“Lady Cockerell is capable of anything. She might sit down in the hall and wait. She must have heard by now,” poor Mrs. Chadwick murmured. “That married girl of hers in London must have written. With the projecting teeth.”
“I’ll soon get rid of her, if it’s really she,” said Mrs. Averil; but she had hardly risen when the door at the back of the house opened and they saw Johnson usher forth a hurrying female figure, obviously not Lady Cockerell’s; a figure so encumbered by its motoring wraps, so swathed in veils, that only Mrs. Chadwick’s ejaculation enlightened Oldmeadow as to its identity.
“Joséphine!” cried Mrs. Chadwick and then, between the narrow framing of purple gauze, he recognized the dramatic, melancholy eyes and pale, pinched lips of Adrienne’s maid.
“Oh, Madame! Madame!” Joséphine was exclaiming as she came towards them down the path. Her face wore the terrible intensity of expression so alien to the British countenance. “Oh, Madame! Madame!” she repeated. They had all risen and stood to await her. “He is dead! The little child is dead! And she is alone. Monsieur left her yesterday. Quite, quite alone, and her child born dead.”
Mrs. Chadwick faced her in pallid stupefaction.
“The baby, Aunt Eleanor,” said Nancy, for she looked indeed as if she had not understood. “Barney’s baby. It has been born and it is dead. Oh—poor Barney. And poor, poor Adrienne.”
“Yes, dead!” Joséphine, regardless of all but her exhaustion and her grief, dropped down into one of the garden-chairs and put her hands before her face. “Born dead last night. A beautiful little boy. The doctors could not save it and fear for her life. They will not let me stay with her. Only the doctors and the nurses—strangers—are with her.” Joséphine was sobbing. “Ah, it was not right to leave her so. Already she was ill. It could be seen that already she was very ill when Monsieur left her. I came to her when he was gone. She did not say a word to me. She tried to smile. Mais j’ai bien vu qu’elle avait la mort dans l’âme.”
“Good heavens,” Mrs. Chadwick murmured, while Joséphine, now, let her tears flow unchecked. “She is alone and Barney has left her! Oh, this is terrible! At such a time!”
“He had to go, Aunt Eleanor. You know he had to go. We will send for him at once,” said Nancy, and Joséphine, catching the words, sobbed on in her woe and her resentment: “But where to send for him? No one knows where to send. The doctors sent a wire yesterday, at once, when she was taken ill; to the Paris hotel. But no answer came. He must have left Paris. That is why I have come. No telegrams for Sunday. No trains in time. I took the car. The doctor said, Yes, it was well that I should come. Some one who cares for Madame should return with me. If she is to die she must not die alone.”
“But she shall not die!” cried Mrs. Chadwick with sudden and surprising energy. “Oh, the poor baby! It might have lived had I been there. No doctor, no nurse, can understand like a mother. And I shall be able to help with Adrienne. I must go. I must go at once. Mademoiselle will see that you have something to eat and drink, my poor Joséphine, and then you and I will return together. It will not take me a moment to get ready.”