His Unknown Wife
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When the tide was high Sturgess and Maseden, before they, too, turned in, rose to make sure that the anchor could not drag during the night, and Sturgess electrified his friend by choosing that odd moment to allude to the Cartagena marriage.
“Say, Alec,” he said, “you sure have had the time of your life ever since you were hauled off to San Juan and sentenced to be shot.”
Maseden imagined that the New Yorker was merely referring to the incidents following the shipwreck.
“I don’t see exactly how life has been more of a sizzle for me than for you and the girls,” he said.
“Ah, come off it, Alec!” laughed the other. “You know better than that. But I guess I’ll have to hand the explanation on a tray. Madge and Nina have told the facts about your wedding. Gosh! What a jolt it must have given you to find your wife on board the Southern Cross!”
“You know?” gasped Maseden.
“Yep. They up and told me while you were gathering fire-wood. Nina said she had promised you to put the full hand on the table at the first opportunity. She’s done it.”
“Nina! Didn’t Madge say anything?”
“You bet your life. She was tickled to death. It’s been worrying her no end.”
“May I ask – ”
“No, you mayn’t. It was square of you, Alec, to insist that I should come in on the inside track. Of course, I wasn’t born and bred in little old New York for nothing, and I had my doubts a while back. One day, too, you were within an ace of blurting out the whole yarn. I remember it well. I’m glad now you didn’t. It would have made things kind of difficult for me. But both girls are a bit shy where you’re concerned. You don’t blame ’em, do you?”
Maseden was absolutely bewildered. Sturgess was an irresponsible, devil-may-care fellow in many respects, but these effervescent qualities cloaked a fine sensibility, and it was astounding to find him treating the matter so lightly.
“I – I hardly know what to say,” he stammered.
“Say nothing. The tangle will straighten out in time. We’re going to win through all right, so let us forget the San Juan affair till it overtakes us. You ain’t going to switch off from Nina on to Madge, I guess, so you and I won’t quarrel, and the other kinks in the chain will sort themselves if we all go easy.”
“Tell me this. What was the cause of the marriage?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Each word was a crescendo of astonishment.
“No. What business is it of mine, anyhow?”
“But you yourself have told me that you mean to marry Madge.”
“Sure as death.”
“Yet – ”
“Sorry, Alec. I’ve promised to keep mum. Suppose we leave it at that.”
“What is there to keep mum about?”
“Hanged if I can tell you, though you yourself haven’t been what you might call bursting with information during the past month.”
“It was a woman’s secret, C. K.”
“And that’s just how I size it up at this sitting.”
Sturgess’s logic was unanswerable, but Maseden was in high dudgeon as he strode back to the camp-fire. He was far more angry with Nina than with Madge. He suspected that Madge simply followed her sister’s instructions, and the injustice of this steady refusal of confidence was aggravated by the fact that Sturgess seemed to know more about the ins and outs of the affair now than he did.
True, the New Yorker said he was still in ignorance of the motive which led up to the marriage, yet he had hinted at the possession of knowledge withheld from the man who had saved their lives not once but a dozen times. Nina was to blame. Maseden was certain of that. He would have liked to shake her.
As it happened, she was either sound asleep or pretending it, so he, too, curled up in the sand and slept till long after dawn.
The new day began with an unexpected difficulty. The Indian girl was cheerful as a grig during breakfast. She ascertained their names, which she pronounced fairly well. “Nina” she had no trouble with. “Madge” she made into “Mad-je.” Maseden was “Ah-lek,” and Sturgess “See-ke.” Her own name had a barbarous sound, if, indeed, it was a name at all; so Madge christened her “Topsy,” which seemed to please her. But her light-heartedness vanished when she saw preparations being made to renew the voyage. She protested volubly, pointed to a colony of seals and well-filled beds of oysters, and generally implied an earnest desire to remain on the island.
Eastward, it would appear, were other “bad men” and “much smoke,” but, whatsoever her motive, Maseden sternly overruled her. She was greatly distressed when placed on board the boat, and sulked for a couple of hours. As the coast drew near, however, she evinced renewed anxiety, and signified that she would act as pilot again.
The land seemed to be a replica of seaward islands; a fast-running tidal stream passed due east between two gaunt promontories. According to Maseden’s reckoning the straits they were now entering should open into Smyth’s Channel, and he bent his wits to the task of getting Topsy to understand that he wanted to meet one of the big ships which follow that route.
He believed she understood, but there could be no doubting she was so deeply concerned as to the probable whereabouts of the inhabitants of the coast region that she gave little heed to the wishes of her rescuers.
Oblivious of the pain she must be enduring, she contrived to perch herself in the bows, and scanned each bay and inlet of the ever-narrowing passage, though this was no subsidiary channel, but a deep and swift tide-way. The wind was strong and favorable and the boat was traveling fully eight knots an hour, a speed which no native craft could hope to rival. Still, Topsy’s marked uneasiness led Maseden to examine the rifle and make sure that its mechanism was in good order and the magazine charged.
He had no definite notion as to the type of weapons used by the Indians. Nearly all savages are armed with spears and clubs, but he believed that a people so low in the social scale as these South American nomads would not possess firearms. At any rate, he bade all hands keep a sharp look-out, and specifically ordered Sturgess and the girls to take cover in the event of an attack, unless an actual attempt was made to board the boat, in which case the girls could thrust with the rapiers and Sturgess might do good work with an ax.
They ran on several miles without incident, and were beginning to think that their guide was, perhaps, swayed more by recollection of earlier sufferings than by any active peril of the hour, when Topsy, whose piercing black eyes were ever and anon turned to the bluffs on either hand, uttered a sharp cry and pointed to a low cliff overhanging a bay they had just passed on the left.
Three thin columns of smoke were ascending from its summit.
Maseden could make nothing of her excited speech, but he understood her gestures readily, and took it that the smoke was a signal, while the danger, whatever it may be, lay ahead.
And, indeed, they had not long to wait for an explanation. From around a point not a mile distant, and directly in front, appeared a number of coracles, eight all told, and each containing two men, or a man and a woman. It was clear that this flotilla meant to waylay them, and the terror exhibited by the Indian girl was only too eloquent as to the fate of the boat’s occupants if they allowed themselves to be overpowered.
Maseden disposed his forces promptly. Sturgess was given the tiller. Topsy was put back on her couch in the bottom of the boat, and Nina and Madge were told to crouch by her side until their help was called for. From the outset the Americans did not dream of attempting to parley. Topsy’s unfeigned dread was sufficient to ban any such quixotic notion.
The coracles were strung out in an irregular line, covering a width of about four hundred yards, and, in laying his plans, Maseden recalled the strategy of a certain great admiral.
“Head slap for their center,” he told Sturgess confidently. “That was Nelson’s favorite way of attack. If possible, he always broke the enemy’s line in two, and I suppose it paid him. I think these heavy-caliber bullets will rip a native craft as though it were made of brown paper, and I should be able to sink at least four before the others can close in.”
Sturgess nodded.
“What Nelson says goes,” he grinned.
The battle opened at a range of one hundred yards, and Maseden’s first shot buckled the framework of the nearest coracle, so that it sank like a stone. There was a spurt of steam as the fire which every Indian boat carries reached the water, and two men swam away like otters.
The second shot struck a little too high. It whizzed through the craft’s hide cover and lodged in an Indian’s body, because the man yelled frantically. Maseden fired again, and damaged another coracle.
But by this time he had made the unpleasing discovery that these light skiffs could be propelled very rapidly for a short distance. In each a man or woman was paddling with furious energy, while their companions were using slings. Small, heavy stones rattled against and into the boat.
Sturgess was struck twice on the breast and left shoulder, and was only saved from serious injury by the stout oilskin coat he was wearing. Even so, he went white with pain, but he neither uttered a word nor neglected his task, which was to keep the sail filled and the boat traveling.
Maseden had two objects in mind – to beat off their assailants and yet keep sufficient ammunition in stock lest other Indians were encountered later. He sank two more coracles, and had killed or wounded three men, when a flint pebble struck him on the head, finding the exact spot where he was injured during the wreck.
He sank to his knees, and tried to say something. He believed he heard a crash and some shouting. Then the sky and hills and swift-running waters whirled in a mad dance before his eyes, and he lost consciousness.
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.