The boy was tall, not in the least like a little boy; and yet, then, he seemed to his father as quite a little boy, a little 'thing' in a night- shirt, with childish gestures and childish inflections, and a childish, delicious, quaint anxiety not to disturb his mother, who had lately been deprived of sleep owing to an illness of Amy's which had demanded nursing.
His father had not so perceived him for years.
In that instant the conviction that Cyril was permanently unfit for human society finally expired in the father's mind.
Time had already weakened it very considerably. The decision that, be Cyril what he might, the summer holiday must be taken as usual, had dealt it a fearful blow.
And yet, though Samuel and Constance had grown so accustomed to the companionship of a criminal that they frequently lost memory of his guilt for long periods, nevertheless the convention of his leprosy had more or less persisted with Samuel until that moment: when it vanished with strange suddenness, to Samuel's conscious relief.
There was a rain of pellets on the window.
"Hear that?" demanded Cyril, whispering dramatically.
"And it's been like that on my window too."
Samuel arose.
"Go back to your room!" he ordered in the same dramatic whisper; but not as father to son--rather as conspirator to conspirator.
Constance slept.
They could hear her regular breathing.
Barefooted, the elderly gowned figure followed the younger, and one after the other they creaked down the two steps which separated Cyril's room from his parents'.
"Shut the door quietly!" said Samuel.
Cyril obeyed.
And then, having lighted Cyril's gas, Samuel drew the blind, unfastened the catch of the window, and began to open it with many precautions of silence.
All the sashes in that house were difficult to manage.
Cyril stood close to his father, shivering without knowing that he shivered, astonished only that his father had not told him to get back into bed at once.
It was, beyond doubt, the proudest hour of Cyril's career.
In addition to the mysterious circumstances of the night, there was in the situation that thrill which always communicates itself to a father and son when they are afoot together upon an enterprise unsuspected by the woman from whom their lives have no secrets.
Samuel put his head out of the window.
A man was standing there.
"That you, Samuel?" The voice came low.
"Yes," replied Samuel, cautiously.
"It's not Cousin Daniel, is it?"
"I want ye," said Daniel Povey, curtly.
Samuel paused.
"I'll be down in a minute," he said.
Cyril at length received the command to get back into bed at once.
"Whatever's up, father?" he asked joyously.
"I don't know.
I must put some things on and go and see."
He shut down the window on all the breezes that were pouring into the room.
"Now quick, before I turn the gas out!" he admonished, his hand on the gas-tap.
"You'll tell me in the morning, won't you, father?"
"Yes," said Mr. Povey, conquering his habitual impulse to say
'No.'
He crept back to the large bedroom to grope for clothes.
When, having descended to the parlour and lighted the gas there, he opened the side-door, expecting to let Cousin Daniel in, there was no sign of Cousin Daniel.
Presently he saw a figure standing at the corner of the Square.
He whistled--Samuel had a singular faculty of whistling, the envy of his son--and Daniel beckoned to him.
He nearly extinguished the gas and then ran out, hatless.
He was wearing most of his clothes, except his linen collar and necktie, and the collar of his coat was turned up.
Daniel advanced before him, without waiting, into the confectioner's shop opposite.
Being part of the most modern building in the Square, Daniel's shop was provided with the new roll-down iron shutter, by means of which you closed your establishment with a motion similar to the winding of a large clock, instead of putting up twenty separate shutters one by one as in the sixteenth century.
The little portal in the vast sheet of armour was ajar, and Daniel had passed into the gloom beyond.
At the same moment a policeman came along on his beat, cutting off Mr. Povey from Daniel.
"Good-night, officer!
Brrr!" said Mr. Povey, gathering his dignity about him and holding himself as though it was part of his normal habit to take exercise bareheaded and collarless in St. Luke's Square on cold November nights.
He behaved so because, if Daniel had desired the services of a policeman, Daniel would of course have spoken to this one.