‘Thank you for your goodness–you are very kind,’ he said quickly, his voice breaking, as he hurried away.
‘Poor young fellow! I wonder if his wife will get better,’ said the prosperous-looking matron to her husband.
‘Pooh, my dear! A perfect stranger! The thing is sure to be in the Times if she does die. That “poor young fellow” must be young Wellfield of Wellfield. I wonder how he came to be here.’
‘He has a great trouble of some kind, and I hope his poor wife will not die,’ repeated the lady.
The kindly words of the strange lady put a momentary warmth into his heart, and he thought of them more than once on his journey home.
We all know what a journey from such a place to London is. Jerome, inquiring on the way, found that with the best will in the world he could not be in Manchester before nine o’clock the following night, and from Manchester how was he to get to that out-of-the-world place Wellfield? He dared not stop to think of it, but made his way onwards as fast as he could. The twenty-four hours of travelling and waiting, and waiting and travelling, seemed an eternity. He knew how they must all be waiting for him, and Nita–he stopped that thought instantly –it never got so far as the wonder whether she were dead or alive.
Manchester at last–after time, on a clear moonlight night. Into a hansom, with urgent demands for speed, from the London Road Station, down the long length of noisy Piccadilly and Market Street, up the hill to the Victoria Station. He breathlessly asked the porter who strolled up to him, ‘The train for Wellfield–how long?’
‘Last train left twenty minutes ago, sir–the slow one–doesn’t get in till eleven.’
‘I must be there to-night,’ he repeated, mechanically.