The Island Pharisees Part 7

Shelton made a face.

"Mother," said he, "always believes things are safe."

His uncle looked through him with his keen, half-suffering glance, and up went the corners of his mouth.

"She's splendid," he said.

"Yes," said Shelton, "splendid."

The transaction, however, did not interest him; his uncle's judgment in such matters had a breezy soundness he would never dream of questioning.

"Well, about your settlement"; and, touching a bell three times, Mr. Paramor walked up and down the room. "Bring me the draft of Mr.

Richard's marriage settlement."

The stalwart commissionaire reappearing with a doc.u.ment--"Now then, d.i.c.k," said Mr. Paramor. "She 's not bringing anything into settlement, I understand; how 's that?"

"I did n't want it," replied Shelton, unaccountably ashamed.

Mr. Paramor's lips quivered; he drew the draft closer, took up a blue pencil, and, squeezing Shelton's arm, began to read. The latter, following his uncle's rapid exposition of the clauses, was relieved when he paused suddenly.

"If you die and she marries again," said Mr. Paramor, "she forfeits her life interest--see?"

"Oh!" said Shelton; "wait a minute, Uncle Ted."

Mr. Paramor waited, biting his pencil; a smile flickered on his mouth, and was decorously subdued. It was Shelton's turn to walk about.

"If she marries again," he repeated to himself.

Mr. Paramor was a keen fisherman; he watched his nephew as he might have watched a fish he had just landed.

"It's very usual," he remarked.

Shelton took another turn.

"She forfeits," thought he; "exactly."

When he was dead, he would have no other way of seeing that she continued to belong to him. Exactly!

Mr. Paramor's haunting eyes were fastened on his nephew's face.

"Well, my dear," they seemed to say, "what 's the matter?"

Exactly! Why should she have his money if she married again? She would forfeit it. There was comfort in the thought. Shelton came back and carefully reread the clause, to put the thing on a purely business basis, and disguise the real significance of what was pa.s.sing in his mind.

"If I die and she marries again," he repeated aloud, "she forfeits."

What wiser provision for a man pa.s.sionately in love could possibly have been devised? His uncle's eye travelled beyond him, humanely turning from the last despairing wriggles of his fish.

"I don't want to tie her," said Shelton suddenly.

The corners of Mr. Paramour's mouth flew up.

"You want the forfeiture out?" he asked.

The blood rushed into Shelton's face; he felt he had been detected in a piece of sentiment.

"Ye-es," he stammered.

"Sure?"

"Quite!" The answer was a little sulky.

Her uncle's pencil descended on the clause, and he resumed the reading of the draft, but Shelton could not follow it; he was too much occupied in considering exactly why Mr. Paramor had been amused, and to do this he was obliged to keep his eyes upon him. Those features, just pleasantly rugged; the springy poise of the figure; the hair neither straight nor curly, neither short nor long; the haunting look of his eyes and the humorous look of his mouth; his clothes neither shabby nor dandified; his serviceable, fine hands; above all, the equability of the hovering blue pencil, conveyed the impression of a perfect balance between heart and head, sensibility and reason, theory and its opposite.

"'During coverture,'" quoted Mr. Paramor, pausing again, "you understand, of course, if you don't get on, and separate, she goes on taking?"

If they didn't get on! Shelton smiled. Mr. Paramor did not smile, and again Shelton had the sense of having knocked up against something poised but firm. He remarked irritably:

"If we 're not living together, all the more reason for her having it."

This time his uncle smiled. It was difficult for Shelton to feel angry at that ironic merriment, with its sudden ending; it was too impersonal to irritate: it was too concerned with human nature.

"If--hum--it came to the other thing," said Mr. Paramor, "the settlement's at an end as far as she 's concerned. We 're bound to look at every case, you know, old boy."

The memory of the play and his conversation with Halidome was still strong in Shelton. He was not one of those who could not face the notion of transferred affections--at a safe distance.

"All right, Uncle Ted," said he. For one mad moment he was attacked by the desire to "throw in" the case of divorce. Would it not be common chivalry to make her independent, able to change her affections if she wished, unhampered by monetary troubles? You only needed to take out the words "during coverture."

Almost anxiously he looked into his uncle's face. There was no meanness there, but neither was there encouragement in that comprehensive brow with its wide sweep of hair. "Quixotism," it seemed to say, "has merits, but--" The room, too, with its wide horizon and tall windows, looking as if it dealt habitually in common-sense, discouraged him. Innumerable men of breeding and the soundest principles must have bought their wives in here. It was perfumed with the atmosphere of wisdom and law-calf. The aroma of Precedent was strong; Shelton swerved his lance, and once more settled down to complete the purchase of his wife.

"I can't conceive what you're--in such a hurry for; you 're not going to be married till the autumn," said Mr. Paramor, finishing at last.

Replacing the blue pencil in the rack, he took the red rose from the gla.s.s, and sniffed at it. "Will you come with me as far as Pall Mall? I 'm going to take an afternoon off; too cold for Lord's, I suppose?"

They walked into the Strand.

"Have you seen this new play of Borogrove's?" asked Shelton, as they pa.s.sed the theatre to which he had been with Halidome.

"I never go to modern plays," replied Mr. Paramor; "too d---d gloomy."

Shelton glanced at him; he wore his hat rather far back on his head, his eyes haunted the street in front; he had shouldered his umbrella.

"Psychology 's not in your line, Uncle Ted?"

"Is that what they call putting into words things that can't be put in words?"

"The French succeed in doing it," replied Shelton, "and the Russians; why should n't we?"