His Unknown Wife, Louis Tracy [best black authors .TXT] 📗
- Author: Louis Tracy
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The sleeping girl, conscious only of warmth and protection, snuggled her head a little nearer.
“Mother, darling,” she murmured, “we had to do it! We had no choice. It was for your dear sake!”
That was all-some troubled confidence of a dream-but it sufficed to set Maseden musing on the strange vortex into which fate had sucked him from the peace and seclusion of Los Andes ranch.
His mind wandered. He saw again the magnificent groves of mahogany trees and royal palms, with their golden flowers fully three feet in height, and the chicka sap oozing from the bark. He sauntered through the well-cultivated plantations of bananas, yams, arrow-root, guavas, and all the fruit and cereals which that favored region of Central America produces in such abundance that men grow lazy and are content to plot and thieve rather than toil. He particularly recalled a number of “chocolate” trees, the marvelous growth which yields a more delicately flavored beverage than the cocoa-tree.
The original owner of the ranch prided himself on these trees-botanically, the Herrania purpurea—because they were not indigenous to San Juan, but had been brought from Guatemala. Los Andes ranch was indeed a veritable Garden of Eden.
While roaming through it in spirit Maseden dropped off to sleep.
And that was a kindly act on the part of a Providence which marks even the fall of a sparrow from a house-top. A full day lay before this man and those others committed to his care. Even a couple of hours’ fitful repose served as a splendid restorative. Without some such respite he could never have faced and carried through the almost Sisyphean task which awaited him at daylight.
He awoke with a shiver. He was chilled to the bone. Not knowing what he was doing, he had drawn the poncho closely over Nina Gray, leaving his own limbs almost uncovered. Startled lest the others might be stiff in death, since his clothes were dry, while theirs, such as they possessed, were wet, he touched the girl’s cheek. It was quite warm and soft.
The oilskins she and her sister wore and the huddling together of the four under the heavy poncho had generated a moist heat which probably helped to preserve the two delicate women from some type of deadly pneumonia.
At first it did not strike Maseden as strange that he should be able to see her face. As the initial feeling of panic passed, and he glanced around, he understood what had happened. The sky was clear, and the moon, late risen, was spreading a mild radiance over rocks and sea.
By raising himself a little, so as not to disturb the sleeper still trustfully tucked under his arm, he peered sidewise down on the reef. The tide was high, and great rollers were smashing over the barrier which had broken the Southern Cross.
So far as he could tell, not a vestige of the ship remained. Bridge and chart-house had vanished. He fancied that some part of the framework accounted for a particularly vexed boiling of the surges on a spot where the engines and stoke-hold had lodged. But that was only guesswork.
The morning tide had done its work with thoroughness. The Southern Cross had become a memory.
Then he surveyed the ledge and the cleft. Apparently, at this point, he was some twenty feet above highwater mark. To the left was the sea. To the right, the rock overhung the ledge in such wise that the place was almost a cave. This fact, combined with the elevation of the opposite wall, explained the shelter the castaways had been vouchsafed from the bitter gale now blowing itself out. But it was affrighting to realize that the very physical feature which provided a refuge might also immure them in a living tomb.
He shuddered, and moved involuntarily, and the girl awoke with a start.
She lifted her head, and gazed at him with uncomprehending eyes.
“Where am I?” she said, rather in wonderment than alarm.
“Somewhere on the coast of Chile,” he said.
She extricated a hand from the folds of the poncho and swept the errant hair from her face. Turning partly, she looked at her sister and Sturgess.
“I remember now,” she said slowly. Then she discovered that Maseden’s arm was supporting her shoulders.
“Have you held me like that all night?” she inquired.
“‘All night’ is a figure of speech. It is not yet daybreak. This is moonlight.”
“The moon! Does the moon still shine? But your arm must be weary.”
Maseden was just beginning to realize that he owned a left arm. Circulation was being restored, and he knew it.
“Now that you mention it,” he said quietly, “I believe it is.”
She spoke again, but he was in such agony that he broke out in a perspiration, a most fortunate circumstance, since he was perished with cold. The spasm did not last long, however, and he found his voice again.
“Are you Miss Nina Gray!” he asked, and, in the same breath, was conscious of the absurd formality of the question in the conditions.
She did not answer.
“We may as well become acquainted,” he went on, smiling at the queer turn their first words had taken.
“Now I remember everything,” she said, burying her face in her hands.
“I can’t have you crying,” he muttered with a certain roughness. “Tears won’t help. We’re in a pretty bad fix, and must meet developments calmly.”
“I’m not crying,” she said, dropping her hands, and looking at him as though to offer proof.
“Then you can at least tell me your name, though I’m almost sure that you are Nina. Even here, your sister, who is also my wife, keeps away from me.”
“That is unjust. You saved both of us, but I kept my senses, and she did not. You asked me if I was Nina Gray. I am not. My name is Nina Forbes.”
Maseden was stung into a revolt as fantastic as it was sudden.
“Good Lord!” he cried. “Are you married?”
“Please let me explain. Mr. Gray was not my father, but my stepfather. My mother married again. I-wanted to tell you. But does it really matter? Why are we discussing such trivial things? Are we four the only survivors of the wreck?”
“I suppose so.”
“Mr. Gray died-while we were in the chartroom. He was an invalid-a neurotic. He could not withstand hardship of any sort. But the captain and chief officer were behind me on that mast…. Ah! I had forgotten that. I fainted, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
Madge stirred uneasily. Their voices had aroused her.
“Don’t be unkind to Madge,” said the girl hurriedly. “Neither of us could help what happened in San Juan. We thought we were acting for the best. Our lives are still in jeopardy, I imagine. Won’t you be good and forget that unfortunate marriage?”
“I won’t talk of it, if that is what you mean. But I can hardly regard it as unfortunate. It undoubtedly saved my life.”
Madge awoke with a cry.
“Nina!” she screamed. “Oh, Nina, is that you? Are we really alive?”
Sturgess awoke, too. Soon they were talking freely, and Maseden not only learned the heartbreaking story of the dozen refugees pent in the chart-house, but was told how he himself came by the blow on the head which took away his senses.
Madge Gray, or Forbes, as he must now call her, was moved to thank Providence for the intervention of the Spanish sailor.
“If that man hadn’t picked you up, Mr. Maseden,” she said, “you would have been washed overboard a few seconds later. Then nothing could have saved any of us.”
She seemed to be completely unaware of the sensation she created by addressing her rescuer by name. Maseden felt Nina’s nervous little start, but Sturgess put his astonishment into words.
“Maseden!” he cried. “You know our friend, then?”
“I—I heard his name before—on the ship,” came the faltered answer.
“Well, you heard more than I did…. Are you the mysterious English-speaking vaquero who lived in the forecastle!” and the questioner bent a puzzled face sideways to try and discern the other man’s features.
“Yes,” said Maseden promptly. “There need be no mystery about it now. I got into trouble in Cartagena, shot the president-elect, and escaped in the disguise of a Spanish cowboy.”
“Gee!” exclaimed Sturgess.
For some reason best known to himself he displayed no further curiosity in the matter, though he might well have wondered how Madge Forbes had come to identify that picturesque looking person, Ramon Aliones, with the American whose exploits had set all Cartagena agog the day before the Southern Cross sailed.
There was an uncomfortable pause, which Maseden broke by a laugh.
“So you see, Mr. Sturgess, I owed you a good turn, though you never guessed it. By your kindness in letting me carry your bag and share your boat I got away from my pursuers without attracting attention.”
“Gee!” said Sturgess again.
His comment probably denoted bewilderment. It may also have shown that the speaker had just ascertained something which supplied food for thought. In the half light Maseden allowed himself to smile, because the conceit instantly leaped into his mind that his fellow-countryman might have been told of that amazing marriage, and was now engaged in fitting together certain pieces of the puzzle.
If, for instance, Sturgess suspected that Madge Forbes was the lady who figured in that extraordinary episode, he must realize that in paying her such marked attention during the voyage he had placed himself, if not her, in a somewhat equivocal position.
“I had reason to believe that the captain recognized me,” went on Maseden. “Probably that is how Miss Forbes came to hear my name.”
“Miss Forbes!”
There was no mistaking the new note of surprise, even of annoyance, in Sturgess’s voice. He was gathering information at a rapid rate, and evidently found some difficulty in assimilating it.
“Yes,” broke in Nina Forbes. “That is my sister’s name, and my own. Mr. Gray was our stepfather. We passed as his daughters while traveling. The arrangement prevented all sorts of misunderstandings. In any event, it concerned none but ourselves. I only mentioned the fact casually to Mr. Maseden a few minutes ago.”
Some men might have caught a rebuke in the girl’s words. Not so Sturgess.
“I’m tickled to death at hearing it, anyhow,” he said cheerfully. “The one thing I couldn’t understand was how you two girls could be that poor chap’s daughters…. Well, now we’re all properly introduced, let’s talk as though we really knew one another. Has any one the beginning of a notion as to the time.”
Then Maseden remembered that he was wearing a watch which he had wound that morning. He produced it, and was able to discern the hands.
“A quarter past two,” he announced.
A silence fell on them. Somehow the intimate and homely fact that one of the little company possessed a watch which had not stopped served rather to enhance than allay the sense of peril and abandonment which their brief talk had dispelled for the moment. A soldier who took part in that glorious but terrible retreat from Mons confessed afterwards that his spirit quailed once, and that was when he read the route names on a London suburban omnibus lying disabled and abandoned by the roadside.
The Marble Arch, Edgware Road, Maida Vale and Cricklewood—what had these familiar localities to do with the crash of shell-fire and the spattering of bullets on the pave? Similarly, the forlorn
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