The woman pushed open the dining-room door and Peter went in.
Peter's first thought was that his father was not there. He saw standing in
front of the well-remembered fireplace a genial-looking gentleman clothed
in a crimson dressing-gown--a bald gentleman, rather fat, with a piece of
toast in one hand and a glass of something in the other. Peter had expected
he knew not what--something stern and terrible, something that would have
answered in one way or another to those early recollections of terror
and punishment that still dwelt with him. He had remembered his father
as short, spare, black-haired, grim, pale--this gentleman, who was now
watching him, bulged in the cheeks and the stomach, was highly coloured
with purple veins down the sides of his nose and his rather podgy hands
trembled. Nevertheless, it was his father. When the red dressing-gown spoke
it was in a kind of travesty of that old sharp voice, those cutting icy
words--a thickened and degenerate relation:
"My boy! At last!" the gentleman said.
The room presented disorder. On the table were scattered playing cards, a
chair was overturned, under the cactus plant lay what looked like a fiddle,
and the only two pictures on the wall were very indecent old drawings taken
apparently from some Hogarthian prints.
Peter stared at all this in amazement. It was, after the grim approach and
the deserted garden, like finding an Easter egg in a strong box.
Pages:
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632