Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 5).djvu/360

F I had described myself when I first started in life, it would simply have been as John Blount, commercial traveller. I was employed by a firm of merchants of very high standing, who only did business with large houses. My negotiations took me to all parts of the United Kingdom, and I enjoyed the life, which was full of change and activity. At least I enjoyed it in my early bachelor days, but while I was still quite young—not more than five-and-twenty—I fell in love and married; and then I found that my roving existence was certainly a drawback to domestic happiness. My wife, Mary, was a bright little creature, always ready to make the best of things, but even she would declare pathetically that she might as well have married a sailor as a landsman who was so seldom at home! Still, as I said, she was one to put a bright face on things, and she and my sister made their home together.

It was in the second year after my marriage, when I had been away on my travels for some weeks, that I heard from my sister that a fever had broken out in the neighbourhood of our home, and that Mary was down with it. Kitty wrote hopefully, saying it was a mild attack, and she trusted by the time I was home her patient would be quite convalescent. I had unbounded faith in Kitty, so that I accepted her cheerful view of things. But, a few evenings later, after a long, tiring day, I returned to the hotel where I was then staying, and found a telegram awaiting me. My heart stood still as I saw the ominous yellow envelope, for I knew my sister would not have sent for me without urgent need. The message was to say that, although Kitty still hoped for the best, a serious change had taken place, and I should return at once.

"Don't delay an hour; come off immediately," she said.

I was not likely to delay. I paid up my reckoning at the hotel, directed that my baggage should be sent on next day, and in less than half an hour from the time I had opened the telegram I rushed, heated and breathless, into the primitive little railway station—the only one which that part of the country boasted for miles round. I gained the platform in time to see the red light on the end of the departing train as it disappeared into the mouth of the tunnel a few hundred yards down the line. For a moment I was unable to realize my ill fortune. I stood gazing stupidly before me in a bewildered way. Then the station-master, who knew me by sight, came up, saying sympathetically:—

"Just missed her, sir, by two seconds!"

"Yes," I answered briefly, beginning to understand it all now, and chafing irritably at the enforced delay. "When is the next train?"

"Six five in the morning, sir. Nothing more to-night."

"Nothing more to-night!" I almost shouted. "There must be! At any rate, there is the evening express from the junction; I have been by it scores of times!"

"Very likely, sir; but that's a through train, it don't touch here—never stops till it reaches the junction."

The man's quiet tone carried conviction with it. I was silent for a moment, and then asked when the express left the junction.

"Nine fifteen," was the answer.