The Soul of Susan Yellam Part 51

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 "sh.e.l.l."

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, anaemic 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 antic.i.p.ating joyously all that "fending" implied. Soon the child slept.

And then the tears came, was.h.i.+ng 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

THE NOVELS OF MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

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"K." Ill.u.s.trated.

K. LeMoyne, famous surgeon, drops out of the world that has known him, and goes to live in a little town where beautiful Sidney Page lives. She is in training to become a nurse. The joys and troubles of their young love are told with that keen and sympathetic appreciation which has made the author famous.

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