Louis Tracy - His Unknown Wife

Perforce, he remained filthy. The captain’s hint was very much to the point.

The Southern Cross was not a regular passenger boat. Primarily a trader, carrying nitrate or grain to home ports, and coal thence to various points on the southern or western seaboard of South America, she was equipped with a few cabins, about a dozen all told, on the upper deck.

The so-called second-class accommodation was several degrees worse than the steerage on a crack Atlantic liner. That is to say, the human freight ranked a long way after cargo. The food was plentiful, though rough. Even for saloon passengers there was neither stewardess nor doctor.

As a matter of course, a passenger list would be an absurdity. The chief steward acted as purser, and knew the names of all on board after five minutes’ study of his ledger. Passengers and ship’s officers soon became acquainted. Within twenty-four hours Maseden had ascertained that a Mr. James Gray, with his two daughters, occupied staterooms; but, for the life of him, he could not learn the ladies’ Christian names.

He cudgeled his brains to try and remember whether or not his “wife” had signed the register as Madeleine Gray; but the effort failed completely. He knew why, for the best of reasons; yet the knowledge did not render failure less tantalizing.

It is one thing to be dazzled by the prospect of escape from the seeming certainty of death within a few minutes, but quite another to be on the same ship as the lady you have married two days earlier, yet neither know her name nor be positive as to her identity.

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” was feeling 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 covert 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 far-fetched 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.