Chapter XX The Traveller Returns
Throughout the day, Mrs. Yellam hovered in and out of Fancy’s room, instinctively conscious that her patient was less strong, but obstinately determined to fight that instinct. Outwardly, there was no change. Fancy lay quiet, thinking and talking of Alfred. Lizzie Alfreda, happily, evoked no maternal anxiety. Colic did not disturb the infantile slumbers. She smiled ineffably at a bottle which contained Frisian-Holstein milk drawn from prize-winners, and judiciously blended with lime-water. On this mild tipple the child thrived amazingly. The monthly nurse now retired to her own cottage at night, returning in the morning. Susan Yellam slept upon a small bed made up in Fancy’s room. The doctor had expressed gratification at the increasing vitality of his patient. And on the Wednesday, he said that he should not call again for three days, unless he were sent for. He congratulated Susan upon her devotion and skill with unmistakable sincerity.
In the afternoon, the morning’s drizzle became a downpour, and the Avon escaped from its banks. If such rain continued, the Yellam cottage would soon become an island. Susan was not disturbed by this. Nothing mattered; nothing distracted her save the overpowering determination to put Fancy on her feet again. Fancy would assume control of her child. And then an old woman would sit down, fold her hands, and await the end. Her premature conviction that Fancy would die and that she would live had been modified on reflection. Susan held theories about life and work. Before the war she had contended that folks were called when their work was done. A few rotten apples might stick to the tree, but they proved the general rule. Fruit fell to the ground when ripe.
Satisfied in her mind that she would save Fancy by her own undivided efforts, Mrs. Yellam contemplated with grim satisfaction her approaching decease. She regarded herself as dead. She could survey with detachment what was left of the Susan who rose early, waited diligently upon Fancy, ate her meals (without any pleasure in them) and lay down to troubled sleep. So chilled was she in mind, soul and body, that she noticed without regret that Solomon, the faithful Solomon, too affectionate, too demonstrative to a hard old flint, had transferred his allegiance to Fancy. The dog lay at the foot of her bed night and day. Fancy talked to him about Alfred, not about Lizzie Alfreda, because Solomon was jealous. When Lizzie Alfreda came in, Solomon went for a run in the garden, and heartened himself up by sniffing at various food-stuffs in a delightful state of decomposition. But, oddly enough, he never wandered farther afield. Within half an hour—Lizzie Alfreda’s visits were drastically curtailed—he would patter up the wooden stairs, scratch at the door, whine, and be admitted. In a jiffy he was on the bed again, staring hard at Fancy, as if he were a doctor contemplating a change of treatment.
It had been agreed between Hamlin and Mrs. Yellam that Alfred’s death should be kept a secret from the villagers till the official notification appeared in the newspapers. But when Uncle walked into the cottage at tea-time, full of cheer despite the weather, and cracking many small jokes about boats and swimmers, Mrs. Yellam simply could not bear it. She said with startling abruptness:
“Habakkuk, I’d break bad news to ’ee gently, if I could. But ’tisn’t in me to do it. Alferd be dead.”
Poor Uncle could not take it in.
“But, Susan, Alferd be lost.”
“’Twas a shell. They couldn’t find ’un, because there was nothing to find.”
To her dismay, Uncle bowed his head upon his hands and wept like a woman, shedding the copious tears that might have softened the hard eyes steadily regarding him. He had loved Alfred. Susan knew this. He could have better spared one of his own sons rather than this kindly, affectionate nephew. She rose quietly and fetched the letter, giving him time to recover his self-control. As she held out the letter, he raised a face to hers so seamed by grief and pain that almost, almost her heart melted within her. He read the letter and returned it. She put it away, and took a chair upon the other side of the hearth. Uncle gazed about him, noting, as men do upon such occasions, trifles that escape notice in happier times. The coffin stools stood in their old place against the wall. Uncle pointed at them, with trembling finger:
“Fancy be dead, too.”
“No. She be more like herself to-day, although tarr’ble weak. They stools be for me, Habakkuk. The sooner I goes the better.”
No inflection of resignation tempered this statement. Uncle, like Hamlin, realised the futility of condolence, but silence imposed too great a burden upon him.
“You has the baby,” he suggested.
“She belongs to Fancy. I bain’t afeard for they two.”
“Be you afeard for yourself, Susan?”
She eyed him, sensible of an ever-increasing aversion to questions. Was he thinking of punishment hereafter, of Hell’s fires?
“I bain’t afeard o’ Hell, and I bain’t going to Heaven. For why? Heaven and Hell be here on earth—and nowheres else.”
“Susan——!”
“Ay, you be mazed, and no wonder. But I be come to that. I believed in God A’mighty; I believed in Satan—for sixty long years. But such belief be clean gone.”
“You be wrong, Susan. It ain’t in me to argufy wi’ ’ee, and, maybe, tear both our hearts. But you be wrong. The swallers knows better’n that. Who gave ’em their wisdom? I says no more but this: God sent His Own People into the wilderness, where you be, and He brought ’em out.”
She shook her head. Uncle stood up.
“’Tis rainin’ crool hard, but I be off to the Forest. You won’t want Jane fussin’ about ’ee? No. Or anybody else. I allers allowed as misery loved company, but I be so miserable this day that I wants to be alone, as you does.”
He kissed her cold cheeks and went out into the rain.
She sat on for a minute, but the thought that worried her most was the regret that he had not had his tea. The day was failing fast. In a moment she would have to light a lamp and carry it upstairs. But something remained to be done, a duty neglected since the morning.
She went into the parlour, where the light was better, but not good; good enough, she reflected, for her purpose. She lifted the Bible, placed it upon the middle table, and opened it at the fly-leaf. Then she took pen and ink from her desk and a clean sheet of blotting-paper. She took out her spectacles, wiped them carefully, put them on, and sat down. Against Alfred’s name she made the necessary entry, “Killed in Action,” adding the date. Her hand never trembled; the writing was characteristic; firm, bold, with the words neatly spaced, indicating love of order. What she had willed herself to be, she was: a flint embedded in sterile soil. She took off her spectacles and placed them in their case, rising as she did so. Upon second thoughts, she decided to let the ink dry upon the page. Suddenly, an irresistible impulse gripped her. She glanced about her furtively, defiantly, as if challenging unseen powers to thwart her determination. Hastily with fingers that trembled this time, she snatched up the pen, dipped it into the ink, and wrote against her name, Susan Yellam, these words:
“Died. December 28th, 1916.”
As hastily, she placed the sheet of blotting-paper above the entries, closed the Bible, and replaced it upon its table.
Having shut up the parlour, she lit a lamp and carried it upstairs. The baby was asleep. The nurse went home for the night. Then Mrs. Yellam told Fancy, in a cheerful voice, that she would bring up tea in a few minutes.
“I thought I heard Uncle,” said Fancy.
“Yes; he looked in and made some stupid jokes, he did, about gettin’ the miller’s boat.”
“Whatever for?”
“Like as not we may be on an island afore nightfall.”
Fancy smiled.
“I’d love to ride in miller’s boat again. Alfred popped the question in that. I did tease him first. ’Twas rare fun. I suppose Uncle was in fine fettle, as usual?”
“Yes; I never seen him so gay and joyous. Now, you lie so quiet as any mouse whilst I gets tea.”
It might have been so delightful a meal. Outside, the wind roared and the rain fell in sheets; inside, the logs crackled in the fireplace, the warm curtains were drawn, and the lamp shone upon Mrs. Yellam’s best tea-things. Everything that could tempt a capricious appetite was there: fragrant tea, cream, jam, honey, and little scones which warranted the belief that Susan Yellam had secreted somewhere a bag of white flour.
Susan had to sustain the burden of talk, and soared to heights. Fancy must be entertained—the doctor’s injunction. The old woman’s amazing will surmounted all obstacles. And who shall say that this heart-breaking effort to beguile Fancy was not the most selfless achievement of Mrs. Yellam’s long life? She described passages in Uncle’s early career; anecdotes about Jane, anecdotes about her own Lizzie and Alfred. As a boy, it seemed, Alfred had been very untidy. He never kept his own little attic in order. Finally his mother said to him:
“Alferd, your room bain’t a boy’s room, nor a dog’s kennel, nor a pig’s stye. ’Tis the habitation of a lunatic.”
Fancy smiled, because the mother must have spoken at the time, and again now, with such inimitable seriousness.
After tea, Fancy was commanded to rest. But before doing so, she caught hold of her entertainer’s hand, and said earnestly:
“How good you are to me, Mother! How good and kind you always are to sick folk. Such a wondersome woman! I hope my lil’ maid will grow up just like you.”
“If you talk such outrageous nonsense, I’ll—I’ll spank Lizzie. That’ll larn ’ee.”
But Fancy refused to be gagged. She went on, in her soft, feeble tones, expatiating upon Mrs. Yellam’s many virtues and excellencies. Time was when Susan would have listened to this praise with smug complacency. Fancy did but state the facts. And the mere recital of them exasperated the listener beyond endurance. Steel striking flint—and praise had become steel—provoked sparks.
“I be real vexed wi’ ’ee, Fancy.”
She bustled off with the tea-things, and remained absent so long that Fancy began to fear that she had really offended her. Solomon, however, reassured her on this point. They exchanged pleasant chat about Alfred. Fancy felt jealous because Solomon would know when Alfred was coming at least five minutes before she did.
“You’ll jump off the bed and bark.”
Solomon wagged his tail.
“My! Won’t he get wet if he comes to-night, Solly? Are you expecting him to-night, you wise little dog?”
Solomon put a cold nose into her hand. Mrs. Yellam’s step was heard on the stairs. Solomon retired to his end of the bed, well aware that prolonged talk had been forbidden after tea.
Mrs. Yellam, seeing that Fancy was awake, said impressively:
“We be an island at this minute.”
“Oh, dear!”
Mrs. Yellam assured her that it had often happened before. The cottage itself stood high above the encroaching waters. At highest flood they were not more than two feet deep.
“Alfred’ll get so wet.”
“Ay. I never thought o’ that. I think, Fancy, that you did ought to put this strange notion of Alferd’s coming out of your dear lil’ head. ’Tis most onlikely. I dunno’ how such a queer idea got into it.”
“Because he promised me that he would come.”
“But, Lard bless ’ee, he meant so be as he got leave. If ’tis true that he be safe in France——”
“I know he be safe.”
Mrs. Yellam glanced at her anxiously. Was the girl light-headed? She must know that if Alfred were missing, owing—as Fancy had been discreetly told—to some injury to his head which had caused him to stray from the British lines, his first steps, when he became himself again, would be directed back to his battalion. Wisely, she busied herself about the room, entreating her patient to compose herself to sleep. Presently Fancy dozed off, and Mrs. Yellam, softly approaching the bed, examined her critically. She looked startlingly pretty. A faint colour tinged lips and cheeks; her skin was translucently clear; her hair, regularly brushed by Mrs. Yellam, lay thick and lustrous above her forehead.
It was almost impossible to behold her as a widow.
For the first time since she had dedicated all her energies to fighting for this frail life doubt assailed Mrs. Yellam. Fancy’s hand lay upon the white counterpane. Mrs. Yellam laid her hand beside it and compared the two.
All her experience of life as it is lived by people who cannot afford servants, the endless bondage to manual labour, the washing, scrubbing of floors and pots and pans, the cooking, the mending, rose up in her ample mind, and filled it with poignant misgiving. Could this attenuated hand, soft and weak as a child’s, fend for Lizzie if—if Death came at the despairing call of Susan Yellam?
She clenched her own hand, nearly as large and powerful as a man’s fist. Fancy must live to mother her child. She had no claim on Death, this young, pretty creature, so easily pleased with life, so happy with simple things, so contented with what she possessed, incapable of envying those above her in station. Time would be kind to her. Time would enshrine Alfred in her heart as the man who had taught her to love, who had given her a fidelity and tenderness rarely found in cottages or palaces. She might marry again. Why not? It says much for Susan Yellam’s essential wisdom that she could visualise such a possibility, however remote, without a pang.
A couple of hours passed.
Lizzie Alfreda was fed and washed, with Fancy looking on, and replaced in her cradle. Mrs. Yellam mended the fire, and went down to the kitchen to prepare supper. Fancy seemed to be refreshed after her nap, but some inflection of her voice warned an obstinate old woman that strength was departing, very slowly, almost imperceptibly, as the hour-hand moves round the dial.
After supper she took her knitting and sat by the bed. To her great relief, Fancy never mentioned Alfred. She prattled artlessly about Lizzie. And then, gradually, during the intermittancies of silence, Mrs. Yellam knew that the victory, for which she had fought so desperately, which she had believed to be won, was unachievable. Afterwards, she was unable to say when this conviction seized her. She admitted, however, to Uncle that she knew because Fancy must have known. And Fancy believed that she was cunningly hiding this knowledge. It leaked from her lips, as she talked about Lizzie Alfreda to her grandmother, conjuring up a picture of youth ministering to age, a picture so vivid, so true to life, that something told Susan Yellam that it must come to pass. Fancy was going. And when her own time came, she would lie in this bed, and Alfred’s child would close her eyes. Fancy foreshadowed no such scene. But she spoke of Mrs. Yellam teaching Lizzie Alfreda how to use her needle and instructing her in other domestic tasks. The thought of doing this, of playing mother in her old age, softened indurated tissues, but the original hardness remained. Susan turned desperately for comfort to a flesh-and-blood grandchild; she turned as desperately from any faith in a wise and merciful God.
Outside, the rain went on falling; the wind wailed through the firs where the ospreys found sanctuary on their flight south. Solomon slept comfortably at the foot of the bed. Presently, it became time to prepare Fancy for the night. Face and hands were washed with soap which Mrs. Yellam had never applied to her weather-beaten countenance. Fancy’s hair was brushed and plaited in two coils.
“Put on fresh ribands to-night, mother.”
“What an idea! You be so vain as any twoad.”
“Are toads vain? I’d like blue ribands.”
Grumblingly, Mrs. Yellam went to a drawer and produced new ribands. When she had finished her patient’s toilet, she said:
“My! But you look pretty to-night.”
“Do I? I’m glad of that.”
Lizzie Alfreda woke up, clamouring for Frisian-Holstein milk. She lay beside Fancy till the bottle was finished. Then she was taken back to her cradle in the next room.
It was fully time now for Mrs. Yellam to prepare for the night, but she didn’t do so. Fancy had closed her eyes. The faint colour had gone from her cheeks. She had fallen asleep. Susan laid her finger upon the pulse; she could just feel it beating, but not regularly. A wild impulse surged through her to rush into the night, to send Uncle for the doctor. But she dared not leave her patient. And, after all, there was so little change; the child had talked too much after tea; strength would return in the morning.
She made up the fire again, slipped off her austere black gown, and put on a dressing-gown, an ancient garment known to many mothers in Nether-Applewhite. Draped in this, with list sandals on her feet, you might have taken Susan for a Roman matron. Hamlin, who had seen her thus arrayed, nearly addressed her as “Cornelia.”
An hour or more may have passed, during which time the gale began to rage itself out. Lulls succeeded roaring blasts. Mrs. Yellam felt no inclination to sleep; she became, instead, sensible of alertness, a quickening of sensibilities and senses. Her hearing, still acute, became painfully so. The patter of the rain upon the windows irritated her; when it stopped, she missed it, and wanted it to begin again.
And then a strange thing happened, strange only when taken in connection with what followed. Solomon woke up, jumped lightly from the bed, and went to the door. He had been let out, as usual, some two hours previously. Mrs. Yellam held up a finger, enjoining silence. Solomon lay down, head up, staring at the door, alert, as Mrs. Yellam was, expectant, with ears cocked as if he heard something or somebody.
“What is it, Solly?” she whispered.
He paid no attention.
If the cottage had not been surrounded by water, Mrs. Yellam might have considered the probability of tramps trying to find shelter in the barn. She would not have been alarmed. Her cottage was tramp-proof and at this moment an island fortress. At the same time, she knew that her heart was beating faster; an indefinable fear assailed her, something she had never experienced before.
She started violently. Fancy was sitting up in bed, her cheeks flushed with colour, her eyes dancing, her arms outstretched.
“I hear him,” she exclaimed. “Don’t you, Mother?”
“Lie down, child; lie down.”
“It’s Alfred. Let him in!”
Mrs. Yellam did not move. Fancy, she decided, was light-headed. She hesitated, fearing to excite her, willing to humour her, provided she made no attempt to leave her bed.
“He’s coming upstairs.”
She no longer looked at Mrs. Yellam; her eyes remained upon the bedroom door. So strange a light shone in those eyes that Mrs. Yellam began to question her own sanity, not Fancy’s.
Solomon never moved.
The suspense became unendurable. But Mrs. Yellam remained in her chair, ready to spring to her feet, if Fancy left the bed.
Solomon got up, whined, turned from the door, and jumped into Mrs. Yellam’s lap. He was trembling. At the same moment she heard Fancy’s voice, strong and exultant:
“Alfie!—I knew you’d come.”
Her speech became broken and faltering:
“I did want you, as never was. It was awful going through it without you. And it’s a She—what you wanted. How lovely you look! Kiss me again! Hold me tight! If you don’t, I—I may slip off....”
Her voice died away in sighs; her eyes closed; her head fell back upon her pillow. Mrs. Yellam put Solomon down, rose to her feet, and hurried to the bed. In an instant her strong arms were encircling the wasted body, clutching it to her, trying to hold Fancy back, but knowing that she was, as she said, slipping away. Fancy spoke again, very faintly:
“However did you manage to come back?”
Mrs. Yellam listened, waiting, hoping, and almost believing, that an answer would be forthcoming. Her son, according to Colonel Tring, had been killed by a shell—killed and obliterated. She had known that death must have been painless.
Fancy answered for Alfred, in a whisper that seemed to come from an immense distance.
“I hear you, plain as plain. What? A—shell—! Did it hurt, Alfie? It didn’t. But because of that you were able to come. You had to come for both our sakes—Mother’s and mine. And such a night! You ain’t a bit wet, neither.... Afraid, Alfie...? With you holding me tight as tight.... Oh, no.”
Susan Yellam heard a trickle of laughter. After that Fancy sighed twice, and then her small body relaxed.
She had slipped away.
Dawn was stealing into the kitchen when Mrs. Yellam went downstairs.
She was still curiously alert in mind, although very weary in body. After she had closed Fancy’s eyes and performed the last services, she sat down by the bed to think. Dying people, as she knew, might entertain hallucinations. And Fancy, in health, exercised a lively imagination. That she should believe that she saw Alfred, so long and ardently desired, just before breath left her body, was not remarkable in itself.
But, speaking for Alfred, repeating, as it were, information, Fancy had used the word “shell.”
Was this mere coincidence?
Again, according to Alfred—admitting that he had come back—his return in the spirit was due not only to solicitude for his wife, but for his mother. She heard Fancy’s feeble voice—“for both our sakes.” And she had spoken of his appearance as “lovely.”
Susan Yellam’s strong brain considered these three facts together with the uncanny behaviour of Solomon, now peacefully asleep in the next room. As yet, she had shed no tears, but, slowly, the ice about her heart was melting.
Her thoughts turned to the form beneath the spotless sheet. It seemed so cruel that Fancy should be dead. Why was life given to young things and then taken away? But this gentle creature had not lived in vain. She had accomplished a task that had baffled Jane Mucklow and herself. Fancy had drawn Habakkuk from the ale-house, beguiled him from his cronies with soft words and smiles, made a better man of him. She had made a better man of Alfred.
She thought of Alfred and Fancy together.
Almost she believed that Alfred had come back.
Hovering upon the brink of this conviction, she heard a wail from the baby, the pitiful appeal of helplessness to strength. She hurried into the next room, and took the child into her arms, clutching it to her bosom.
Lizzie Alfreda was hers, her very own. Till that moment she had regarded the tiny creature, not with indifference, but apathetically, a grandchild by whom she would do her duty. And we know that she had forced herself to believe that Fancy would live to fend for her own child. Could so frail a woman have done so properly? If her wish had been granted, if Death had taken Susan instead of Fancy Yellam, and if Fancy had risen from her bed an enfeebled, anæmic woman, subject to all those maladies which wait on physical debility, could she have “fended” for Lizzie Alfreda?
The ice was melting fast now.
She fed Lizzie Alfreda and replaced her in the cradle, but the baby still wailed a little, staring at Susan Yellam. She took her up—an action against her principles—soothed her, and immediately the child stopped crying. Susan crooned to her a lullaby which she thought she had forgotten, which had served, long ago, when her own Lizzie was wakeful. And the simple, droning song brought back, vividly, past pleasures. Age dropped from her; she became for a moment a young mother anticipating joyously all that “fending” implied. Soon the child slept.
And then the tears came, washing away ice, doubt, despair, cleansing anew a humble and contrite heart.
From that undiscovered country, whose existence she had obstinately denied, a traveller had returned.
After lighting the kitchen fire, Susan Yellam entered the parlour. She pulled up the blinds and drew the curtains. From her desk, she took a sharp penknife, and tried its edge upon her thumb. Then, reluctantly, as if ashamed, she opened the Bible, intending to erase carefully the last presumptuous entry.
She glanced at it, and a sharp exclamation escaped her trembling lips. She put on her spectacles and stared, open-mouthed, at the page in front of her. “Died, December 28th, 1916,” was written not, as she had supposed, against the name of Susan Yellam, but against the name of Fancy Yellam.
And then she remembered that, in her blind haste to record her own death, she had forgotten to put on her spectacles.
And the light, at the time, was failing.
The Light was not failing now.
She fell upon her knees, bowing her head over the Book.
Next Sunday she was in her pew.
The End