"Then little Jeanne-Marie came down with typhoid; her life was despaired of, a priest was summoned. In the presence of death, she managed to tell the priest that it would seem less lonely and terrible to her if she could meet it as the wife 'M'sieu Jee-mee.' So the good priest managed somehow to slash through yards of official red tape in no time—you know how hard it is to get married in France, Ambo!—and the sacrament of marriage preceded the last rites; and then, dear, Jeanne-Marie faced the Valley of Shadow clinging to M'sieu Jee-mee's hand. The whole esquadrille was unstrung—naturally; even their famous ace, Boisrobert. Jimmy says he absolutely refused to fly for three days." Tears were pouring from Susan's eyes.
"Oh, what a fool I am!" she protested, mopping at them with a corner of the top sheet. "She didn't die, of course. She rallied at the last moment and got well—and found herself safely married after all, and quite ready to take her chances of living happily with M'sieu Jee-mee ever afterward! There—isn't that a nice story, Ambo? Don't you like pretty-pie fairy tales when they happen to be true?"
That she could ask me this with her heart breaking! Again I could not trust myself to speak calmly, and I saw that she was worn out with the effort she had made to overcome her weakness, and what I believed to be a living pain in her breast. I rose.
"Ambo!" she exclaimed, wide-eyed, "still you don't ask me why Jimmy didn't tell us! How stupid of you to take it all like this!"
"I've stayed too long, dear," I mumbled; "far too long. I've let you talk too much. Why, it's almost dark! To-morrow——"
"No, now," she insisted, with a little frown of displeasure. "I won't have you thinking meanly of Jimmy! It's too absurdly unfair! I'm ashamed of you, Ambo."
How she idealized him! How she had always idealized that normal, likable, essentially commonplace Irish boy—pouring out, wasting for him treasures of unswerving loyalty! It was damnable. But these things were the final mysteries of life, these instinctive bonds, yielding no clue to reason. One could only accept them, bitterly, with a curse or a groan withheld. Accept them—since one must. . . .
"Well, dear," broke from me with a touch, almost, of impatience, "I confess I'm more interested in your health than in Jimmy's psychology! But I see you won't sleep a wink if you don't tell me!"
"I've never known you to be so horrid," she said faintly, all the weariness of body and soul returning upon her for a moment, till she fought it back. She did so, to my amazement, with an entirely unexpected chuckle, a true sharp, clear Birch Street gleam. "You don't deserve it, Ambo, but I'm going to make you smile a little, whether you feel like it or not! The reason Jimmy didn't tell us was because—after Jeanne-Marie got well—he spent weeks trying to persuade her that a marriage made exclusively for eternity oughtn't to be considered binding on this side! She had been entirely certain, he kept pointing out to her, that she ought not to marry him in this world, and she had only done so when she thought she was being taken from it." Susan chuckled again. "Can't you hear him, Ambo—and her? Jimmy, feeling he had won something precious through an unfair advantage and so refusing his good fortune—or trying to; and practical Jeanne-Marie simply nonplussed by his sudden lack of all common sense! Besides which, wasn't marriage a sacrament, and wasn't M'sieu Jee-mee a good Catholic? Was he going back on his faith—or asking her to trifle with hers? And, anyway, they were married—that was the end of it! And of course, Ambo, it was—really. There! I knew sooner or later you'd have to smile!"
"Did he give in gracefully?" I asked.