"It's quite all right. He's coming back."

Mrs. Yellam laid down her sewing, and rose majestically. In a small cupboard, a special sanctuary to the right of the hearth, she kept some home-made cordials: mead, currant wine, and ginger-brandy. Upon very special occasions she would produce such strong waters, and drink one small gla.s.s, not more. Her feelings might be gauged by the cordial selected. Mead was well enough after village christenings and churchings; the currant wine was stronger tipple, and very heartening after a wedding. The ginger-brandy warmed bodies chilled by winter funerals.

She took down the currant wine, and fetched two gla.s.ses. Having filled them to the brim, she gave one to Fancy and held up the other.

"Alferd."

They clinked gla.s.ses and drank, very solemnly. Mrs. Yellam replaced the bottle of wine and washed the gla.s.ses. Returning to her chair, she perceived that Fancy was re-shuffling the cards.

"Leave well alone, child."

"I want to try something else."

"What, you queer creature?"

"I'm wondering whether IT will be a He or a She?"

"What notions you has, to be sure!"

Fancy laughed and dealt on. Mrs. Yellam sat down, looking into the smouldering embers, seeing, possibly, the shadowy forms of the children she had lost. The wooden cradle which had rocked them to sleep stood in its place to the left of the fireplace--full of logs. It would serve for Fancy's child, for her own grandchild. And upstairs, in an old chest of drawers, lay some little things, tiny shifts and frocks with lavender between them. Once, in a moment of dull despair, she had resolved to burn them. A kindlier thought had urged her to give them, away. She had put that thought from her frowningly. How deeply the gain of others magnifies and distorts our own loss! Happy instinct must have constrained her to keep these garments made by her own hands, although at the time she never recked that they might be worn, so long afterwards, by flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone.

"Mother...."

"Ah-h-h! You've settled the affair, have 'ee?"

"Yes. 'Tis a boy--another Alfred. Ain't you glad?"

"I be ready to welcome any babe, boy or girl, as belongs to Alferd--and you."

Solomon, dreaming blissfully of rats, woke up and wagged his tail.

CHAPTER XV

LEANNESS OF SOUL

Life meandered on in the village. Mrs. Yellam spent her mornings at Pomfret Court; Fancy took her place in the afternoon; they were together during the light-lengthening evenings. By this happy arrangement, two women, not of the same temperament, never saw too much of each other.

They met at supper, glad to exchange the mild gossip of the day. And, always, after uneasy matutinal hours, Fancy felt a renewed zest in life, an appet.i.te for work amongst the "boys," and a delightful consciousness that physical strength--heretofore lacking--was slowly coming to fortify a frail body against the still far-off ordeal. She learnt much from Mrs.

Yellam, and said so with flattering reiteration. Mrs. Yellam may have learnt more from her, but she did not say so. That, perhaps, const.i.tuted the essential difference between them. Fancy's thoughts and ideas bubbled out of her mind, effervescent, like water from a chalybeate spring. Mrs. Yellam had suppressed her intimate thoughts since childhood. What she said, indeed, masked her real feelings, conveying to others an impression of shrewdness, c.o.c.ksureness and unruffled calm. It would be grossly unfair to speak of this as a pose. Since girlhood, she had been shrewd, sure of herself, and calm. Now, when she was past sixty, these comfortable and admirable attributes deserted her. She judged herself quite as severely as she judged her neighbours. She knew that, inwardly, she was questioning her wisdom, her cherished convictions, and her unruffled deportment.

"I be a whited sepulchre," she told Solomon.

Nevertheless, during these Spring days, when May was dancing in the woods and across the fields, rest and refreshment fell upon Mrs.

Yellam's perplexed mind. By sheer force of will, for her own sake and for Fancy's sake, she called "Pax" to introspection, and, like a schoolboy, almost believed that the kindliest dew from heaven had fallen upon her. During this month, too, Alfred happened to be out of the danger zone, busy with new drafts who had not yet been under fire. And everybody in Nether-Applewhite predicted that the war must end soon because sheer exhaustion, military and economic, affected so tremendously the belligerents. Upon this _cheval de bataille_ Sir Geoffrey Pomfret rode over all obstacles. Old Captain Davenant bestrode just such another charger. Uncle, you may be sure, ran with them, throwing his tongue, speaking to a breast-high scent.

"We be nigh the end on't," he told his cronies. "They Proosians be more fed up wi' mud and blood than us. I talks of what I knows. The slaughter o' they Huns be so fearsome that Kayser Bill be a-thinkin' night and day o' polligammy."

"Polly--who? I never heard tell o' she, Uncle."

To this interruption Uncle replied with something of his sister's majesty.

"Ah-h-h! This war'd be over now, if beastly ignerunce ran mute.

Polligammy be practised, as I told old Captain, by cannibals and such.

For why? Because they eats up the young men, and then there bain't husbands enough to go round. Polligammy allows a man to marry so many wives as he's a mind to."

"Lard preserve our dear lives!"

"Yes, my sonnies, that's how life be preserved amongst savage tribes.

They Huns be cannibals and worse. When I told Squire as they fellers used corps to make them tasty Bolony sausages, he couldn't believe me; but 'tis a fact."

"How do you know?" asked William Saint.

"Never you mind how I knows, Saint Willum. I don't never help myself to what isn't mine. I nourishes meself wi' sober truth, not lies. Where be I? Ah, yes. Well, neighbours, they be come to that pretty pa.s.s, polligammy. I allows that one wife be enough for me."

"More than enough, 'tis said, Uncle."

"You be seldom right, my man, but times you hit the mark. Now, I figures it out this way. They Huns be savages, but not fools. One wife be more'n enough for any man, and if so be as Kayser Bill makes polligammy the law in German land, why, I says they won't stick it. 'Tis the beginning o'

the end."

An old gaffer was not sure about this. Women in Germany, so he'd been told, worked with dogs in carts. A farmer with fifty wives might get a lot of work out of them. The gaffer spoke with some authority, having buried three wives in his time. All present knew that they had worked hard for their husband. Uncle, however, after more strong talk and weak ale, convinced his audience that peace would be declared before October.

Wiser folk held the same opinion.

The villagers, at last, were beginning to feel the pinch of war. Wages had risen, greatly to their satisfaction, but prices outstripped them.

The local store closed shutters, because the proprietor was called up.

The baker was baking bread somewhere in the North Sea. On Sundays Mrs.

Yellam and other housewives ate cold victuals for dinner, unless they stayed away from Morning Service to make hot beef-and-kidney puddings.

Shopping had to be done in Salisbury. This meant increased business for the carrier. But, unhappily, Alfred's _loc.u.m tenens_ lacked the executive ability to cope successfully with a glut of orders.

In August, William Saint began a daily service to the county town. Peace fled, silently, from Mrs. Yellam's pillow.

In September, worse followed. Fortune, cruel jade, lashed out at Mrs.

Yellam, striking her hard below the belt. Alfred's resplendent 'bus was knocked into a deep ditch by a huge Government trolley, which rolled serenely on--undamaged.

_Et tu, Brute----!_

Try to picture Mrs. Yellam's feelings. The 'bus was out of action. That in itself might be deemed a serious mishap, to use a word often in Nether-Applewhite mouths, a word applicable to murders, chicken-pox, frozen water-pipes and other domestic disasters. External and internal injuries to the car might be set right in six weeks or so. Skilled mechanics in Salisbury were overworked. No definite promise could be extracted from the firm that sold the 'bus to Alfred. But the driver, the middle-aged man whom, with all his faults, Mrs. Yellam had come to regard as a tower of sobriety and honesty, sustained concussion of the brain. He soon recovered from this but, alas! his nerve was gone.

Obstinately, deaf to Fancy's coaxing and to Mrs. Yellam's trenchant protestations, he tendered notice. How could he be replaced? By the time that the 'bus was in order again--insurance covered all damage--William Saint would have captured Alfred's faithful customers; the faithless were his already.

But what rankled so bitterly in Mrs. Yellam's heart, and would have provoked the Caesarean apostrophe had she indulged in quotations from the Swan of Avon, was the tormenting reflection that the Army had dealt her this parlous blow, the Army she loved, because Alfred was part of it.

Rampaging on, like a ruthless Juggernaut, the trolley had crashed into the 'bus, wiping it out, killing it and burying it in a ditch.

Sympathy flowed into the Yellam cottage from all points of the compa.s.s, a generous flood upon which Fancy floated buoyantly. Poor Mrs. Yellam sank beneath it, helplessly aware of its significance. Everybody, of course, knew that Alfred's business was bound up in the 'bus, ditched indefinitely, perhaps forever. The cynical thought obtruded itself, grinning derisively; help was proffered so eagerly, because it could not be accepted.

Satan had triumphed again.