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

This, however, was literally Maseden’s predicament when chance favored him with a long, steady look at the Misses Gray. He could not be mistaken, because there were no other ladies on board.

Thus when a very pretty girl, wearing a muslin dress and hat of Leghorn straw, appeared at the forward rail of the promenade deck and gazed wistfully out over the sea, Maseden’s heart fluttered more violently than he would have thought possible as the effect of a casual glance at any woman.

So, then, this fair, slim creature, whose unheeding eyes had dwelt on him for a fleeting second ere they sought the horizon, was his wife! It was an extraordinary notion; fantastic, yet not wholly unpleasing. It would be rather a joke, if opportunity offered, to flirt with her. He had never flirted with any girl, and hardly knew how to begin; but much reading had taught him that the lady herself might prove an admirable coach if so minded.

Of course, there was room for error in one respect. He might have married the sister, who, thus far, nearly midday, had not been visible during daylight. He calculated the pros and cons of the situation. If his “wife” wasfeeling the strain of that unnerving experience in the great hall of the Castle of San Juan, she might now be resting in her stateroom. But why should the sister, on whose shoulders, one would suppose, sat no such heavy load of care, come on deck alone and scan the blue Pacific with that dreamy air?

Yes, by Jove, this really must be his wife! Somehow, poetic justice demanded that she, and not her sister, should meet him thus unconsciously.

In covet fashion he began to study her. The deck on which she stood was fully twenty feet above him, and she was still further separated from him by some thirty feet of the fore hatch, but he noted that her eyes were of the Parma violet tint so frequently met with in the heroines of fiction, yet all too seldom seen in real life. Being a mere man, he was not aware that blue eyes in shadow assume that exact tint. At any rate, as eyes, they were more than satisfactory.

Her nose was well modeled, with broad, flexible nostrils, unfailing sign of good health and an equable disposition. Her lips were prettily curved, and the oval face, framed in a cluster of brown hair, was poised on a perfectly molded neck. She owned shapely arms; he had already had occasion to admire her hands; a small, neatly-shod foot was visible under the lowest rail as the girl leaned on her elbows in an attitude of unstudied grace.

Altogether, Mr. Maseden liked the looks of Mrs. Maseden!

He was beginning to revel in sentiment when the edifice of seemingly substantial fact so swiftly constructed by a fertile imagination was dissipated into space by hearing a voice-the voice, he was sure-coming from some unseen part of the upper deck.

“Ah! There you are, Nina!” it said. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere! How long have you been here?”

Nina! So this fairy was only the sister. Maseden smiled grimly behind a cloud of cigarette smoke because of the absurd shock which the words administered. He was sharply aware of a sense of disappointment, a feeling so farfetched as to be almost ludicrous.

What in the world did it matter to which of these two he was married? In all probability he would never exchange a word with either, and his first serious business on reaching a civilized country would be to get rid of the incubus with which a set of phenomenal circumstances alone had saddled him.

At last, however, he would really see his wife, and thus end one phase of a curious entanglement. Nina had half turned. Evidently she realized that Madeleine meant to join her. Maseden leaned back against the external paneling of his cubby-hole and looked aloft now with curiosity at once quickened and undisguised.

But he was fated to suffer many minor shocks that day. Madeleine appeared, and presented such an exact replica of Nina that, at first sight, and in the strong shadows cast by the canvas screen which alone rendered that portion of the deck habitable while the sun was up, it was practically impossible for a stranger to differentiate between them.

Maseden discovered later that Madeleine was twenty-two and Nina nearly twenty-four; but the marked resemblance between the pair, accentuated by their trick of dressing alike, led people to take them for twins. Moreover, each so admirably duplicated the other in voice and mannerisms that only near relatives or intimate friends could be certain which was speaking if the owner of the voice remained invisible.

For a little while, too, Maseden’s mind was reduced to chaos by hearing Nina address her sister as “Madge.” He was vouchsafed the merest glimpse of Madge’s face, because, after a quick, heedless look at him and at a half-caste sailor readjusting the hatches covering the fore hold, she turned her back to the rail and said something that Maseden could not overhear.

A man joined the two girls, whereupon Nina also faced aft. The newcomer, standing well away under the screen, could not be seen at all, and Maseden thought it must be Mr. Gray, the querulous person whose outspoken utterances had first warned Maseden that his wife was on board.

But he erred again. Some comment passed by Nina raised a laugh, and Maseden recognized the voice of Mr. Sturgess, whose baggage he had carried overnight.

“I guess not!” he was saying, with a humorous stress on each word. “As a summer resort, San Juan disagreed with my complaint, Miss Gray.”

“Have you been ill, then?” came the natural query.

“No, but I might have been had I remained there too long,” was the answer. “A change of president in one of these small republics is like a bad railroad smash-you never know who’ll get hurt. I’ve a notion that Mr. Gray must have felt sort of relieved when he brought you two young ladies safe and sound aboard this ship.”

“We didn’t see anything specially alarming,” said Nina. “Madge went out twice during the day with Mr. Steinbaum, a trader, and the streets were very quiet, she thought.”

Madge! Was “Madge” a family diminutive for Madeleine? Maseden neither knew nor cared. Nina’s harmless chatter had told him the truth. Madge most certainly did find the streets quiet, if the story brought by Lopez from Cartagena was correct; namely, that she had been carried out of the Castle in a dead faint.

And now the heartless creature was actually laughing!

“One cannot take a South American revolution quite seriously-it always has something comical about it,” she cried, and it was astounding how closely the one sister’s voice resembled the other’s. “I understand that some poor people were shot the night before last, but I saw a man who keeps a restaurant opposite Mr. Steinbaum’s house produce a device with flags and a scroll. On the scroll was painted ‘Long Live Valdez.’ He drew some fresh letters over the first part of the name, dabbed on plenty of black and white paint, and the new legend ran ‘Long Live Suarez.’ The whole thing was done, and the flags were out, in less than five minutes.”

Sturgess evidently asked for and obtained permission to smoke. He came to the rail. Both girls faced forward again, and Maseden was free to compare them.

Madge, or Madeleine, as he preferred to style her, seemed to be a trifle paler than Nina,Otherwise, her likeness to her sister was almost uncanny, if that ill-omened word might be applied to two remarkably pretty girls. Neither of the girls wore gloves, but Maseden looked in vain for the heavy gold wedding-ring which Steinbaum’s thoroughness had supplied when wanted.

At that moment an officer appeared on the main deck. The fore hold had to be opened, it seemed. A quartermaster, summoned from the forecastle, hoisted a block and tackle to a derrick. The noise effectually drowned the talk of the trio on the upper deck until the tackle was rigged, and a couple of hatches were removed. The half-caste sailor was about to descend into the hold just as Sturgess’s somewhat staccato accents reached Maseden clearly again.

“Say, did you ladies hear of the American who was to be shot early yesterday morning? A most thrilling yarn was spun by a friend of mine who knows Cartagena from A to Z. He said-”

Maseden was on the alert to detect the slightest variation of expression on Madeleine’s face. She bent forward, her hands tightly clutching the rail, and darted a piteous under look at her sister. Thus it happened that Maseden alone was gazing upward, and he saw, out of the tail of his eye, the heavy block detaching itself from the derrick and falling straight on top of the sailor, who had a leg over the coaming of the hatch and a foot on the first rung of the iron ladder leading down into the hold.

With a quickness born of many a tussle with a bucking broncho, Maseden leaped, caught the rope held by the quartermaster, and jerked it violently. The block missed the half-caste by a few inches, and clanged in the hold far beneath.

The tenth part of a second decided whether the sailor should be dashed headlong into the depths or left wholly unscathed. As it was, he and every onlooker realized that the rakish looking vaquero had saved his life.

In the impulsive way of his race, the man darted forward, threw his arms around Maseden’s neck, and kissed him. To his very great surprise, his rescuer thrust him off, and said angrily:

“Don’t be such a damn fool!”

An exclamation, almost a slight scream, came from the upper deck. Maseden knew in an instant that this time he had blundered beyond repair. Madeleine had heard his voice, and had recognized him. Moreover, the officer, the quartermaster, even the grateful Spaniard, were eyeing him with unmixed amazement.

The fat was in the fire this time! In another moment would come denunciation and arrest, and then-back to the firing squad! What should he do?