CHAPTER XII.
AN EXPLANATION DEMANDED.
Miss Winthrop did not delay even long enough to make her purchases, but turned about and went home to report her news to her mother.
She found madam in her own room, and learned that Salome had returned about half an hour before, and gone directly to her own boudoir.
“Well, mamma, I have learned something this morning that will astonish you,” Evelyn remarked, as she threw off her wraps and sank upon a chair, quivering to her finger-tips with excitement over the precious morsel of scandal she believed she had secured.
“Ah!” madam remarked placidly, but looking up interested, nevertheless. “Is anybody married, or going to be?—or maybe it is a bit of scandal.”
“It may prove to be more than a bit, if we are not careful,” Evelyn excitedly returned. “It’s about Salome.”
“Ha!” exclaimed her mother, now all on the alert, “what about her?”
“There is some deep mystery connected with the girl, just as we have thought, and there is doubtless some good reason why she has been so anxious to keep her history from us all,” said Evelyn impressively.
“What do you mean?” demanded madam eagerly.
“I have learned this morning, by a lucky circumstance, that she is a runaway from her home and family, and has been sailing about under an assumed name—perhaps she even married True under a false one.”
“What!” exclaimed Madame Winthrop sternly, and growing pale; “how do you know? who has told you this?”
Evelyn then related her adventures of the morning, enlarging upon the circumstances to suit herself, vividly portraying Salome’s agitated demeanor and her sudden flight, and assuming as facts what she had guessed at from her observation, and what she had inferred from the strange man’s conversation.
Madame Winthrop listened to all this with a white, set face, her heart growing harder than ever toward the girl whom her son had married.
When her daughter concluded she said, in a low, icy voice:
“Well, Evelyn, this is a matter that must be cleared up. I am going to know whom my son has married and brought into a family upon whose name there has never been even the shadow of a stain. I am going to make that girl tell me her history this very hour.”
“She has a good deal of spirit, mamma, and perhaps she will refuse to say anything about herself,” Evelyn suggested, but secretly delighted at her mother’s determination.
“She shall tell me—she shall no longer insult us with her companionship and by enshrouding herself in such mystery,” was the resolute retort.
“Well, but suppose she will not, what can you do? This is her home; she is mistress here. True has made her such, and we cannot compel her to go away. Likely as not, she will tell us, if we object to associating with her, that we can take ourselves out of her way,” Miss Winthrop suggested.
“She would not dare,” replied her mother sternly; “and if I find your suspicions regarding her confirmed we must manage to get rid of her by strategy if no other means will avail. My son’s brilliant career shall not be ruined at the outset by a scheming adventuress. I never would have believed,” she continued, with a groan, “that Truman would become so infatuated as to marry any girl without investigating her family history.”
“But, mamma, True would never forgive you if you should do anything to compromise his wife,” said Evelyn.
“She isn’t his wife if she has married him under false pretences—under a false name,” retorted madam, almost savagely. “I don’t believe such a marriage would be legal,” she added with a fierce gleam in her eyes. “I am determined to make her believe so, if I can; then, perhaps, she will run away from him, as she did from her own home, and that will give him a chance to get a divorce. The thought that he knows absolutely nothing about her drives me nearly wild,” she despairingly concluded.
“Well, but you must remember they had only been married about a fortnight when we returned, and her health was such he would not allow her to get excited over anything; you know he said he would not have her annoyed, and forbade us to question her,” remarked the younger lady.
“He had no right to compromise us in any such rash way, even if he had no pride on his own account. I am only thankful that no one in our set appears to know anything about the marriage as yet. Oh, if we could only find some way to get rid of her!” and the dark look upon the woman’s face augured ill for the fair young bride.
“You can take my word for it, mamma, Salome is not one to be easily managed. Where she imagines herself to be in the right she will not be turned from her point,” said Evelyn.
“How do you know? What makes you say that?”
“Why, by the way she has managed ever since we returned, for one thing. She has ruled in everything where any serious question has arisen, only, I admit, she has done it in a very quiet, adroit manner. True told her she was to be mistress here, and she has made us recognize the fact from the very first. She has very cleverly managed to ascertain our wishes and preferences, and has tried to defer to them; she has often supplemented her commands to please us, when we have objected to certain things at times, but she never countermanded previous orders.”
“That is true,” madam assented with firmly compressed lips.
“And about those ponies the other day,” Miss Winthrop resumed; “I knew that they had been purchased expressly for her, but I did not mean that she should think I did, and I had been aching to use them, only I wouldn’t drive with her—you remember how obstinate she was, mamma!”
“But you made a mistake, Evelyn,” her mother answered. “They would have been ruined if they had dragged that heavy barouche around, and Truman would have been very angry with you. You should have ordered them put into his buggy if you were bound to use them and would not go in the coupé.”
“I did not think of that; but the affair proves that she will not give up her point—the tone she used to the coachman settled the matter at once,” said Miss Winthrop, flushing at the remembrance of her defeat.
“Well, I will find a way to manage her,” retorted her mother sharply.
Meanwhile Salome in her own room was trying to compose her quivering nerves and recover from the terrible shock she had received.
She had been very much unstrung, and when she at last reached the seclusion of her own room and knew that she had escaped all immediate danger, she was still pallid and panting from nervous excitement.
“My poor heart is not right even yet,” she murmured, as she pressed her hand upon her throbbing side and realized how it was fluttering, “and I must not allow myself to become so excited. Oh! what an unfortunate meeting! I never imagined that I could meet him, of all persons, here in New York. I shall hardly dare go out again while True is away, for fear of meeting him again, and yet I promised that I would ride every day. I wish I had insisted upon telling True everything before he went away, but there was no time, he had to go in such a hurry. Oh! if he were only back and we could be alone together again!”
She fell to sobbing nervously in her exceeding loneliness.
It was so hard to have to live as she was living—to receive no sympathy nor love from her husband’s mother and sister, and to have to pull all the time against an opposing current.
“Still,” she went on, after a moment, while she resolutely wiped her tears, “I have nothing to really fear—that wretch can only annoy me—even if he should discover where I live. I need only keep out of his sight until my dear one comes back, when I shall tell him everything, and he will manage all that is disagreeable for me. I will not grieve. I will not get ill. I will just throw off this load that oppresses me and—trust.”
She turned to her table, and taking up some work tried to interest herself in it, and to forget the occurrences of the morning.
She had been engaged thus only a few moments when there came a knock upon her door.
Thinking it must be Nellie, for no one else came to her rooms, she said “Come in,” when Evelyn put her head inside the door.
Salome regarded her with some surprise, though a bright smile instantly chased the sadness from her face.
“Oh, have you come to make me a visit?” she cried, greatly pleased by what she considered a wonderful concession on the part of her proud sister-in-law. “Come in, do, and have this cozy chair; it will be very pleasant, and I was feeling a little lonely.”
She looked so pretty and appealing, her sweetness was so charming, that for an instant the haughty girl’s heart was touched, and she half regretted the errand that had brought her there. But the next moment her proud spirit rebelled against accepting the slightest hospitality, and she coldly responded:
“No, I am not coming in; I merely came to tell you that mamma would like to see you. She wished me to ask you to step into her room for a few moments.”
Salome’s face expressed surprise at such an unusual request; but she obligingly laid down her work and rose to follow. Evelyn was already half way down the hall, but she waited at the door of her mother’s room until Salome entered, when she closed it and locked it. She had no intention of having this interview interrupted until the battle should be fought out to the end.
Salome wondered at such a strange proceeding, and her heart failed her somewhat as she caught the cold, relentless look upon Madame Winthrop’s face.
Then a sudden fear almost paralyzed her.
Had they received bad news from abroad?
Mr. Winthrop was improving when last they had heard of him, though she had had no letter by the last two steamers. Could any ill have befallen her husband? Oh, if anything should happen to him, there could be nothing left for her to live for!
“Sit down, Salome,” said Madame Winthrop, in her iciest tones; “I have something that I wish to say to you.”
Salome obeyed and mechanically seated herself in the chair that Evelyn pushed toward her, but with a strange feeling of numbness creeping over her.
“Oh!” she gasped, “has anything happened? is there anything the matter with—True?”
Madam’s lips curled scornfully over the girl’s excitability. She was never thrown out of her equilibrium by any tidings, good or ill.
“No, there is nothing the matter with Dr. Winthrop that I am aware of,” she said coldly; then added, with a furtive glance at her victim; “you had the last letter from him, and you surely ought to be better posted than I.”
“Oh, but I have not heard from him by either of the last two steamers, and you looked so grave, so strange, I feared——” faltered Salome.
“Well, I feel that I have reason to look grave; I have felt so ever since my return,” said madam, with a severely injured air; “and I have finally come to the conclusion that I can no longer endure the suspense that I have suffered. I have determined to have my doubts and fears either confirmed or removed, and so have sent for you to tell me what I wish to know.”
“I do not understand you,” Salome replied, beginning to regain her composure, now that her fears regarding her husband were allayed, and regarding the woman wonderingly.
“I suppose you are aware of the cause of my sudden return from abroad?” observed madam.
“No, I am not,” said the young wife.
“What! did not your hus—did not my son inform you why we came home in such hot haste?”
“No; how could he when he was summoned away so suddenly himself?”
“Well, then, it was because of the unexpected news of his marriage; it came in the form of a cable message to us, and like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, for we had not the remotest suspicion that he intended to be married so soon.”
“So soon!” These two words somehow struck a sudden chill to the young wife’s heart. They seemed to imply that he entertained thoughts of marriage before meeting her. But she put the thought away from her, and replied, deprecatingly:
“It was very sudden to—to us, as well as to you, and there was no time to send word to any one until it was over.”
“Doesn’t it strike you that it was a very strange marriage?” demanded Madame Winthrop.
“Yes, the circumstances attending it were very peculiar, and I was very much surprised when True asked me to be his wife,” Salome answered, flushing.
“It seems that it was not so much a surprise as to prevent your ready acceptance of his quixotic proposal,” sneered Evelyn vindictively.
Salome flushed crimson again at this thrust, then she grew white to her lips over the cowardly attack.
All at once she seemed to become strangely calm and self-possessed, although she did not regain her color.
“Allow me to ask,” she said, addressing Madame Winthrop, and not deigning to notice Evelyn’s insulting remark, “if Dr. Winthrop made you acquainted with all the circumstances leading up to our union?”
“Yes, he did,” curtly responded the woman, a frown upon her brow.
Salome’s face had cleared somewhat. If her husband had told his mother and sister of the romantic story of his wooing, they knew that he alone was responsible for their marriage, and they had no right to thus call her to account for having become his wife.
“Then,” she said quietly, “since you know all that occurred in the City Hospital of Boston, you know just why he asked me to become his wife, and why I consented to do so, notwithstanding I had known him so short a time, and I cannot feel that you have any right to arraign me in such a manner during his absence for having married him.”
Madam and Evelyn both opened their eyes in astonishment at this dignified, yet spirited response to their attack. It told them that they had a stronger and wiser spirit to cope with than they had anticipated.
There was a moment of silence, then madam broke forth with more heat than she had yet manifested:
“I should have supposed that any girl possessing proper self-respect would have hesitated to accept a proposal that must have been prompted by a feeling of gratitude. You saved my son’s life—there can be no doubt about that—he was grateful; you were ill, you had no home, no friends; your physician said you must not remain under the depressing influences of a public hospital, and so a sense of honor and of the great debt he owed you prompted Dr. Winthrop to ask you to be his wife, that he might try to save your life in return for the one you had given back to him.”
Salome’s heart leaped with sudden pain at this cruel speech.
As we know, she had been exceedingly sensitive upon this very point, and she had only just begun to have these fears allayed by his increasing tenderness, when these two women came so rudely in upon them and he was called away to his father.
What wonder that all her former doubts began to be aroused by his mother’s cruel and unprincipled assertion?
“Did Dr. Winthrop tell you that he was actuated by gratitude when he asked me to marry him?” she gravely inquired.
“He did,” briefly responded Madame Winthrop, and Salome felt herself growing dizzy, and there was a ringing sound in her ears; but controlling herself by a mighty effort, she demanded:
“Did he tell you that he was prompted solely by gratitude?”
“Let me tell you what he did say,” said madam, evading a direct reply to this searching question. “I charged him with having simply a feeling of pity for your forlorn condition and of gratitude for what you had done; I asked him just what you have asked me. ‘Can you honestly say,’ I asked, ‘that gratitude did not prompt you to make her your wife?’”
“And his answer?” breathed Salome, with a wild look in her eyes, a spot of fire on each cheek.
“‘No, I cannot,’ he replied, ‘for it was a feeling of profound gratitude for the girl’s noble sacrifice of her life-blood to save me’—those were his very words, were they not, Evelyn?” madam interposed, pausing to look at her daughter.
“Yes, mamma, you have repeated them exactly as I remember them,” was the unfeeling reply.
Salome felt as if the blood was turning to ice in her veins at this blighting statement.
She had begun to be so happy, so secure in her husband’s love, before these people came into her home with their cold looks and unfeeling hearts, and even since his departure she had trusted him fully; but these terrible words burned themselves into her brain and stabbed her to the heart like a poisoned dagger.
“He also said,” Madame Winthrop went on ruthlessly, “that the head physician told him he believed that you were not going to get well—that you ought to be removed to some pleasant home where you would be tenderly cared for, where you would feel no anxiety about yourself. My son believed that you had conceived a sudden passion for him—he said some word, look, or gesture that escaped you one day led him to believe that you loved him; and so—can’t you see?—everything goes to prove that he married you from pity and gratitude.”
Salome’s head had gradually drooped during these garbled and shameless statements, and now she covered her burning face with her trembling hands to conceal the shame and agony that were crushing her at this last terrible charge.
Oh, it was dreadful! Could it be possible that she had betrayed all her wild love for Dr. Winthrop before he asked her to be his wife? Had she, in her weakness, been so lost to all maidenly delicacy and modesty? She tried to think—to remember when and how; but the bitter humiliation of the moment confused her utterly, and she could recall nothing.
It did not seem possible that Dr. Winthrop could be so devoid of respect and consideration as to speak of these things to another, and yet, how otherwise would his mother have known of them?
“You can imagine something of our trouble and consternation when we learned all this,” madam relentlessly resumed, “when, too, we learned that he had married a woman concerning whose history and family he knew absolutely nothing, and about whom there seemed to be some strange mystery. When I demanded why he had not insisted upon having everything explained, his answer was that you were easily excited, and he feared the effect upon your health. But he promised that he would inform me regarding your history as soon as he learned it himself. He was, however, called so unexpectedly abroad that the matter was not cleared up. I had intended to be patient until his return—to trust that all would come out right in the end, and leave the matter with him to settle. But to-day I learned something which made me resolve to sift the subject to the bottom, and to demand an open confession from you. And now I ask you, Salome, who you are, what your real name is—for I have reason to doubt that Howland is such—why you have so persistently kept your husband in the dark regarding your past, and what the mystery is that surrounds you.”