slowly, and with shaking limbs, she crept inch by inch from her own place in the car to where Ferrers sat — and stretching out her hand she touched him. He gave no response. Dragging herself still closer she peered with an awful inquiry into his face on which the moon shed a cold white glare. Then she screamed — a loud wild scream of delirious frenzy.

  “Claude! Claude! Don’t play tricks with me! — don’t frighten me! You are not dead! No — no! Wake! — wake! — wake! It’s the drink that makes you sleep like this! — the drink! — you should never have touched it! — Claude — rouse yourself! — wake!”

  And in the extremity of her terror she clutched at his coat and shook his inert figure; — whereat it slowly toppled over and lurched heavily to one side as she sprang back from it, the upper part of the body falling into a reclining posture against the edge of the car and remaining so with
its head partially upturned to the sky.

  And then she realized the horrible truth. That he was dead! Quite dead. She stared at that ghastly face, with its wide sensual mouth half open, and its glassy eyes frozen on vacancy, and recoiling, leaned against the ropes of the car, trying to steady the wild throbbing of her pulses. How had he died so suddenly and without sound? She could not tell. Heart-failure might have been the cause, — heart-failure, due perhaps to the high altitude of the balloon and the drink he had taken to ensure his ‘nerve.’ Anyway, he was dead. Quite dead!

  All at once she found herself laughing hysterically at this. Claude Ferrers — the ‘conqueror of the air’ — the writer of many books ingeniously composed with the object of proving the supremacy of Man and the nothingness of God — was dead! From the way in which he had talked to his society friends, it seemed as if he thought he would never die. And yet even he, — the darling of literary cliques, — the voluptuary of idle women’s boudoirs, — was there before her, a helpless lump, deprived of sense and motion and of no further use in the world, — only fit to be burned or buried out of sight and out of mind! Her breath came in short quick gasps — she pressed her hands against her heart in a futile effort to still its rapid beatings, — and then, like a lightning flash tearing open the heavens, another frightful realization broke in upon her brain — the hideous maddening realization that now Ferrers was dead, she was alone! Alone, all alone with the elements! — alone in a mere toy-vessel of the sky, without any knowledge of how to guide it or control it, — alone — alone! — adrift in the immense heavens, and beneath her the sea! A despairing cry broke from her lips, — a cry which, among the vast spaces where she floated, was no more than the cry of a weak wild bird in a storm, — her limbs sank under her, and she crouched down on the floor of the car, hiding her face in her hands. She could not look any more on the waxen-livid features of the corpse that was now her sole companion — or on the thickening procession of monster clouds which, gathering closely round the balloon, moved above and below it in a sort of solemn moonlit pageantry, like Titanesque shapes of warriors arrayed in order for battle, — and shivering with the deathly cold of utmost fear, she shrouded herself in the folds of her sable cloak and tried to collect her scattered forces — to think — to reason out her awful position. Her breathing had gradually become easier — there was a sense of dampness in the air, and she suddenly remembered how she had been told that if a balloon passed through any wet fog, the moisture would help to bring it to a lower level. This was what indeed had happened; but she had not just then the strength or the courage to get up and read the aneroid, which would have shown her that the balloon, from having been at a height of nearly twelve thousand feet, had gradually dropped to about six thousand and was still slowly but slightly sinking. The clouds were thick below the car — yet now and then they drifted asunder, showing glimpses of the sea between, dark gray in the moonbeams and covered with almost microscopic waves, which had the appearance of being frozen like the ridges of a glacier. But she saw nothing and almost felt nothing; the paralyzing terror of her situation had deprived her of all sense save the bare consciousness of life and the dread of death.

  Huddling under her cloak she began dreamily to wonder what death was like. Dan Kiernan was dead. She had crushed the life out of him under the wheels of her motorcar. It was an accident, — and as she had told Parson Everton a few hours ago—’ motor-cars run over and kill so many people that one ceases to think about it. It’s part of the fun.’ Part of the fun! Yes, — and Dan Kiernan’s death was part of her usual ‘luck.’ She had looked at him as he lay mangled in the dust, without one throb of pity for his end. He had a horrible dead face! — horrible dead eyes! — she could see them still. And now Claude Ferrers was dead — and death had made him almost as hideous as Dan Kiernan. Would she, when she was dead, look hideous? Would her beauty — that ravishing, exquisite beauty which drew all men to worship it — be disfigured and destroyed? At the very thought she began to weep, — and a storm of hysterical sobbing shook her frame. This, and this alone, was what death meant to her, — the loss of beauty. She sobbed and sobbed till she was absolutely exhausted, — a weak numbness stole over her limbs, and at last, like a querulous child worn out by peevish crying, she sank into a deep sleep.

  For the next two consecutive hours the balloon wandered on its unguided way, bearing its strange freight of the dead and the living together through the clouds. By midnight the moon had disappeared behind’ a mountainous mass of thick black vapors, and the heavens were rather darkening than lightening towards the first hour of the day. Creeping mists arose from a low-lying coast washed by the sea, and the ‘Shooting Star’ falling somewhat rapidly downwards, hovered above the little hills and plains of a land which was scarcely discernible in the gathering gloom. A stormy wind began to blow, and the balloon traveled with incredible swiftness, always at a lower and lower level, till all at once, with a violent crashing and cracking sound, the trail rope caught in the tops of some tall trees, and the car jerked against the boughs.

  The shock woke Jacynth from her stupor and sleep of misery; she sprang up hardly knowing where she was, and only hearing the noise of the collision. All was dark around her; she was unable to help herself in any way, — and scarcely had she realized the position of the balloon, when with another terrific jolt it tore away from the trees, swaying the car on one side in such a manner that the body of Claude Ferrers slipped over the edge and fell like a leaden weight to earth. Released of this heavy load, the balloon rose with sudden and frightful rapidity, and tore away at a mad speed, racing with wind and cloud in the darkness, and Jacynth stood alone in the car, with hair blown back and wild eyes staring into the gloom of nothing, — the nothing of life, — the nothing of death — and — dared she say — the nothing of God? She had slept, — and the sleep had steadied her brain; she knew now exactly what had happened and that there was no hope. She knew that she had, as it were, almost touched earth — the blessed earth so unvalued by the majority of those that tread upon it — and that if any aeronaut had been with her, it was possible she might have been saved. But it was now too late. Too late! She also knew, albeit vaguely, that the loss of weight occasioned by the fall of Claude Ferrers’ dead body from the car must increase her danger a thousand-fold, and that any strong or continued disturbance of the air would make short work of the balloon’s now risky equilibrium. Yet, knowing all, she could not actually believe it likely that she would meet with her own end. That was too impossible for her imagining. ‘Luck’ had always favored her; she had said of herself:— “My badness, if it is badness, has brought me nothing but luck.” Nothing but luck! Luck would be on her side again, — of that, even lost as she was in the immensities of space, she felt sure!

  When once this idea impressed itself on her mind, a rush of strength and courage came to her. She was faint and hungry, and by the light of the electric lamp, which, despite all shocks and difficulties, was still steadily burning, she sought among the various things with which the car was provided and came upon a leather pouch, containing some biscuits and a flask of brandy. She ate and drank greedily — the raw fiery liquor which she swallowed as though it were water, sent a thrill of pleasure through her veins, and it was only the thought of Claude Ferrers and his sudden silent death that made her all at once stop drinking and put the flask away with a shudder. But the nourishment, false and only temporary as it was, gave her a brief access of boldness amounting to bravado; — she took a firm stand in the middle of the car, and with her right hand resting lightly on one of the suspension ropes to steady herself, she faced the night like a steersman at the wheel of a ship plowing through dark unknown seas. If only her many lovers could have seen her then, she would have scored a triumph for her beauty greater than any she had yet experienced. With her glorious hair half loosened about her, and her exquisite face, pale as death, illumined by the glimmering glare of the electric lamp which also gave a cold unnatural brilliancy to her dark ey
es, and her figure wrapped in the shrouding sables that were like a part of the mists of midnight and morning — she was wonderful to behold, — nothing more wonderful or beautiful in human shape had ever floated solitary between earth and heaven!

  And she was conscious of this, — for she began to think how the account of her terrific adventure would read in the newspapers.

  “I shall be the most famous woman in the world!” she thought, with a sudden smile— “London, Paris and New York will be at my feet! One does not need to be good or clever in order to win renown, — clever people are generally dull and good ones always so. But to have such an experience as this! — this night by myself in a balloon, trusting to chance for a rescue, is enough to make one’s name celebrated for ever!” And her smile deepened. “I wonder what Parson Everton will say!”