"Put your thick overcoat on, dear," said Constance, in a dream, descending with him.
"I hope it isn't--" Miss Insull stopped.
"Yes it is, Miss Insull," said Samuel, deliberately.
In less than a minute he was gone.
Constance ran upstairs.
But the cry had ceased.
She turned the door-knob softly, slowly, and crept into the chamber.
A night- light made large shadows among the heavy mahogany and the crimson, tasselled rep in the close-curtained room.
And between the bed and the ottoman (on which lay Samuel's newly-bought family Bible) the cot loomed in the shadows.
She picked up the night-light and stole round the bed.
Yes, he had decided to fall asleep.
The hazard of death afar off had just defeated his devilish obstinacy.
Fate had bested him.
How marvellously soft and delicate that tear-stained cheek!
How frail that tiny, tiny clenched hand!
In Constance grief and joy were mystically united.
II
The drawing-room was full of visitors, in frocks of ceremony.
The old drawing-room, but newly and massively arranged with the finest Victorian furniture from dead Aunt Harriet's house at Axe; two "Canterburys," a large bookcase, a splendid scintillant table solid beyond lifting, intricately tortured chairs and armchairs!
The original furniture of the drawing-room was now down in the parlour, making it grand.
All the house breathed opulence; it was gorged with quiet, restrained expensiveness; the least considerable objects, in the most modest corners, were what Mrs. Baines would have termed 'good.'
Constance and Samuel had half of all Aunt Harriet's money and half of Mrs. Baines's; the other half was accumulating for a hypothetical Sophia, Mr. Critchlow being the trustee.
The business continued to flourish.
People knew that Samuel Povey was buying houses.
Yet Samuel and Constance had not made friends; they had not, in the Five Towns phrase, 'branched out socially,' though they had very meetly branched out on subscription lists.
They kept themselves to themselves (emphasizing the preposition).
These guests were not their guests; they were the guests of Cyril.
He had been named Samuel because Constance would have him named after his father, and Cyril because his father secretly despised the name of Samuel; and he was called Cyril; 'Master Cyril,' by Amy, definite successor to Maggie.
His mother's thoughts were on Cyril as long as she was awake.
His father, when not planning Cyril's welfare, was earning money whose unique object could be nothing but Cyril's welfare.
Cyril was the pivot of the house; every desire ended somewhere in Cyril.
The shop existed now solely for him.
And those houses that Samuel bought by private treaty, or with a shamefaced air at auctions--somehow they were aimed at Cyril.
Samuel and Constance had ceased to be self-justifying beings; they never thought of themselves save as the parents of Cyril.
They realized this by no means fully.
Had they been accused of monomania they would have smiled the smile of people confident in their commonsense and their mental balance.
Nevertheless, they were monomaniacs.
Instinctively they concealed the fact as much as possible; They never admitted it even to themselves.
Samuel, indeed, would often say:
"That child is not everybody.
That child must be kept in his place."
Constance was always teaching him consideration for his father as the most important person in the household.
Samuel was always teaching him consideration for his mother as the most important person in the household.
Nothing was left undone to convince him that he was a cipher, a nonentity, who ought to be very glad to be alive.
But he knew all about his importance.
He knew that the entire town was his.
He knew that his parents were deceiving themselves.
Even when he was punished he well knew that it was because he was so important.
He never imparted any portion of this knowledge to his parents; a primeval wisdom prompted him to retain it strictly in his own bosom.
He was four and a half years old, dark, like his father; handsome like his aunt, and tall for his age; not one of his features resembled a feature of his mother's, but sometimes he 'had her look.'