His Unknown Wife. Tracy Louis

much in these confounded boots.”

      The stout financier made no reply. He was singularly ill at ease. Any critical onlooker, not cognizant of the facts, would take him and not Maseden to be the man condemned to death.

      A heavy, iron-clamped door leading to the row of cells was wide open. Some soldiers, lined up close to it in the hall, were craning their necks to catch a first glimpse of the Americano who was about to marry and die in the same breath, so to speak.

      Beyond, near a table in the center of the spacious chamber, stood a group that arrested the eye – a Spanish priest, in vestments of semi-state; an olive-skinned man whom Maseden recognized as a legal practitioner of fair repute in a community where chicanery flourished, and a slenderly-built woman of middle height, though taller than either of her companions, whose stylish coat and skirt of thin, gray cloth, and smart shoes tied with little bows of black ribbon, were strangely incongruous with the black lace mantilla which draped her head and shoulders, and held in position a double veil tied firmly beneath her chin.

      Maseden was so astonished at discovering the identity of the lawyer that he momentarily lost interest in the mysterious woman who would soon be his wife.

      “Señor Porilla!” he cried. “I am glad you are here. Do you understand – ”

      “It is forbidden!” hissed Steinbaum. “One more word, and back you go to your cell!”

      “Oh, is that part of the compact?” said Maseden cheerfully. “Well, well! We must not make matters unpleasant for a lady – must we, Steinbaum?.. Now, madam, raise your veil, and let me at least have the honor of knowing what sort of person the future Mrs. Philip Alexander Maseden will be!”

      The only answer was a stifled but quite audible sob, and Maseden had an impression that the lady might put a summary stop to the proceedings by fainting.

      Steinbaum, however, had recovered his nerve in the stronger light of the great hall, especially since the soldiers had gathered around.

      “The señora declines to unveil,” he growled in Spanish. “Begin, padre! There is not a moment to spare.”

      The ecclesiastic opened a book and plunged forthwith into the marriage service. Maseden was aware that the shrinking figure by his side was trembling violently, and a wave of pity for her surged through his heart.

      “Cheer up!” he whispered. “It’s only a matter of form, anyhow; and I’m glad to be able to help you. I don’t care a red cent what your motive is.”

      Steinbaum gurgled ominously, and the bridegroom said no more. Clearly, though he had given no bond, he was imperiling the fulfillment of this unhappy girl’s desire if he talked.

      But he kept his wits alert. It was evident that the lady understood little Latin and no Spanish. She was quite unable to follow the sonorous phrases. When the portly priest, who seemed to have small relish for the part he was compelled to play in this amazing marriage, asked Maseden if he would have “this woman” to be his wedded wife, the bridegroom answered “Yes,” in Spanish; but a similar question addressed to the bride found her dumb.

      “Say ‘I will,’” murmured Maseden in her ear.

      She turned slightly. At that instant their heads came close together, and the long, unfamiliar fragrance of a woman’s well-tended hair reached him.

      It had an extraordinary effect. Memories of his mother, of a simple old-world dwelling in a Vermont village, rushed in on him with an almost overwhelming force.

      His superb self-possession nearly gave way. He felt that he might break down under the intolerable strain.

      He feared, during a few seconds of anguish, that he might reveal his heartache to these men of inferior races.

      Then the pride of a regal birthright came to his aid, and a species of most vivid and poignant consciousness succeeded. He heard Steinbaum’s gruff sponsorship for the bride, obeyed smilingly when told to take her right hand in his right hand, and looked with singular intentness at the long, straight, artistic fingers which he held.

      It was a beautifully modeled hand, well kept, but cold and tremulous. The queer conceit leaped up in him that though he might never look on the face of his wedded wife he would know that hand if they met again only at the Judgment Seat!

      Then, in a dazed way which impressed the onlookers as the height of American nonchalance, he said, after the celebrant: “I, Philip Alexander, take thee, Madeleine – ”

      Madeleine! So that was the Christian name of the woman whom he was taking “till death do us part,” for the Spanish liturgy provided almost an exact equivalent of the English service. Madeleine! He had never even known any girl of the name. Somehow, he liked it. Outwardly so calm, he was inwardly aflame with a new longing for life and all that life meant.

      His jumbled wits were peremptorily recalled to the demands of the moment by the would-be bride’s failure to repeat her share of the marriage vow, when it became her turn to take Maseden’s hand.

      The priest nodded, and Steinbaum, now carrying himself with a certain truculence, essayed to lead the girl’s faltering tongue through the Spanish phrases.

      “The lady must understand what she is saying,” broke in Maseden, dominating the gruff man by sheer force of will.

      “Now,” he said, and his voice grew gentle as he turned to the woman he had just promised “to have and to hold,” “to love and cherish,” and thereto plighted his troth – “when the priest pauses, I will translate, and you must speak the words aloud.”

      He listened, in a waking trance, to the clear, well-bred accents of a woman of his own people uttering the binding pledge of matrimony. The Spanish sentences recalled the English version, which he supplied with singular accuracy, seeing that he had only attended two weddings previously, and those during his boyhood.

      “Madeleine” – he would learn her surname when he signed the register – was obviously hard pressed to retain her senses till the end. She was sobbing pitifully, and the knowledge that her distress was induced by the fate immediately in store for the man whom she was espousing “by God’s holy ordinance” tested Maseden’s steel nerve to the very limit of endurance.

      But he held on with that tenacious chivalry which is the finest characteristic of his class, and even smiled at Steinbaum’s fumbling in a waistcoat pocket for a ring. He was putting the ring on the fourth finger of his wife’s left hand and pronouncing the last formula of the ceremony, when he caught an agonized whisper:

      “Please, please, forgive me! I cannot help myself. I am – more than sorry for you. I shall pray for you – and think of you – always!”

      And it was in that instant, while breathlessly catching each syllable of a broken plea for sympathy and gage of lasting remembrance, that Maseden’s bemused faculties saw a means of saving his life.

      Though a forlorn hope, at the best, with a hundred chances of failure against one of success, he would seize that hundredth chance. What matter if he were shot at quarter to eight instead of at eight o’clock? Steel before, he was unemotional as marble now, a man of stone with a brain of diamond clarity.

      If events followed their normal and reasonable course, he would be free of these accursed walls within a few minutes. Come what might, he would strike a lusty blow for freedom. If he failed, and sank into eternal night, one or more of the half-caste hirelings now so ready to fulfill the murderous schemes of President Suarez and his henchman Steinbaum would escort an American’s spirit to the realm beyond the shadows.

      He did not stop to think that an unknown woman’s strange whim should have made possible that which, without her presence in his prison-house, was absolutely impossible; still less did he trouble as to the future, immediate or remote. His mind’s eye was fixed on a sunbeam creeping stealthily towards a crack in the masonry of that detestable cell.

      He meant to cheat that sunbeam, one way or the other!

      CHAPTER II

      TIME VERSUS ETERNITY

      Henceforth