“But, really now, my darling, would you have me lacking in all proper paternal feeling! It is necessary I give the child a fair start in life; and I ask you, candidly, could any parent discharge that duty, with any real thoroughness, in less than a week?”
“That, though, is not at all what I said. And for any full-grown man to be talking such nonsense—”
“So now you see for yourself! Therefore I shall be leaving you both next Tuesday, and it is quite useless for you to implore me to stay a half-second longer than that. Besides, I rather like him.”
Yet the child showed peculiarities. For one thing, his tongue had no red in it, but was formed of perfectly white flesh. When Gerald noticed this odd fact he said nothing about it, though, because Gerald comprehended the limitations of gray magic. And for another thing, on the third day of Theodorick’s existence, Gerald happened to lay aside his rose-colored spectacles while he was playing with his son. Then the boy was not there. Gerald shrugged, just in time to avoid shuddering. He replaced his spectacles, and all was as before, to every freckle and each red hair.
After that, Gerald wore his spectacles always.
For Theodorick Quentin Musgrave had become very dear to him. No more than any other father could Gerald rationally explain this dearness or justify it by any common-sense logic. He only knew that the brat aroused in him a tenderness which came appreciably near to being unselfish; that it worried him to have the brat go unchristened in this neighborhood so full of sorcerers and wizards; that when he touched the brat it pleased him, for no assignable reason; and that when the brat displayed the mildest gleam of intelligence, it at once seemed quite brilliant and profound, and inexpressibly beyond all other people’s children.
For Theodorick noticed everything. And Gerald delighted particularly in the child’s intelligence and powers of observation, because, since no sort of cleverness could possibly be inherited from poor dear stupid Maya, all the boy’s more excellent mental traits were obviously paternal.
For example, “There is a lady,” Theodorick had stated, pointing toward Antan.
“Oh, any number of ladies, my son,” Gerald assented, as he thought of the many beautiful goddesses and feminine myths who (for all that, he reflected, he had never seen any female creature pass toward Antan) must be aiding to make yet more glorious that kingdom over which Gerald would by this time next week be ruling.
And Gerald’s hand went to the shoulder of the freckled brat whom, after next week, he would not ever be seeing any more: and Gerald wondered at the wholly illogical pleasure he derived just from touching this child.