Читать книгу Judith Paris. A Novel онлайн

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The most exciting news to his parents, however, was that he had taken dinner with his mother's cousin, Sir Pomfret Herries, who had a fine house in Kensington: Pomfret was the son of Deborah's first cousin Raiseley, who had once owned a fine house in Keswick but was now with God. Deborah's memory flew back to her cousin Raiseley, a sickly and arrogant youth who had been for ever at war with her brother David. It had seemed that there would be a family feud there, but when Raiseley had in later years moved to London, and the Keswick house was sold, communication had altogether dropped.

It seemed, however, that this child Pomfret, whom Deborah remembered as a little stout boy beating David's big black horse with a toy whip, now a man of thirty-four or so, had done well for himself in the City, married a clergyman's daughter, and begotten of her body two healthy children.

Well, feud or no feud, Pomfret Herries had been kind to her boy, and for that she would forgive him all old scores. Young Humphrey described the splendour of the Kensington house, the garden with its fountain and statues, the many servants, the rich food and wine. Cousin Pomfret was large and stout ('like his poor grandfather before him,' sighed Deborah, with a sudden desire to go somewhere and be kind to that poor old man with his red face and pimples, suffering so sadly from gout, sitting alone and deserted in the Keswick house by the Lake). And now there was this new Pomfret with his children and handsome wife sitting in his grand Kensington house, forgetting no doubt that he had ever had a grandfather. Time flies, thought Deborah, and this is a modern world that we are in. Those old days are gone for ever! There was indeed a certain moment's melancholy in this excited acceptance by her son of this new life. She had lost him!—he who only a moment ago had been rolling naked on this Turkey carpet while she turned the tunes in the music-box—and, her eyes a little tearful, she placed her chubby hand on her husband's chubby arm that she might feel securely that he, at any rate, was still with her.