Читать книгу Wintersmoon онлайн

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One summer evening, when he was convalescent, lying in a chair looking out over the lawns, the woods, the gently rising hills, he poured out all that was in his soul to his father, and from that moment they were companions.

He had always intensely admired his father, but until now he had never thought of him as human in the way that he himself was human. He was omnipotent, omniscient, something of other bodily make from himself. This evening it was as though his father's body stepped into view for the first time, blood and muscles like his own, the eyes real eyes, the chest with its breadth and thickness a man's chest, thighs and sinews of a man like himself—and when that night his father's hand closed on his he could feel the pulse beating through the strength of the palm. He twisted his fingers between his father's fingers. He kissed his father on the mouth. He had never kissed his father before, only been kissed by him.

Now he was alive to many things in his father's character that he had never seen before. He had always perceived his courtesy to others, his gentleness and yet his authority with the servants in the house and the men on the estate, but now he realised that this courtesy came from a deep modesty that would have been shyness had there been in the character more egotism.