"It's very unfortunate," murmured the parson, "certainly, in many cases."Shelton would now have changed the subject, but at this moment the unhappy Crocker snored. Being a man of action, he had gone to sleep.
"It seems to me," said Shelton hurriedly, as he saw the parson's eyebrows rising at the sound, "almost what you might call wrong.""Dear me, but how can it be wrong?"
Shelton now felt that he must justify his saying somehow.
"I don't know," he said, "only one hears of such a lot of cases--clergymen's families; I've two uncles of my own, who---"A new expression gathered on the parson's face; his mouth had tightened, and his chin receded slightly. " Why, he 's like a mule!"thought Shelton. His eyes, too, had grown harder, greyer, and more parroty. Shelton no longer liked his face.
"Perhaps you and I," the parson said, "would not understand each other on such matters."And Shelton felt ashamed.
"I should like to ask you a question in turn, however," the parson said, as if desirous of meeting Shelton on his low ground: "How do you justify marriage if it is not to follow the laws of nature?""I can only tell you what I personally feel.""My dear sir, you forget that a woman's chief delight is in her motherhood.""I should have thought it a pleasure likely to pall with too much repetition. Motherhood is motherhood, whether of one or of a dozen.""I 'm afraid," replied the parson, with impatience, though still keeping on his guest's low ground, "your theories are not calculated to populate the world.""Have you ever lived in London?" Shelton asked. "It always makes me feel a doubt whether we have any right to have children at all.""Surely," said the parson with wonderful restraint, and the joints of his fingers cracked with the grip he had upon his chair, "you are leaving out duty towards the country; national growth is paramount!""There are two ways of looking at that. It depends on what you want your country to become.""I did n't know," said the parson--fanaticism now had crept into his smile--"there could be any doubt on such a subject."The more Shelton felt that commands were being given him, the more controversial he naturally became--apart from the merits of this subject, to which he had hardly ever given thought.
"I dare say I'm wrong," he said, fastening his eyes on the blanket in which his legs were wrapped; "but it seems to me at least an open question whether it's better for the country to be so well populated as to be quite incapable of supporting itself." -"Surely," said the parson, whose face regained its pallor, "you're not a Little Englander?"On Shelton this phrase had a mysterious effect. Resisting an impulse to discover what he really was, he answered hastily:
" Of course I'm not!"
The parson followed up his triumph, and, shifting the ground of the discussion from Shelton's to his own, he gravely said:
"Surely you must see that your theory is founded in immorality. It is, if I may say so, extravagant, even wicked."But Shelton, suffering from irritation at his own dishonesty, replied with heat:
"Why not say at once, sir, 'hysterical, unhealthy'? Any opinion which goes contrary to that of the majority is always called so, Ibelieve."
"Well," returned the parson, whose eyes seemed trying to bind Shelton to his will, "I must say your ideas do seem to me both extravagant and unhealthy. The propagation of children is enjoined of marriage."Shelton bowed above his blanket, but the parson did not smile.
