The Soul of Susan Yellam Part 40

"Out of dry dock? Ready for the road--um?"

"I believe so, Sir Geoffrey, but Willum Saint has the business; and I don't know where to turn for a man."

"That's going to be my affair. I should have made it my affair, if you had come to me without my sending for you. Alfred has been treated abominably. All the facts never reached my ears till yesterday, when I heard about Uncle and the tankard."

He laughed, and Susan laughed with him. The Squire waxed confidential.

"Just between us, let it go no further, William Saint will be called up."

"The Lard be praised! This be heartsome news, Sir Geoffrey. If you gets me a man, trade'll come back."

"You rest easy. I repeat, all this is my affair. I'm still Squire of Nether-Applewhite. Have you seen my grandson lately?"

"No, Sir Geoffrey."

"You come along with me to the nursery, and we'll have a squint at him.

He's a whopper."

And thus the sun shone bright once more in Mrs. Yellam's heaven. The Squire proved even better than his word. What he said in private to William Saint was never known. Sir Geoffrey found, for Mrs. Yellam, a reliable driver, an ex-soldier discharged from the army but not disabled, with a merry eye and a persuasive tongue. Saint's 'bus went to the station, as before, not to Salisbury.

You may think of this time as the St. Martin's Summer of Mrs. Yellam's life. The dull November days drifted by, bringing with them mist and rain and wind; the trees were stripped of their leaves; Nature sang her requiem for the dying year; but Pentecostal joys filled Mrs. Yellam's heart.

And this Feast of Rejoicing affected Fancy and her child. The Yellam cottage became a heat-centre. From it radiated warming beams. Susan, at work in her kitchen, could hear Fancy's clear voice singing "Abide with Me."

Hold Thou Thy Cross before my closing eyes; Shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies: Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee; In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me!

If it were only so, reflected Mrs. Yellam, how rich and happy life would be, with all its ups and downs. She remained obstinately convinced that she wanted the Lord to abide with her. It was He Who left her so mysteriously. And then, of course, Satan took the vacant place. She examined herself rigorously. She dealt justly with her neighbours; she loved mercy; she read her Bible each day. What more could she do? Really and truly, she demanded so little of Omnipotence--not wealth, not even health, for, at her age, she must expect aches and pains; just peace, only that, and Alfred.

CHAPTER XVII

FOOL-WISDOM

Fancy's approaching confinement aroused no apprehensions in the mind of Mrs. Yellam. She took it for granted that nothing untoward would happen.

Probably, the doctor in attendance would make things appear more serious than they were. Deep down in her heart lay the conviction that doctors, in their own interests, pursed up lips and bent frowning brows over sick-beds, because when their patients pulled through the greater credit attached itself to them. Her own confinements had been reasonably easy, so she told Fancy.

Both women wondered whether Alfred would get his Christmas leave and his Christmas present at the same time. That double event, however, lay upon the knees of the G.o.ds.

Leave or no leave, Mrs. Yellam told herself that Alfred was safe till the Spring. Why this conviction came to her she did not explain. Had you asked her, she would have replied, probably, that the wounded boys at the Court affirmed nothing to be doing in mid-winter. The sight of William Saint in khaki nearly made her break into song. The banns of his approaching marriage to the young person behind the bar were called in Nether-Applewhite Church, none too soon, according to Jane Mucklow.

Uncle was heard to whisper, "And sarve 'un right!" by neighbours in adjoining pews. He a.s.sured his cronies that Mr. Sinner's punishment was to come. Susan rejoiced, also, in the notable fact that Nether-Applewhite harboured no conscientious objectors. Ocknell, the next parish, was not so fortunate.

In fine, the first half of December glided by swiftly and pleasantly.

Alfred's business became firmly re-established, and, with Saint no longer competing, more remunerative than ever. Mrs. Yellam said to Fancy:

"Your child, seemin'ly, may be rich."

She refused to speak of the child as a son. But Fancy's conviction about that remained impregnable.

"I ought to know, Mother."

"Maybe. But you don't. n.o.body knows."

"Alfred wants him to be a girl."

"Do he? I wonders why."

"He said a little maid would traipse so nicely after you. I promised him to call her Lizzie. She'll be the next."

"Lizzie! Ah-h-h! Alferd be a good son. Fancy his thinkin' o' that.

Lizzie----!"

She spoke the name almost under her breath. A moment later, she removed her spectacles, and wiped them. The two women were sitting in the kitchen by the hearth, after supper. A basket held the logs. The cradle was upstairs in Mrs. Yellam's room. In that room, despite Fancy's protests, Alfred's child would be born. In that room Susan Yellam's first baby had wailed his regret at finding himself in a wicked world.

In that room her husband had died. Everything lay ready to hand; the monthly nurse lived only a quarter of a mile away; the doctor had been advised that he might be wanted at any minute.

Fancy loved to sit over the fire, listening to the wind talking to the chimney, telling that stay-at-home the tale of many wanderings. She liked to make-believe that the winds were real persons, although she had never heard of aeolus and his rebellious prisoners. She hated to pick flowers because they must feel so unhappy out of their own garden. Of course, they died of loneliness in mid-Victorian vases. She held inviolate her faith in fairies, beneficent and malevolent. She a.s.sured Mrs. Yellam that Solomon could see pixies dancing in their rings. How else could you account for his stopping in the middle of a field and barking?

Of her mother and the four Evangelists she said nothing.

Uncle and she became great friends.

Three days out of the week (as has been mentioned), from October to the end of January, Uncle served as "beater" to Captain Davenant, when that veteran went shooting in the New Forest. Returning home, about five, Uncle liked to wander into Mrs. Yellam's cottage and drink a cup of tea instead of marching up to the _Pomfret Arms_, where his supremacy as a talker and man of the world might be disputed by certain bagmen in that inn, which prided itself upon being "more cla.s.s" than the _Sir John Barleycorn_. Fancy paid homage to Uncle, as the favourite brother of Mrs. Yellam, ministering to his love of creature comforts, making hot b.u.t.tered toast and putting cream into his tea, which he never got at home. Whenever Jane happened to be "miffed" her husband tactically retreated to what he now termed "Fancy's rest camp." He found her alone there, because Mrs. Yellam was now on duty at Pomfret Court from two till seven. Fancy and Uncle would sit by the fire and talk.

Between Uncle's house and the Yellam cottage stood a clump of firs, near the river. Each year, during the annual migration, ospreys, probably southward bound from Scotland, would roost for one night only in these firs. Uncle had watched them many a time. They would circle three times round the firs and then alight upon them. Always the young birds, that year's nestlings, would come first. The parent birds followed, perhaps two days later. The sense of direction, the triple circling round the same trees, on the part of young birds, who preceded their parents, filled Fancy with astonishment. Being urban, she delighted in Uncle's Arcadian lore. She asked him to explain this amazing performance.

"Birds be wiser than we, my girl."

Alfred had made the same remark about water-rats.

"How do they find their way, Uncle?"

"Ah-h-h! How does a young hound find his way back to kennels, when he be taken to a distant meet by train, to new country never seen afore? You answer me that."

"I can't. Can you?"

"I thinks I can. 'Tis fool-wisdom. Wimmenfolk has it, because they be nearer to the animals than we men."

Fancy wondered whether this was to be taken as a compliment. Uncle continued:

"Fool-wisdom comes from G.o.d A'mighty. We be told that He don't forget one sparrer. I never liked sparrers too well, because they interferes crool wi' the house-martins, pore lil' dears. Yas--G.o.d A'mighty guides they young ospreys. I've a notion that He'd guide us if so be as we weren't so set on guiding ourselves. That be the main trouble wi' my dear sister."

Fancy opened her eyes wide.

"What are you saying, Uncle?"

"I be fool-wise, my girl. I sees that you be mazed. Fool-wisdom be what we read on in the Holy Book, the sart that G.o.d A'mighty gives to babes and sucklings. My dear sister be full o' man's wisdom, just so clever as a man can be. She takes credit to herself for every big onion in her garden."