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I can’t recollect what happened, or what I said or did for a few minutes after that. It was such a shock to me—so unexpected—that it almost took my breath away.
All I know is that presently I found Jenny on her knees by my side, pouring her story into my ears, telling it quickly and excitedly, as though she feared that I should refuse to hear her, if she didn’t get it out before I could stop her.
It was a very sad story.
Jenny Measom had been well brought up by her father and mother until she was fifteen, and then her father, who held a good position in a big brewery, had a paralytic stroke. The most unfortunate thing about it was that it happened a week after he had left his old firm of his own accord, and gone to take a better position in another, so that he had not the slightest claim on either firm for much consideration, and the stroke meant ruin. He got a little better, but not well enough to get about or to do anything, and so Jenny’s mother had to take needlework, and Jenny was, by the kindness of the old firm, got into a public-house as a barmaid, and her earnings and her mother’s were all that kept them from the workhouse.
Jenny, with her bright merry ways and her smartness at her work, soon got on as a barmaid, and left the first public-house, and went to a big West End house, where the trade was of a higher character.
It was when she was eighteen, and in this swell West End house, that the great misfortune of her life happened to her. Among the young fellows who came to the bar was one named Sidney Draycott. He was a handsome young fellow, the son of an English doctor who had at that time a practice in Paris. Sidney Draycott was studying for his father’s profession, and, like most young fellows of his class, he spent a good many of his evenings in bars and billiard-rooms.
He fell awfully in love with Jenny, and the poor girl fell in love with him, and they walked out together. It never entered the head of the young girl that the difference in their stations made the acquaintance a dangerous one, for “Sid,” as she called him, had asked her to be his wife. She spoke well, and played the piano, and had learnt quite enough before she left her good school to hold her own in conversation, and to appear a lady.
But the young fellow begged her to keep the engagement secret for the present, as he didn’t want anybody to know until he had passed his examination and become qualified to set up for himself, which would be very soon.
Jenny was in the seventh heaven of delight. She was going to be married to the man she loved, and he was a gentleman. The only person she told was her mother, and she was one of those simple-minded women who know very little of the world, and thought her dear, good, clever Jenny was fit to be a nobleman’s wife.