His Unknown Wife

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.”