It seemed that there was to be no pause, no reprieve in the sequence of his calamities just then. A waiter came up to him, and asked if he were the person to whom ‘dieses telegram’ was addressed.
Mechanically he took it; his apprehension dulled with the moral castigation from which he was freshly come, and opened it, dully wondering from whom it came, and what in the world it was about.
‘John Leyburn,
Wellfield.
To Jerome Wellfield, Esq.,
–Hotel, Frankfort-am-Main.
‘Your wife has a son. She is very ill. Return at once, or you may be
too late.’
For the first moment this seemed the one drop too much. With a kind of faint groan, he dropped into a chair that stood hard by, and propped— his throbbing head upon his hands, feeling as if to move another step would be impossible.
But this was but for a moment. He raised his head at last, and saw that one person had been compassionate enough to come forward, and speak to him–a stout, comely English matron, who, bravely overcoming her insular reserve, said:
‘I fear you are ill. Is there nothing we can do for you?’
He raised so haggard a face, such wretched eyes towards her, that she half-started; but Jerome, touched inexpressibly by the one drop of sympathy of this motherly-looking woman, answered brokenly:
‘I am not ill, madam, I thank you. I–my wife–you may see—’
He put the paper into her hand, and went upstairs to put up his things, and hasten to the night train for Brussels and Calais, which he knew left in about half an hour’s time. When he came down again, and had paid his bill, and was going out into the night with his wretchedness, the same kind-looking matron stepped up to him, and said, all her stiffness melted away:
‘I hope you will find your wife better, and not worse, when you get home. I can feel for you, and I shall think of you, for I have daughters of my own.’