“No,” she whispered, opening her eyes slowly, “look—look at the paper!”
I kept my arm around her and stooped and picked up the London paper, which had fallen from her hands on to the floor.
I looked at it for a minute and couldn’t see anything—then a name caught my eye, and I read this——
“It is reported from Paris that the young Englishman who was robbed and thrown out of a train some time ago between Calais and Amiens has at last recovered from the injury to the brain, which at one time threatened to be permanent. The case has aroused much interest in the medical profession in Paris, where, it may be remembered, his father, Dr. Draycott, has been for many years a resident.”
“Oh, Jenny!” I said; and that was all I could say. But we had a long talk up in her room afterwards, and she decided that she would write the next day to Sidney, under cover to his father—only a line with her address, nothing to worry him, nothing to distress him, only these words:—“The present address of J. Measom is ‘The Stretford Arms,’” and then she added the name of our village and the county.
She put “J.,” not to put “Jenny,” for fear the father might open it. Of course “J.” might be a John, and she wrote it in a big, round hand that might be a man’s.
Three days afterwards a telegram came. She showed it me. It was only this: “My poor darling,—I am coming back as soon as I can travel. Have written. God bless you!”
And then came a letter—a letter written in a shaky hand; but one that poor Jenny kissed and hugged and cried and sobbed over till I really was afraid she would make herself quite ill.
I had an idea that it would be all right for poor Jenny now; but I was a little afraid how the young fellow would take what had happened after he left England. Some men, under the circumstances, would have been heartless enough to—but what is the use of troubling about what some men would have done. Sidney Draycott behaved like a noble and honourable young Englishman. He came back to London a month later, and took Jenny to the church one fine morning, and he brought her out again Mrs. Sidney Draycott.
I went up to town for the day, and was at the church, and I was the only one invited except a great friend of Mr. Draycott’s, who had come up from the country on purpose. Jenny cried, and I cried, and nearly spoilt my beautiful new bonnet strings letting the tears run down them, and after it was all over and Jenny had kissed her husband, she came up and put her arms round my neck and kissed me, and then we both had just one little moment’s cry together, and then they both went off quietly in a four-wheel cab to see the baby.