Hamlin sat still by his fire and thought of Mrs. Yellam. He desired to help her with an intensity which few would have suspected. Her empty pew, as before, stood out in his mind as a vacuum which he abhorred. Not because he was a parson. Churchgoing, in one sense, the sense in which William Saint regarded it, touched his humour. To go to church because it was respectable and pleased the Squire, to mumble prayers, to preserve a smug deportment, and rattle coins into an offertory plate, approximated closely to comic opera! Mrs. Yellam attended church to worship her Maker. Her abstention from Divine Service indicated loss of faith, the most grievous loss that can be imposed upon human beings. Faith filled Mrs. Yellam's pew; faithlessness emptied it. And if she, the strong woman, the helper in so many good works, stayed away from God's House, what would be the effect on the faith of others who looked up to her as a pattern and example?
His fighting instincts were strongly stirred. But Uncle was right. For the moment, Susan Yellam stood alone, beyond man's help.
He went to see her as a friend. As before, she received him with perfect self-possession, answered his questions quietly, and assured him that her own health caused her no anxiety. Hamlin thought of a chapel standing by itself upon a high hill near Abbotsbury, in perfect condition without, stripped within, an empty and deserted temple. Presently Fancy came in, and Mrs. Yellam went out. After the first greeting, Fancy exclaimed eagerly:
"I know that Alfred will come back. I feel it here."
She touched her bosom.
He perceived, with poignant regret, the ravages wrought by suspense. But this, he soon discovered, was not due to apprehension concerning herself. She was worrying because Alfred would not get enough to eat. She talked confidently of his escape from bondage. Alfred was a man of resource, quick to seize opportunity. Dozens had got through to Holland. Why not he?
Then she spoke of the war. What did it all mean, this never-ending slaughter? Was God angry with the world?
Hamlin felt more at ease with this softer specimen of womanhood, who had served him faithfully. He admitted frankly, despite the evidence of the Old Testament, that he could not conceive of Omnipotence as "angry." Then he appealed to her imagination, evoking out of his own hopes and hypotheses a new world of nations, linked together by a nobler and wider humanity, poorer in material things, richer in faith and charity. He sketched for her prehistoric man concerned only with self-preservation. He passed from this ape-man to his successor informed by love of his own family. From him again to the chief concerned with the welfare of his tribe. And thence to the monarch and his nation.
"We must come, sooner or later, to Universal Brotherhood. That, I think, Fancy, may come sooner because of this war. The gain to those who are not yet born may be ten thousand times greater than our loss."
Her pale cheeks flushed.