第77节

parents and grandparents, to suit Eustacia’s modern ideas. The gaunt oak-cased clock, with the picture of the Ascension on the door panel and the Miraculous Draught of Fishes on the base; his grandmother’s corner cupboard with the glass door, through which the spotted china was visible; the dumb-waiter; the wooden tea trays; the hanging fountain with the brass tap—whither would these venerable articles have to be banished?

He noticed that the flowers in the window had died for want of water, and he placed them out upon the ledge, that they might be taken away. While thus engaged he heard footsteps on the gravel without, and somebody knocked at the door.

Yeobright opened it, and Venn was standing before him.

“Good morning,” said the reddleman. “Is Mrs. Yeobright at home?”

Yeobright looked upon the ground. “Then you have not seen Christian or any of the Egdon folks?” he said.

“No. I have only just returned after a long stay away.

I called here the day before I left.”

“And you have heard nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“My mother is—dead.”

“Dead!” said Venn mechanically.

“Her home now is where I shouldn’t mind having mine.”

Venn regarded him, and then said, “If I didn’t see your face I could never believe your words. Have you been ill?”

“I had an illness.”

“Well, the change! When I parted from her a month ago everything seemed to say that she was going to begin a new life.”

“And what seemed came true.”

“You say right, no doubt. Trouble has taught you a deeper vein of talk than mine. All I meant was regarding her life here. She has died too soon.”

“Perhaps through my living too long. I have had a bitter experience on that score this last month, Diggory. But come in; I have been wanting to see you.”

He conducted the reddleman into the large room where the dancing had taken place the previous Christmas, and they sat down in the settle together. “There’s the cold fireplace, you see,” said Clym. “When that half-burnt log and those cinders were alight she was alive! Little has been changed here yet. I can do nothing.

My life creeps like a snail.”

“How came she to die?” said Venn.

Yeobright gave him some particulars of her illness and death, and continued: “After this no kind of pain will ever seem more than an indisposition to me. I began saying that I wanted to ask you something, but I stray from subjects like a drunken man. I am anxious to know what my mother said to you when she last saw you. You talked with her a long time, I think?”

“I talked with her more than half an hour.”

“About me?”