According to the tenets of ideality and poetry, he ought to be like his father, a large, fair, serene-eyed boy, born out of mystic hours and moonlight dreaming. In reality he is the antipodes of serene, and is acutely organised. He is tiny, and timid, and tearful too, but Zai, after the fashion of most young mothers, considers him a cherub, a lump of perfection.
Whether he screams or whether he crows, she fancies they are warblings of the angelic choir, but notwithstanding half the time she does not know what to do for him. Long before she can manage to hold him tight in her slender arms, without letting him drop on the floor, her big, wistful grey eyes follow the obese proportions of the French nurse from hour to hour to learn what she does to keep “Baby” quiet. And when at last nature overpowers her prudence and she rashly insists on taking charge of him herself, her fear lest he should come to grief gives him a feeling of insecurity which makes him scream louder than ever.
Nevertheless mother and child make such a charming Madonna-like picture that Lord Delaval, who has always gone in for lust of the eye, likes to look upon it. Nothing, in fact, can exceed his devotion for the first six weeks of paternal experience. He may have been fickle and unstable, but he now spends his whole time with his wife, his strong arms carry her about, he reads to her, and gazes on her with eyes through which the passionate fervour of the honeymoon shines out.
Never has Zai had him so completely to herself. Never has he been so gentle, so unselfish, so loving. And no matter what happens, she has this period to look back upon with unmarred sensations of content. Maybe if wrong or trouble come to her, these hours will be green oases in life’s desert, landmarks in memory, which will soften resentment into regret. But when a couple of months have gone by, Paris has begun her season, and it is at Zai’s own solicitation that her husband begins to go and look about him a little.
“You’ll get quite ill, darling, unless you have a little distraction,” she says, tenderly, as her white hand, smaller and thinner than ever, plays with his fair hair. “And you need not mind leaving me, for I shan’t be dull now I’ve got Baby.” Yes, she has got Baby to keep her company and to take up all her attention, and he is not at all loth for a little distraction, especially as she urges it.
The next evening, sauntering down the Boulevard des Italiens, he runs against old London pals, men of the same rank, and something of the same calibre as himself, Shropshire and Silverlake, men who have formed mésalliances, and whose morals are not too strict for a “spree.”
“Hallo, Delaval, come over on French leave?” Shropshire asks. “There are a lot of pretty women at the theatres now. Silverlake and I are off to the Alcazar presently, and you might as well join us.” He hesitates—the Alcazar—it does not sound so respectable as the Folies Dramatiques, or the Opera Lyrique. Delaval has a dim sense that music-halls in London are not quite the thing for newly married men, but he salves his conscience by the thought that in Paris these kind of places are on a more respectable footing.
So after an excellent dinner at Bignon’s, washed down by Röederer, the trio stroll to the Alcazar.
“It’s a long time since I’ve been at a place like this,” Delaval says, “but I suppose I must try and do some of the Parisian things, unless I want to be taken for a regular savage.”
“Things are rather changed since you were here, eh,” Silverlake asks.