THE SETTLEMENT
Just as before, when he awoke on board the _Southern Cross_ in
surroundings so bewildering that he gave up the effort to localize
them, his puzzled eyes now surveyed white-painted panelled walls, a
brass-bound port-light, and some tapestry curtains. At any other time he
would have realized at once that he was in a ship's cabin, but now an
uncomprehending stare soon yielded to a torpor of pain.
He believed that a gentle hand adjusted a bandage on his head, and was
aware of a grateful coldness where before there had been heat and a
throbbing ache. Afterwards--he thought it was immediately, though the
interval was a full half hour--he looked again at the walls and ceiling
with something of real recognition in his glance.
"Glad to see you're regaining your wits, Mr. Alexander," said a man's
voice, a strange but very pleasant voice. "Lucky for you you've got the
right sort of thick head, or, from what I hear, it would certainly have
been cracked twice."
Mr. Alexander! Who was he? And where was he? Where were--
"May he talk a little now, doctor?" and Maseden would have had to be
very dead if he did not know that Nina Forbes was sitting by his side.
He turned, and even remembered to repress a groan lest some one in
authority might not grant her request.
Even so the doctor was dubious.
"He must not be allowed to get excited," he said.
"Then may he listen to me a minute?"
"Yes, if you really keep to schedule."
"Don't move, Alec!" whispered Nina, and there seemed to be a note in
her voice that Maseden had heard only once before, though he could not
recall the occasion. "We're on board a mail steamer bound for England,
but she touches at Punta Arenas and Buenos Ayres, so you must be 'Mr.
Alexander,' not 'Mr. Maseden,' until we reach home. Don't ask why just
now. I'll tell you to-morrow, or next day, when you are stronger. You
will trust me, won't you?"
"Trust you, Nina! Yes, forever!"
He looked at her, as though to make sure that his senses were not
deceiving him and that it was really Nina Forbes who sat there, a Nina
with her hair nicely combed and coiled and wearing a particularly
attractive pink jersey and white serge skirt.
He thought that her eyes--those frank blue eyes he had gazed into so
often--were suffused with tears.
"Why are you crying?" he demanded, with just a hint of that domineering
way of his.
"Not for grief," she said quietly. "But you must drink this now, and go
to sleep. When you awaken again, perhaps the doctor will let C. K. come
and chat with you."
"C. K.? Is he all right?"
"Yes."
"And Madge?"
"Yes. Not another word. Drink--to please me."
"I'll do anything to please you."
He swallowed some milk and soda-water; took a whole tumbler-full, in
fact.
"That's fine," he said. "Now I'll hold your hand and you'll tell me--"
"You're going to close your eyes and lie still," she said firmly. "If
you don't I'll leave you. If you do, I'll stay here."
"I'm bribed," he said, smiling. Soon he slept, but this was nature's
healing sleep, not the coma of insensibility. When next he entered a
world of reality he found Sturgess sitting where Nina had been.
"Going strong now, Alec?" inquired his friend.
Maseden did not answer at once. He wanted to be quite sure that the
wretched throbbing in his head had ceased. Yes; there was a great
soreness, but it was of the scalp, not of the internal mechanism. He
sat bolt upright.
"Hi!" shouted Sturgess, "you mustn't do that! Gosh! The doctor man will
raise Cain with me if he knows I let you move."
"I'm all right, C. K."
"You're going to flatten out straight away, or I'll shriek for help."
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."
"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 to-morrow, 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.
Common-place 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 love-making, 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 matter. 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 return home. For myself I cared little, but when I
thought of my mother I yielded. I am not excusing myself, Alec, though
I little guessed the true nature of the bargain. I see now that Suarez
and Steinbaum wished to avoid the actual semblance of having committed
daylight murder and robbery. They might justify your death as a rebel
against the state, but they could not explain away the seizure of your
property, whereas its sale by your widow would be a most reasonable
proceeding.
"Please understand that I believed I was only carrying out a formal
undertaking meant to enable my stepfather to recover money honestly
lent. Even so, my resolution faltered at the last moment, and I signed
the register in my mother's name. And now I have bared my heart to you,
and you see how--utterly--impossible--it is--Oh, Alec, don't be cruel!
Don't torture me! I can never, never be your wife, because I can never
forgive myself!"
Alec, the wise, as Sturgess had often styled him, showed exceeding
wisdom now by letting her cry her fill. Never a word did he say until
the tempest subsided. Then he took her hand again and drew her to him.
"Tell me one thing, Nina," he said gently. "What became of the ring--our
ring?"
"It is tied around my neck--on a bit of ribbon," she sobbed.
"Then it shall remain there until we reach New York," he said.
"But--I want--to keep it--as a souvenir--of all that has passed," she
said brokenly.
"So you shall, dear one. You would never feel satisfied, anyhow, with a
Spanish marriage, so we'll try an American one."
"Alec, I cuc--cuc--can't marry you. I'm too ashamed."
He laughed happily, and drew her to him.
"You can't wriggle out of the knot now, girlie," he said. "But, just to
behave like other folk, we'll begin again at the beginning, and not at
the end. Nina, do you think you can learn to love me quick enough to
permit of a real wedding when we arrive in New York? You and I have gone
through so many experiences since we met that we can dispense with some
of the preliminaries to courtship. Shall we fix a date now? Say three
weeks after we land, or sooner, if matters can be arranged."
She lifted her tear-stained face, and her soul went out to his in their
first kiss.
* * * * *
Sturgess, when he heard of the latest development, "got busy," as he put
it, on his own account. He, of course, had been told the exact facts by
Nina on that night passed on the island in Nelson Straits. The upshot
of the general agreement speedily arrived at was a noteworthy double
wedding, at which, as a topic of conversation, the beauty of the brides
rivaled, if it did not eclipse, their extraordinary adventures.
It should be said, as a fitting rounding off of a record of singular
events, that Maseden not only obtained the money held in trust for him
by the consul at Cartagena, but the proceeds of the sale of the ranch
as well. Enrico Suarez was stabbed to the heart by a maniac with a
grievance. Senor Porilla, an honest man, according to South American
standards, became president, and saw to it that Maseden's rights were
safeguarded. Even the wily Steinbaum was compelled to disgorge to Gray's
executors.
The Aztec treasure was sold for a mint of money to a millionaire
collector, and this sum was settled on Mrs. Gray for life, with
reversion to her daughters in equal shares.
If any one is really curious to ascertain the identity and whereabouts
of Mr. and Mrs. Philip Alexander Maseden or Mr. and Mrs. C. K. Sturgess,
all that is necessary is to visit a town on the coast of Maine any
August, and keep an eye peeled for a ship's life-boat converted into a
yawl and named "_The Ark_." Therein will be found some very pleasant
people, and, with the help of the foregoing history, the rest of the
task should be simplicity itself.
THE END.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise,
every effort has been made to remain true to the author's words and
intent.