Part 30 (2/2)
”Bring out a chair and sit with me, David,” he invited.
David pointed to the ground.
”Your furniture seems--”
”Don't jest,” his uncle interrupted. ”That chair I have broken to pieces with my own hands because of the woman who sat upon it not many hours since.”
David frowned.
”You mean Marcia?”
”I mean Marcia--the woman who was my daughter,” was the stern reply, ”the woman of whose visit you warned me.”
”Come into the house with me,” David begged, turning his back upon Mandeleys. ”You sit and look at that great drear building and brood overmuch. I want to talk with you.”
Richard Vont rose obediently to his feet and followed his visitor into the little parlour. David looked around him curiously.
”This place seems to have the flavour of many years ago,” he said.
”Sometimes I can scarcely realise that I have ever eaten my meals off that oak table. Sometimes it seems like yesterday.”
”Time pa.s.ses, but time don't count for much,” the old man sighed.
”Mary Wells will be up from the village soon, and she'll make us a cup of tea. Sit opposite me, lad. Is there any more news?”
”None!”
”Them shares, for instance?”
”There will be no change in them,” David replied. ”In two months' time he will know it.”
”And he'll have forty thousand pounds to find, eh?--forty thousand pounds which he will never be able to raise!” Richard Vont muttered, his eyes curiously bright. ”There isn't an acre of land here that isn't mortgaged over and over again.”
”You'll make him a bankrupt, I suppose,” David said thoughtfully.
”Ay, a bankrupt!” his uncle repeated, lingering over the word with a fierce joy. ”But there's something more as'll fall to your lot, David,” he went on,--”something more--and the time's none so far off.”
David moved in his chair uneasily.
”Something more?”
”Ay, ay!” the old man a.s.sented. ”You'll find it hard, my boy, but you'll keep your word. You've got that much of the Vonts in your blood. Your word's a bond with you.”
”Tell me,” David begged, ”about that something more?”
”The time's not yet,” his uncle replied. ”You shall know, lad, in good season.”
David was silent for a moment, filled with nameless and displeasing apprehensions. He was brave enough, prepared to meet any ordinary emergency, but somehow or other the vagueness of the task which lay before him seemed appalling. Outside was Mandeleys, a grim and silent remembrance. Inside the cottage everything seemed to speak of changeless times. The pendulum of the tall clock swung drowsily, as it had swung thirty years ago. The pictures on the wall were the same, the china, the furniture, even its arrangement. And the man who sat in his easy-chair was the same, only that his whiskers and hair were white where once they had been black.
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