His Unknown Wife, Louis Tracy [best black authors .TXT] 📗

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 tomorrow 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-tonight-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 tomorrow, 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. Commonplace 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 lovemaking, 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 mat-. ter. 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