His Unknown Wife by Louis Tracy - HTML preview

CHAPTER XVIII

THE SETTLEMENT

Just as before, when he awoke on board the Southern Cross in surroundings so bewildering that he gave up the effort to localize them, his puzzled eyes now surveyed white-painted panelled walls, a brass-bound port-light, and some tapestry curtains. At any other time he would have realized at once that he was in a ship’s cabin, but now an uncomprehending stare soon yielded to a torpor of pain.

He believed that a gentle hand adjusted a bandage on his head, and was aware of a grateful coldness where before there had been heat and a throbbing ache. Afterwards—he thought it was immediately, though the interval was a full half hour—he looked again at the walls and ceiling with something of real recognition in his glance.

“Glad to see you’re regaining your wits, Mr. Alexander,” said a man’s voice, a strange but very pleasant voice. “Lucky for you you’ve got the right sort of thick head, or, from what I hear, it would certainly have been cracked twice.”

Mr. Alexander! Who was he? And where was he? Where were—

“May he talk a little now, doctor?” and Maseden would have had to be very dead if he did not know that Nina Forbes was sitting by his side. He turned, and even remembered to repress a groan lest some one in authority might not grant her request.

Even so the doctor was dubious.

“He must not be allowed to get excited,” he said.

“Then may he listen to me a minute?”

“Yes, if you really keep to schedule.”

“Don’t move, Alec!” whispered Nina, and there seemed to be a note in her voice that Maseden had heard only once before, though he could not recall the occasion. “We’re on board a mail steamer bound for England, but she touches at Punta Arenas and Buenos Ayres, so you must be ‘Mr. Alexander,’ not ‘Mr. Maseden,’ until we reach home. Don’t ask why just now. I’ll tell you to-morrow, or next day, when you are stronger. You will trust me, won’t you?”

“Trust you, Nina! Yes, forever!”

He looked at her, as though to make sure that his senses were not deceiving him and that it was really Nina Forbes who sat there, a Nina with her hair nicely combed and coiled and wearing a particularly attractive pink jersey and white serge skirt.

He thought that her eyes—those frank blue eyes he had gazed into so often—were suffused with tears.

“Why are you crying?” he demanded, with just a hint of that domineering way of his.

“Not for grief,” she said quietly. “But you must drink this now, and go to sleep. When you awaken again, perhaps the doctor will let C. K. come and chat with you.”

“C. K.? Is he all right?”

“Yes.”

“And Madge?”

“Yes. Not another word. Drink—to please me.”

“I’ll do anything to please you.”

He swallowed some milk and soda-water; took a whole tumbler-full, in fact.

“That’s fine,” he said. “Now I’ll hold your hand and you’ll tell me—”

“You’re going to close your eyes and lie still,” she said firmly. “If you don’t I’ll leave you. If you do, I’ll stay here.”

“I’m bribed,” he said, smiling. Soon he slept, but this was nature’s healing sleep, not the coma of insensibility. When next he entered a world of reality he found Sturgess sitting where Nina had been.

“Going strong now, Alec?” inquired his friend.

Maseden did not answer at once. He wanted to be quite sure that the wretched throbbing in his head had ceased. Yes; there was a great soreness, but it was of the scalp, not of the internal mechanism. He sat bolt upright.

“Hi!” shouted Sturgess, “you mustn’t do that! Gosh! The doctor man will raise Cain with me if he knows I let you move.”

“I’m all right, C. K.”

“You’re going to flatten out straight away, or I’ll shriek for help.”

Maseden lay down. The dominant emotion of the moment was curiosity. Perhaps, if he kept quiet, Sturgess would talk.

At any rate, the New Yorker was much relieved, and said so.

“You’ve nearly hopped it,” he explained anxiously. “It was a case of touch and go with you for two days, and—”

“Two days!” gasped Maseden. “Have I been stretched here two days?”

“And more. We were picked up by the Valentia on Thursday evening, and now it is Sunday morning.”

“Everything seems to happen on a Sunday,” said Maseden inconsequently; but Sturgess understood.

“Sunday is our day,” he agreed. “Now, if you don’t butt into the soliloquy, but show an intelligent interest by an occasional nod, I’ll switch you on to the Information Bureau. The doc said I might, just to stop you from worrying.

“When an Indian with a spit lip got you with a stone at about five yards there were two coracles on each side of us. I suspicioned that the Thugs in them meant to spring aboard at the same time, which would have meant trouble, so it was up to me to spoil the combination. I shoved the helm hard over and drove into the two on the port side. Our heavy boat went through them as though they were jelly-fish, and the sudden rise of our starboard gunwale upset the calculations of the other crowd.

“Everybody, including you, rolled over with the sudden lurch, but Nina gathered herself together, grabbed your gun, stood straight on her feet, and said to me: ‘Do you know which of these men hit Alec?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that joker with the criss-cross mouth. But you lie down. We’re clear now.’ Without another word she drew a steady bead on the stone-slinger and got him with the first shot.

“Then she attended to you. It seemed almost as though we had reached the limit, with you lying like dead, and me weak and sick, because the slingers gave me a couple to begin with, and the Indian girl screaming for all she was worth. Nina was just crooning over you like a mother nursing an ailing baby, so Madge came and took the tiller—not before time, as I didn’t know enough to run with the wind again.

“We missed a howling reef by a hair’s breadth—missed it only because the new course had taken us close inshore towards the north. Half an hour later we were in Smyth’s Channel, and didn’t know it, so we would have been sailing yet into the middle of the Andes if the Valentia hadn’t bumped around a corner. Since then we three have been setting the scene for you when you come on deck. The passengers are the right sort, every man and woman among ’em all wool and a yard wide. Tell you what, Alec—I’d better warn you—Nina and Madge have fixed up a star turn for you on your first appearance.”

Sturgess paused to grin largely, so Maseden broke in with a question.

“Are we at sea now?” he inquired.

“No. We’re anchored at Punta Arenas. The girls have gone ashore to see that Topsy is well fixed in a mission-house. The man who runs it came aboard for mail. He talks Topsy’s lingo, so now we know why we happened on her. She broke her leg when one of half a dozen coracles was upset, and the brutes simply left her there to die, as they were in such a dashed hurry to go for the supposed loot of a wrecked ship. She will be all right here. I’ve attended to the financial side of it. They tell me that a hundred dollars will make her a great heiress.”

“What about my name—Alexander?”

“Gee whiz! I was nearly forgetting. That was Nina’s notion. She’s real cute, that girl. She sized up the position in San Juan, and in case there might be any difficulty while the ship is in South American waters gave your name as Philip Alexander. She remembered that there was a Mr. Alexander on board the Southern Cross, and it would be just silly to try and pass you off as a broncho-buster. No one gave any heed to your clothes. Our collective rig was so cubist or futurist, in general effect, that your vaquero outfit passed with the rest.

“The skipper is about your size, and he has sent you a suit. The girls are buying linen and underclothes for all of us in Punta Arenas. I had no money, so instead of borrowing from the other people I went through your pants for five hundred dollars. You’ll find a note with your wad, so that you can collect if I peg out before we find a bank.”

Then Maseden laughed, and was heard by the doctor, who was coming along the gangway.

“Halloa!” he said. “Was it you who laughed, Mr. Alexander?”

“Yes, doctor.”

“Any pain in your head?”

“Outside, yes; inside, no.”

“Feeling sick?”

“Sick. I could eat a pound of grilled steak.”

“You’ll do! Wonderful health resort, that wild land you’ve been wandering through. You have survived the nastiest concussion, short of absolutely fatal injuries, I’ve come across. I can’t prescribe steak just yet, but if you get through the night without a temperature I’ll allow you on deck to-morrow for a couple of hours.”

Maseden chafed against the enforced rest, and rebelled against a diet of milk and beef tea, but the doctor was wiser than he, and the patient acknowledged it when really strong again.

On the day the ship left Buenos Ayres he was able to dress unaided and reach a chair on deck without a helping arm. The boat which had proved the salvation of the castaways had been hoisted on board, and that particular part of the deck was allotted to the party of four. The other passengers were never tired of hearing them recount their adventures, and Maseden, to his secret amazement, discovered that Nina Forbes seemed to find delight in attracting an audience.

Madge and Sturgess could, and did, stroll off together for many an uninterrupted chat, but Nina was always surrounded by a coterie of strangers, some of them men, young men, frankly admiring young men.

Maseden endured this state of affairs until the ship had signalled her name and destination at Fernando Noronha, whence there was a straight run home. Then, disobeying the doctor, and coming on deck for the first time after dinner, he found Nina ensconced in her corner alone.

He took her by surprise. She would have sprung up, but he stopped her with a firm hand.

“No, you don’t,” he said, pulling a chair around and seating himself so that his broad back offered a barrier to any would-be intruder. “You and I are going to have a heart-to-heart talk, Nina. I’ve been waiting many days for the chance of it, and now is the time.”

She tried to laugh carelessly.

“What an alarming announcement,” she tittered. “Wherein have I erred that I am to be catechised? Or is it only a lecture on general behavior?”

“I’ll tell you. While we were trying to dodge the worries of existence round about Hanover Island I gave little real thought to my own affairs. But the calm of the past few days has enabled me to sort out events in what I may term their natural sequence, and the second rap on the head may have restored my wits to their average working capacity. Perhaps it will simplify matters if I begin at the beginning. The woman I married—”

“Are you still harping on that unfortunate marriage?”

The tone was flippant enough, but its studied nonchalance was a trifle overdone.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I promise that you will not be bored by the facts I intend to put before you—now—to-night—unless you resolve not to listen.”

There was no answer. Somehow, every woman knows just how far she may play with a man. Had Nina Forbes chosen, she might have sent her true lover out of her life that instant. She did not so choose. Indeed, nothing was further from her mind. She did not commit the error of imagining that Maseden would pester her with his wooing and wait her good pleasure to yield. His temperament did not incline to gusts of passion. She must hear him now or lose him forever.

“Of course I’ll listen,” she said timidly.

“Thank you. Well, then, my wife signed the register as Madeleine. That is not your sister’s name.”

“No.”

“Nor yours?”

“No.”

“Yet you led me to believe that I had married your sister?”

“No. You assumed it.”

“What really happened was that you assumed the name of Madeleine. Nina, you are my wife!”

“In a sense, yes.”

Though the promenade deck was lighted by a few lamps, there was a certain gloom in that corner. Nina’s face was discernable, but not its expression, and a curious hardening in her voice brought to Maseden a whiff of surprise, almost of anxiety. Happily he had mapped out the line he meant to follow, and adhered to it inflexibly.

“In the sense that you are legally Mrs. Philip Alexander Maseden,” he persisted.

“I may or may not be. I am not sure. I used a name not my own. It was the first that come into my head—a frightened woman’s attempt to leave herself some loophole of escape in the future.”

“You are mistaken, Nina. I know enough about the law to say definitely that it is the ceremony which counts, not the name. You will see at once that this must be so. If you married another man to-morrow, and signed yourself ‘Mary Smith,’ you would still be committing bigamy.”

At that she laughed.

“I must really be careful,” she said.

“I only want to fix in your mind the absolute finality of that early morning wedding in the Castle of San Juan. It makes matters easier.”

“To my thinking it makes them most complex.”

“Not at all. You and I have only reversed the usual procedure. Common-place folk meet, fall in love, go through a more or less frenzied period of being engaged, and, finally, get married. We began by getting married. Circumstances beyond our control stopped the natural progression of the affair, but I suggest that the frenzied part of the business might well start now.”

He caught her left hand and held it. She did not endeavor to withdraw it, but he was startled by her seeming indifference. Still, being a determined person, even in such a delicate matter as love-making, he pursued his theme.

“You well know that I mean to marry you, Nina, though I have regarded myself as bound to your sister until freed by process of law,” he went on. “But I ought to have guessed sooner that Madge would never have allowed Sturgess to become so openly her slave if she had contracted to love, honor and obey me. She might, indeed, have shared my view that the marriage was a make-believe affair as between her and me, but she would have held it as binding until the law declared her free. Then, that day in Hell Gate, when the hazard of a few minutes would decide whether we lived or died, you meant to tell me the truth before the end came. Is that so?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“You have no right to ask.” Her voice was very low.

“I can answer my own question. You wanted to die in my arms, Nina, with our first and last kiss on our lips. Fool that I was, I was so concerned about the height of a tide-mark on a rock that I gave no heed to the faltering speech of the woman I loved. The next time I heard those same accents from you was when I came to my senses on board this ship. For a few seconds you bared your heart again, Nina, and again I was deaf.

“You must forgive me, sweetheart, though such grievous lack of perception was really the highest compliment I could pay you. The notion that I was married to Madge was firmly established in my mind, and I literally dared not tell you that you were the one woman in the world for me till the other obstacle was removed. Seldom, if ever, I suppose, has any man been in such a position. Of course, there would have been no difficulty at all if I had happened to guess the truth—”

“That is just where you are mistaken, Alec,” and the words came with a sorrowful earnestness that Maseden found vastly disconcerting. “What woman with a shred of self-respect would agree to regard such a union as ours binding? Now, you have had your say; let me have mine,” and she snatched her hand away vehemently. “I married you as part of an infamous compact between that trader, Steinbaum, and Mr. Gray.

“My family is not wealthy, Alec. When my mother married a second time she did so largely on account of Madge and myself. She lacked money to educate us, or give us the social position every good mother desires for her daughters. But Mr. Gray, though a man of means, frittered away a good income in foolish speculations. He was worth half a million dollars, and believed himself such a financial genius that he could soon be a multi-millionaire. Instead of making money, he lost it, and the latest of his follies was to finance Enrico Suarez in a scheme to seize the presidency. The attempt was to have been made two years ago, but was postponed, or defeated, I don’t know which—”

“Defeated,” put in Maseden. “I know, because I helped to put a stopper on it.”

“Well, the collapse of that undertaking and its golden promise frightened my stepfather. After a lot of correspondence between Steinbaum and himself he came to South America, bringing with him practically the remnants of his fortune. My mother was too ill to accompany him, and he refused to travel alone, so we two girls were given the trip. Naturally, we were quite ignorant of the facts, and believed he was merely visiting a little republic in which he had financial interests.

“By chance we arrived in Cartagena on the very day Suarez had planned for the president’s murder—and yours, too, for that matter. Your arrest and condemnation gave the conspirators a chance of repaying Mr. Gray the money he had advanced. They were afraid he would lodge an official complaint, and get the State Department to interfere. But they had not the means in hard cash, and it occurred to one of them—Suarez, I believe—that if one of Mr. Gray’s daughters married you, and inherited your estate, the property could be sold for a sum sufficient to clear his claim and leave a balance for the other thieves.

“That is the precious project in which I, the elder of the two, became a pawn. Mr. Gray terrified me into compliance by telling me that we would be paupers on our return home. For myself I cared little, but when I thought of my mother I yielded. I am not excusing myself, Alec, though I little guessed the true nature of the bargain. I see now that Suarez and Steinbaum wished to avoid the actual semblance of having committed daylight murder and robbery. They might justify your death as a rebel against the state, but they could not explain away the seizure of your property, whereas its sale by your widow would be a most reasonable proceeding.

“Please understand that I believed I was only carrying out a formal undertaking meant to enable my stepfather to recover money honestly lent. Even so, my resolution faltered at the last moment, and I signed the register in my mother’s name. And now I have bared my heart to you, and you see how—utterly—impossible—it is—Oh, Alec, don’t be cruel! Don’t torture me! I can never, never be your wife, because I can never forgive myself!”

Alec, the wise, as Sturgess had often styled him, showed exceeding wisdom now by letting her cry her fill. Never a word did he say until the tempest subsided. Then he took her hand again and drew her to him.

“Tell me one thing, Nina,” he said gently. “What became of the ring—our ring?”

“It is tied around my neck—on a bit of ribbon,” she sobbed.

“Then it shall remain there until we reach New York,” he said.

“But—I want—to keep it—as a souvenir—of all that has passed,” she said brokenly.

“So you shall, dear one. You would never feel satisfied, anyhow, with a Spanish marriage, so we’ll try an American one.”

“Alec, I cuc—cuc—can’t marry you. I’m too ashamed.”

He laughed happily, and drew her to him.

“You can’t wriggle out of the knot now, girlie,” he said. “But, just to behave like other folk, we’ll begin again at the beginning, and not at the end. Nina, do you think you can learn to love me quick enough to permit of a real wedding when we arrive in New York? You and I have gone through so many experiences since we met that we can dispense with some of the preliminaries to courtship. Shall we fix a date now? Say three weeks after we land, or sooner, if matters can be arranged.”

She lifted her tear-stained face, and her soul went out to his in their first kiss.

Sturgess, when he heard of the latest development, “got busy,” as he put it, on his own account. He, of course, had been told the exact facts by Nina on that night passed on the island in Nelson Straits. The upshot of the general agreement speedily arrived at was a noteworthy double wedding, at which, as a topic of conversation, the beauty of the brides rivaled, if it did not eclipse, their extraordinary adventures.

It should be said, as a fitting rounding off of a record of singular events, that Maseden not only obtained the money held in trust for him by the consul at Cartagena, but the proceeds of the sale of the ranch as well. Enrico Suarez was stabbed to the heart by a maniac with a grievance. Señor Porilla, an honest man, according to South American standards, became president, and saw to it that Maseden’s rights were safeguarded. Even the wily Steinbaum was compelled to disgorge to Gray’s executors.

The Aztec treasure was sold for a mint of money to a millionaire collector, and this sum was settled on Mrs. Gray for life, with reversion to her daughters in equal shares.

If any one is really curious to ascertain the identity and whereabouts of Mr. and Mrs. Philip Alexander Maseden or Mr. and Mrs. C. K. Sturgess, all that is necessary is to visit a town on the coast of Maine any August, and keep an eye peeled for a ship’s life-boat converted into a yawl and named “The Ark.” Therein will be found some very pleasant people, and, with the help of the foregoing history, the rest of the task should be simplicity itself.

THE END.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:

1. Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters’ errors; otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author’s words and intent.

2. The original of this etext did not have a Table of Contents; one has been added for the reader’s convenience.