It was in a smaller room beyond, a combined living-and-dining room, stodgily ugly, but comfortable enough as well, that I first made the acquaintance of James Aulard Kane. What I saw was a great roll of blankets in a deep boxlike cradle, and in the depths of a deeply dented feather pillow a tiny, wrinkled monkey-face, a miniature grotesque. The small knife-slit that served him for mouth opened and shut slowly and continuously, as if feebly gasping for difficult breath. He gave not even one faint encouraging cry. I turned to Doctor Pollain, shaking my head.
"But no!" he exclaimed. "For an eight-months child, look you—he has vigor! I am sure he will live."
"Then, for his father's sake," I replied, "we must take no chances! Isn't there a maternity hospital in the neighborhood where he can receive the close attention that you, madame, at your age, with your responsibilities, ought not to be expected to give? I make myself fully responsible for any and all charges involved. Understand me, madame, and you, M. le Médecin, I insist that no stone shall be left unturned!"
These words produced, at once a grateful change in the atmosphere—hitherto, I had felt, ever so slightly hostile. It is unnecessary to follow our further negotiations to their entirely amicable close. Half an hour later I left the shop of the Widow Guyot, satisfied that Doctor Pollain would assist her to make all needful arrangements, and promising to get into communication as soon as it could be managed with "M. Jee-mee." I should return, I told them, certainly, before noon.
But for Jimmy's sake, on leaving, I raised a corner of the sheet covering the face of Jeanne-Marie. It was a peaceful face. If she had lately suffered, death now had quietly smoothed from her all but a lasting restfulness. A good little woman, I mused, of the best type provincial France offers; sensible, yet ardent; practical, yet kind. As I looked down at her, the meaningless smile of the bisque Madonna in the shop without returned to me, simpered for a half-second before me. . . . The symbols men made—and sold—commercial symbols! The Mother of Sorrows, a Chinese toy! Well. . . .
"One thing troubles me," said the Widow Guyot at my elbow, in her husky, passionless voice: "She did not receive the last rites, m'sieu. When the bad turn came, it was not possible for us to leave her. You will understand that. There was a new life, was there not? Assuredly, though, I am troubled; I regret that this should have happened to me. It will be a great cause for scandal, m'sieu—when you consider my connections—the nature of my little affairs. But, name of God, that will pass; one explains these things with a certain success, and my age favors me. I bear, God be praised, a good name; and in the proper quarters, m'sieu. But—the poor little one! Observe m'sieu, that she clasps a crucifix on her breast. Be so good as to remember that I placed it in her hands—an instant before she died."
VII
It is an artistic fault in real life that it deals so frequently in coincidence, to the casting of suspicion upon those who report it veraciously. On the very night that Jeanne-Marie died, probably within the very hour that she died, Jimmy was shot down, while taking part in a bombing expedition; the plane he was conducting was seen, by crews of the two other bombing-planes in the formation, to burst into flames after a direct hit from an anti-aircraft battery, which had been firing persistently, though necessarily at haphazard, up toward the bumble-bee hum of French motors—so betrayingly unlike the irregular guttural growl of the German machines.
Throughout the following morning I had been attempting, with the indispensable aid of my old friend, Colonel ——, of the French war office, to get into telegraphic communication with the commander of Jimmy's esquadrille; but it was noon, or very nearly, before this unexpected word came to us. And when it came, I found myself unable to believe it.
In the very spirit of Assessor Brack, "Things don't happen like that!" I kept insisting. "It's too improbable. I must wait for further verification. We shall see, colonel, there's been an error in names; some mistake." I was stubborn about it. Simply, for Susan's sake, I could not admit the possibility that Jimmy was dead.