CHAPTER XLII.

EXPLANATIONS.

Dr. Winthrop and Salome found their carriage waiting at the main entrance, but Dr. Arnot was not visible; he had not the courage to take leave of her, whom he had so wronged, and she was glad that she was not compelled to bid him farewell. There was a feeling of infinite relief and thankfulness in the heart of both husband and wife, when they turned a corner and the asylum was hidden from their sight.

“Where do you want to go, Salome; where shall I take you?” Dr. Winthrop asked after a few moments, not knowing just what was best to do.

“Home—to Harriet,” she answered.

He was disappointed and wounded, for while he could understand that she would be anxious to relieve Harriet’s anxiety upon her account, and he even wished to do so himself, there was something in the way she uttered the woman’s name that told him she expected to find comfort and support in her presence—a sense of rest and security which she could not realize in his.

She was leaning back in the carriage with closed eyes and an unmistakable look of pain on her face—she seemed little like a happy woman who had been almost miraculously restored to a fond husband, after nearly two years of separation, he thought, with some bitterness.

The drive was not a long one, and they soon stopped before the modest little house where Salome had made her home since the death of Miss Leonard.

Harriet happened to be sitting by a window when they drove up; it needed but a single glance to tell her who was with Dr. Winthrop, and she sprang to the door to meet them, before the young physician could lift his precious charge from the carriage, and the next moment the two women were sobbing in each other’s arms.

Dr. Winthrop paid and dismissed his cabman, after which he followed his wife into the house, but it was some time before he could reason either of his companions into anything like composure.

Harriet was the first to recover herself, for Salome seemed utterly unnerved. Then she noticed immediately how wretched her young mistress appeared. She had been quick to observe and understand, too, that the relations between the young people were of a far tenderer nature than would naturally be expected to exist between a physician and a nun, no matter how much gratitude the former might imagine he owed for faithful nursing.

She began to realize at once that she was _de trop_, and remarking that it was dinner time, and they must both be hungry, she slipped from the room and Dr. Winthrop was left alone again with his wife.

He was not sorry. He saw that something was very wrong with Salome—there were many things to be explained and talked over, and he was determined that every barrier should at once be broken down, and perfect confidence in each other restored.

He loved her with his whole soul, and he believed that she had once loved him as well; but he knew that she had been deeply wounded and injured, while his mother and sister had been her guests in New York, and that they were, to some extent, responsible for the misunderstanding that had driven her from his home. Just the truth of it he had never been able to learn; but now he meant to have the whole story—to go to the bottom of all secrets, even at the sacrifice of a little strength on her part, if need be, for he believed she would be the better for it in the end.

A strange silence and constraint seemed to fall over Salome after Harriet left the room. She shrank into a corner of the sofa, without removing any of her things, and sat there with clasped hands and averted face before her husband.

“Salome, dear, are you not going to remove your bonnet and wrap?” Dr. Winthrop asked, in a kindly tone.

She started violently, and nervously tried to untie the strings of her bonnet; but she only pulled them into a harder knot, which she found it impossible to loosen.

Her husband went to her side and gently disentangled them for her, removing the ugly head covering and casting it upon the floor. Then he unfastened her wrap, and threw it behind her.

Still she had not once lifted her eyes to his face; she was trembling nervously too, and her cheeks were crimson, her bosom heaving with suppressed emotion.

“Salome!”

The darkly fringed lids quivered over the beautiful eyes, but she did not look up or reply.

“Salome!” her husband repeated more tenderly, more gravely too, than before.

There was something in his tone half authoritative, half appealing, which she could not resist, and she lifted her glance to his.

“My wife, have you ceased to love me?”

There was a moment of silence after Dr. Winthrop put that grave earnest question to his wife.

Then all Salome’s forced composure forsook her, and throwing out her hands in a wild passionate gesture, she cried:

“No—no—no!” and burst into a perfect tempest of tears.

Had she ceased to love him?

How could he have such a thought when she had braved and sacrificed so much for his sake?

Dr. Winthrop gathered those trembling hands tenderly into his, his face lighting with joy, and then he drew her close to his breast once more.

But he said nothing more just then—he thought it better to allow her to weep all she would and relieve her overburdened heart before questioning her any further.

All the pent-up grief of the past seemed bound to expend itself, and unmindful of everything, she wept and sobbed until the fountain of her tears was dry and she lay exhausted in her husband’s arms, with deep, quivering sighs breaking at intervals from her lips.

Nearly half an hour elapsed, and no word had been spoken; the tender, noble-hearted man was content to sit there, holding the beloved form in his embrace, and patiently bide his time.

At last, however, he thought to renew the subject so near his heart.

“Now, Salome, my wife,” he began in a quiet, kindly tone, “begin at the beginning, and tell me all about yourself; the sooner you and I get out of this unnatural state of constraint, and understand each other, the better it will be for us both.”

Those two words, “my wife,” suddenly brought her to herself, renewing all her doubts and fears, and she shrank away from him again with a gesture of despair.

“Oh!—I am not your wife,” she moaned, covering her burning face with her hands.

Ah! that began to throw a little light upon her strange behavior, and Dr. Winthrop’s mind reverted to what his mother had said about the illegality of their marriage, because Salome’s true surname had been withheld, and was not written upon their certificate. He had wrung enough from madam and Evelyn, on his return to New York, after Salome’s supposed death, to make him suspect something of the cruel things they had said to her.

He did not attempt to take her in his arms again, for her gestures had told him that she felt she had no right to his embraces.

“Why do you say that, Salome?” he gravely questioned, “what makes you think you are not my wife?”

“They told me so,” she answered wildly. “They said our marriage was illegal.”

“My mother and sister, I suppose you mean,” he quietly returned. “I know that they argued something of the kind—perhaps they even really believed it; but you should never have trusted to a simple assertion like that. You should have written to ask me the truth; or if you could not trust me, you should have gone to some trustworthy lawyer in New York and obtained a decision.”

“I did not think of that,” she murmured.

A look of keen pain swept over Dr. Winthrop’s face.

“O Salome! how could you believe that I would be guilty of doing you such wrong as to disown you, even though there had been a flaw in our marriage?” he cried sharply.

She lifted her eyes and searched his face wonderingly.

“I never should have believed it, if—if you had not sent me away from your home,” she said, with quivering lips.

“I sent you away from my home—your home!” he repeated in astonishment.

“Yes; you sent me that cruel dispatch, telling me to shut up the house on Madison Avenue, and go to the —— Hotel, and remain there until your return.”

“‘Cruel dispatch!’ Why, my darling, I was wild lest you should be poisoned by sewer-gas, and I simply sent you the message to save time. I wrote explaining all by the next steamer.”

“Sewer-gas!” Salome repeated, astonished now in turn.

“Yes, my mother wrote to me saying that your health was failing—that sewer-gas had been discovered in the house—that she had begged you to go home with them, and you refused; she said that nothing but a command from me would make you go away. So immediately on receiving this letter, I cabled you to go to the —— Hotel. I mentioned that house, because, knowing you were not strong, I thought you would be more at home than in a large hotel, while I also felt that it might be more agreeable than for you to go to Thirty-fourth Street with my mother and sister. I realized that they were not quite congenial,” Dr. Winthrop explained.

“There was no sewer-gas in the house on Madison Avenue,” said Salome, looking blank.

“I know it. I examined it thoroughly upon my return,” he briefly replied.

“And,” she went on, “I thought the cable message was sent in reply to my letter of confession. Madam, your mother, had accused me of many things; she insisted that I should tell her my whole history; I could not do that, for I had not confided it to you and I felt that you had the first right to my confidence. She told me that my marriage was illegal, because I had withheld my true surname, that I had compromised you and the family, so I resolved to tell you everything, and wrote to you my whole history, begging you to send me but one word, ‘stay’ by cable, to relieve my suspense as to how you would receive my confession. But your message told me to go, and believing that you were ashamed of one who was a fugitive from home and friends—that you had simply married me from a feeling of gratitude, duty, and pity, and now regretted the union, as they said, I resolved that I would not burden you longer. I——”

“Salome, you break my heart!” Dr. Winthrop interposed, his pale lips quivering in spite of his manhood. “How could you imagine for one moment that, having deliberately won you to be my wife, I would ever send you away from me or take advantage of a legal flaw? If there had been any such thing in connection with our marriage, it would have been my first care to have righted the wrong or mistake. Even if I had married you from a sense of duty, gratitude or pity—which is absolutely false—I hope there is honor enough in me to have enabled me to stand faithfully by the contract and not take such cowardly advantage of a friendless woman.”

“Oh!” gasped unhappy Salome, who began to realize how rashly and foolishly she had acted—how, perhaps, after all, she had been her own worst enemy, “I ought to have thought of that; but I did not, there were so many things which seemed to confirm what they told me.”

“You spoke of a letter of confession,” her husband resumed. “I never received such a letter; it must have miscarried, or else——”

He broke off hastily, but the suspicion which flashed into his mind was very near the truth.

Salome lifted a surprised look to his face.

“You never received it?” she cried; “and you do not know the truth about me even now?”

“No; I know no more to-day, than I did the morning I bade you farewell in New York, nearly two years ago,” he answered. “I have blamed myself many times,” he went on regretfully, “because I did not allow you to tell me your history, as you attempted on several occasions; but really, I did not imagine there was anything very important to be told.”

“And you have never learned—you have never been told my true name?” she gasped.

“No; I only know you as Salome Howland Winthrop, and still my beloved wife,” Dr. Winthrop returned with a fond little smile, which however had much of sadness in it. “You are my wife, dear,” he added, as he saw the hot flush that mounted to her brow; “it makes no difference that you did not give your true surname. I married you in good faith and before witnesses; I took you to my home and made you mistress there—that of itself would give you a legal claim upon me, and nothing could break the contract but a divorce obtained upon the ground of unfaithfulness, upon my part or yours.”

At the word divorce Salome threw out her hands with a low cry of horror and pain.

Oh! she surely deserved the very worst that she could suffer as a punishment for her lack of faith in this noble man, whom she loved with her whole soul. What would he think of her when he learned what she had done—when she should tell him that she had applied for a legal separation from him? No doubt he would be so wounded and offended that he would repudiate her and tell her that he would abide by the decision of the court.

“Does the thought of a divorce so pain you?” he said tenderly. “It is an ugly thought, an ugly word, but it never need trouble us; for, love, our hearts are too firmly knit together to ever desire a separation, are they not?”

“Oh, how shall I tell you?—how shall I tell you?” she wailed, breaking down utterly again, and wringing her hands in anguish.

“How shall you tell me what?” he questioned wonderingly.

With a great effort she calmed herself, for she knew that she must tell him the truth.

“What will you think of me when I tell you that I have petitioned for a divorce?” she moaned with lips that were absolutely colorless.

“Salome!” and he recoiled from her in sudden horror, shocked and wounded to his very heart’s core. “How could you? On what grounds?” he sternly demanded after struggling a moment for speech.

She shivered as with an ague chill at his tone, and bowed her head humbly before him.

“On the plea of desertion and repudiation,” she said. “I—I believed all that they told me—that you did not love me—that you would be glad to be free. It is only lately that I did it, and for myself I would not have wished it; but they told me that you were to marry Sarah Rochester; they—she and her mother—discovered my identity, and, though they also asserted that our marriage was illegal, they said there might be a possibility that I would have some claim upon you, and they wanted me—or Sarah did—to make assurance doubly sure by applying for a separation—it could be secretly done, and no one save the lawyer and ourselves need ever know anything about it, while, since she was going to marry you, it would be a great burden off her mind. I was dead to you; there was no hope that I could ever be anything to you again, and so—O True, I was desperate, I believed you loved her, I wanted you to be happy, even if I was not, and I did not wish to stand in the way of your interests or desires—so, I signed the letter she wrote——”

“The letter that she, Miss Rochester, wrote?” he demanded in a terrible voice, and beginning to realize all the treachery and wickedness that had been employed to separate them, without regard to his feelings or the ruin of his wife’s life and happiness.

“Oh, do not make me tell any more!” Salome cried, as she suddenly recalled that scene in Mrs. Rochester’s parlor. “It is better, perhaps, that you should not know——”

“But I shall make you tell more—all—everything. I will know!” he said in a determined tone. “Was it Miss Rochester who made you sign that letter?”

She bowed a mute assent.

“Did—did my mother have anything to do with the matter?”

“No—oh, no.”

“Thank Heaven! I should have been humiliated indeed to know that she could have been guilty of such a crime,” the young physician ejaculated, as he wiped the perspiration from a face, white to the lips.

She thought he was suffering on account of Miss Rochester’s treachery.

“Oh, forgive me—forgive me and do not question me any more,” she pleaded. “I have done this thing, and I must bear your scorn and anger as best I can. I have loved you through all—too well, perhaps—I shall love you till I die. I have been rash, foolish; I have allowed my pride, my desperation, to drive me to extremes, when I should have trusted and consulted you. I have found it out, all too late. It is my punishment, and I have no one but myself to blame.”

“Hush, Salome,” her husband said gently, almost unnerved himself at the sight of her wretchedness and hopelessness, “since you love me, as you say you do, it is all I ask; the past shall go for nothing. I can even overlook the application for a divorce, since I know it was forced from you—that you were tricked into it. You live—you were not a victim of that fearful fire—I have found you, and nothing shall ever separate us again.”

“Oh! but if the divorce has been granted—if she should already have received the decree!” Salome cried breathlessly, but looking up with a gleam of hope on her white face.

“Even then it would be a very easy matter for me to make you my wife again. My darling, tell me, if news should come to-day that the separation had been granted, do you still love me well enough to give yourself to me a second time?”

Could she believe her ears? Could he even wish such a thing after all her distrust?

The face bending so eagerly toward her was full of love and tenderness and earnest appeal, she could no longer doubt him.

She threw herself upon his breast, tears raining from her eyes.

“O True, it is not a question of my love for you,” she breathed.

“Then of whose, dear? Certainly not of mine,” he responded as he tenderly smoothed the dishevelled tresses, “for the world has been a wretched blank to me without you, during these last two years—while knowing that you live, the future would be no less miserable, if I had to spend it apart from you. I shall never give you up, Salome. Tell me that you believe me—that there is no longer any question in your heart of my love for you.”

She could not fail to see that he spoke only truth, and yet how could she reconcile that scene in Mrs. Rochester’s parlor at the chateau, with his present protestations?

She lifted her eyes and searched his face.

“There is some doubt yet, love. Tell me what it is. There must be perfect confidence between us. Let us effectually demolish every barrier once for all,” he said with deep tenderness.

“Then you do not love——” she began, then stopped, for it seemed so disloyal to doubt him.

“Whom?” he questioned gravely.

“Sarah Rochester.”

“Assuredly not.”

“But—but——”

“Tell me all, Salome,” he commanded, seeing there was something still troubling her.

“But I heard you tell her so over and over again. I saw her clasped in your arms—lying upon your breast, your lips raining kisses upon hers; and O True! True! that was what broke my heart! I could never have signed that letter but for that,” Salome panted, and her tale was all told at last.

But Dr. Winthrop regarded her in bewildered astonishment, and was almost tempted to believe that a form of madness had seized her, for her words were utterly incomprehensible, and yet her earnestness convinced him that she believed what she had stated.

“What can you mean? When did you imagine that you saw and heard all this?” he inquired.

“When I was ill at the chateau.”

“When you were ill at the chateau! I do not understand you,” he said more deeply puzzled, for everything seemed to be growing more complicated, though a sudden shock went through him as she spoke of having been ill at the villa.

“Yes—or I had been ill and was getting better and had told Mrs. Rochester one day that I must return to Paris. She replied that she would arrange for me to go the next day. I had only sat up once or twice, but I told myself that if I intended to go away the next day I must begin to exercise and gain a little more strength. I was in Sarah’s room, and when I thought no one was about I got up and tried to walk. I steadied myself by the furniture and went into Mrs. Rochester’s room—you know how they were situated—when my strength gave out and I had to sit down. Presently I heard voices in the parlor—your voice and hers; you were telling her of your love; you had never addressed me with a tithe of the passion and earnestness that you used with her. You told her that you had loved her from the moment of your first meeting, and you begged her to assure you of her love for you, in spite of that unnatural contract which would have consigned her to a man whether she could love him or not——”

“You need not tell me any more, Salome,” Dr. Winthrop interposed, laying his fingers softly upon her quivering lips to stop the miserable recital. “I understand it all now. But would it be too much to ask you to believe—could you credit me if I should tell you that I never uttered the words that you have repeated—that I never held Miss Rochester in my arms or touched her lips with mine?”

Salome drew in a deep breath of astonishment, and lifted a wondering glance to his face.

Nothing but grave and earnest truth was written there, and she began to question within herself whether that scene, which had been so indelibly stamped upon her heart, could have been a vision—a mere chimera of the brain.

“Oh, if I had not seen you!” she cried, a puzzled look in her eyes, an eager longing in her tones.