“Now, my dear,” he continued, as they went on, “do you tell me that it's decent for men and women on the stage to writhe about like eels? Is n't life bad enough already?”
It suddenly struck Shelton that, for all his smile, his uncle's face had a look of crucifixion. It was, perhaps, only the stronger sunlight in the open spaces of Trafalgar Square.
“I don't know,” he said; “I think I prefer the truth.”
“Bad endings and the rest,” said Mr. Paramor, pausing under one of Nelson's lions and taking Shelton by a button. “Truth 's the very devil!”
He stood there, very straight, his eyes haunting his nephew's face; there seemed to Shelton a touching muddle in his optimism—a muddle of tenderness and of intolerance, of truth and second-handedness. Like the lion above him, he seemed to be defying Life to make him look at her.
“No, my dear,” he said, handing sixpence to a sweeper; “feelings are snakes! only fit to be kept in bottles with tight corks. You won't come to my club? Well, good-bye, old boy; my love to your mother when you see her”; and turning up the Square, he left Shelton to go on to his own club, feeling that he had parted, not from his uncle, but from the nation of which they were both members by birth and blood and education.
CHAPTER VII
THE CLUB
He went into the library of his club, and took up Burke's Peerage. The words his uncle had said to him on hearing his engagement had been these: “Dennant! Are those the Holm Oaks Dennants? She was a Penguin.”