“Well, we’ve gone and done it!”
There it was, the incredible, incomprehensible future—coming!
Samuel had never correctly imagined the manner of its heralding. He had imagined in his early simplicity that one day Constance, blushing, might put her mouth to his ear and whisper—something positive. It had not occurred in the least like that. But things are so obstinately, so incurably unsentimental.
“I think we ought to drive over and tell mother, on Sunday,” said Constance.
His impulse was to reply, in his grand, offhand style: “Oh, a letter will do!”
But he checked himself and said, with careful deference: “You think that will be better than writing?”
All was changed. He braced every fibre to meet destiny, and to help Constance to meet it.
The weather threatened on Sunday. He went to Axe without Constance. His cousin drove him there in a dogcart, and he announced that he should walk home, as the exercise would do him good. During the drive Daniel, in whom he had not confided, chattered as usual, and Samuel pretended to listen with the same attitude as usual; but secretly he despised Daniel for a man who has got something not of the first importance on the brain. His perspective was truer than Daniel’s.
He walked home, as he had decided, over the wavy moorland of the county dreaming in the heart of England. Night fell on him in mid-career, and he was tired. But the earth, as it whirled through naked space, whirled up the moon for him, and he pressed on at a good speed. A wind from Arabia wandering cooled his face. And at last, over the brow of Toft End, he saw suddenly the Five Towns a-twinkle on their little hills down in the vast amphitheatre. And one of those lamps was Constance’s lamp—one, somewhere. He lived, then. He entered into the shadow of nature. The mysteries made him solemn. What! A boneshaker, his cousin, and then this!
“Well, I’m damned! Well, I’m damned!” he kept repeating, he who never swore.
III
Cyril
I
Constance stood at the large, many-paned window in the parlour. She was stouter. Although always plump, her figure had been comely, with a neat, well-marked waist. But now the shapeliness had gone; the waistline no longer existed, and there were no more crinolines to create it artificially. An observer not under the charm of her face might have been excused for calling her fat and lumpy. The face, grave, kind, and expectant, with its radiant, fresh cheeks, and the rounded softness of its curves, atoned for the figure. She was nearly twenty-nine years of age.
It was late in October. In Wedgwood Street, next to Boulton Terrace, all the little brown houses had been pulled down to make room for a palatial covered market, whose foundations were then being dug. This destruction exposed a vast area of sky to the northeast. A great dark cloud with an untidy edge rose massively out of the depths and curtained off the tender blue of approaching dusk; while in the west, behind Constance, the sun was setting in calm and gorgeous melancholy on the Thursday hush of the town. It was one of those afternoons which gather up all the sadness of the moving earth and transform it into beauty.
Samuel Povey turned the corner from Wedgwood Street, and crossed King Street obliquely to the front door, which Constance opened. He seemed tired and anxious.
“Well?” demanded Constance, as he entered.
“She’s no better. There’s no getting away from it, she’s worse. I should have stayed, only I knew you’d be worrying. So I caught the three-fifty.”
“How is that Mrs. Gilchrist shaping as a nurse?”
“She’s very good,” said Samuel, with conviction. “Very good!”
“What a blessing! I suppose you didn’t happen to see the doctor?”
“Yes, I did.”
“What did he say to you?”
Samuel gave a deprecating gesture. “Didn’t say anything particular. With dropsy, at that stage, you know …”
Constance had returned to the window, her expectancy apparently unappeased.
“I don’t like the look of that cloud,” she murmured.
“What! Are they out still?” Samuel inquired, taking off his overcoat.
“Here they are!” cried Constance. Her features suddenly transfigured, she sprang to the door, pulled it open, and descended the steps.
A perambulator was being rapidly pushed up the slope by a breathless girl.
“Amy,” Constance gently protested, “I told you not to venture far.”
“I hurried all I could, mum, soon as I seed that cloud,” the girl puffed, with the air of one who is seriously thankful to have escaped a great disaster.
Constance dived into the recesses of the perambulator and extricated from its cocoon the centre of the universe, and scrutinized him with quiet passion, and then rushed with him into the house, though not a drop of rain had yet fallen.
“Precious!” exclaimed Amy, in ecstasy, her young virginal eyes following him till he disappeared. Then she wheeled away the perambulator, which now had no more value nor interest than an eggshell. It was necessary to take it right round to the Brougham Street yard entrance, past the front of the closed shop.
Constance sat down on the horsehair sofa and hugged and kissed her prize before removing his bonnet.
“Here’s Daddy!” she said to him, as if imparting strange and rapturous tidings. “Here’s Daddy come back from hanging up his coat in the passage! Daddy rubbing his hands!” And then, with a swift transition of voice and features: “Do look at him, Sam!”
Samuel, preoccupied, stooped forward. “Oh, you little scoundrel! Oh, you little scoundrel!” he greeted the baby, advancing his finger towards the baby’s nose.
The baby, who had hitherto maintained a passive indifference to external phenomena, lifted elbows and toes, blew bubbles from his tiny mouth, and stared at the finger with the most ravishing, roguish smile, as though saying: “I know that great sticking-out limb, and there is a joke about it which no one but me can see, and which is my secret joy that you shall never share.”
“Tea ready?” Samuel asked, resuming
