So things went on, and the young fellow passed his examination, and then he proposed that they should be married quietly before the registrar, and the day was fixed.
The Sunday before the wedding, which was to be on the following Wednesday, was Jenny’s Sunday out. She went with her lover into the country to look at a place where he thought of asking his father to buy a practice. They missed the last train, and they stayed at a little hotel something like ours in that country place.
The landlady took them for a man and wife, and—well, need I tell you any more?
On Monday morning Jenny went back to her business with an excuse about her mother having been ill, and having had to stop with her all night, and in the afternoon Mr. Draycott came in looking very worried, and told her he had just had a telegram calling him to Paris, as his father had been taken suddenly ill, and it was feared that he was dying. The marriage would have to be postponed; but he would hurry back as soon as things turned either one way or the other with his father.
He crossed to Paris by the night mail. What happened nobody ever knew. He was seen at Calais to get into a carriage where there were two other men—Frenchmen—and when the train stopped at Amiens, where there is a buffet, and it waited for a short time, a passenger from Amiens to Paris going to get into the carriage, which was empty, noticed something wrong. There were signs of a struggle, and there was blood here and there.
The guard was called, and a search was made. The two men who had been seen at Calais, the guard then remembered not to have seen get out at Amiens, nor the young Englishman either. No trace of the men was ever found; but the young Englishman was discovered lying on the line half way between Calais and Amiens, with his pockets empty, his watch and his diamond pin gone, and with a terrible injury to his head.
He was instantly attended to by medical men, and removed to a proper place; but though the wound in time got better, and his life was saved, his brain was affected. The doctors differed about him—some thought that in time he would gradually recover his reason, others that he would never do so. Poor Jenny couldn’t quite explain what it was; but it was supposed to be a clot of blood, or something of the sort, pressing on the brain, which might become absorbed in time, and then he would be all right, but which might not.
The young man’s father recovered from his illness, and had his son brought to Paris, and had the best advice, and it was recommended that he should be sent to an asylum—and there, said poor Jenny, as she finished her story, “the man, who was my affianced husband, now is; and my baby is with my mother, God bless her, for she has never given me one reproach. And so, you see, I have three to keep, Mrs. Beckett, and if I get out of a situation, and there is anything against my character, they must suffer as well as I.”
Poor Jenny—it was a sad story. As soon as she was a little calmer I asked her if she had not let her lover’s father know.
“No,” she said proudly, “I would sooner starve. My poor Sid would have married me, I know; everything was arranged; but how could I go to his father in his great trouble, and tell him that which might perhaps add to his grief and despair?”