Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Cover art]
A DEAL
WITH
THE DEVIL
_By_
*EDEN PHILLPOTTS*
AUTHOR OF
"IN SUGAR-CANE LAND;"
"THE END OF A LIFE;" "FOLLY AND FRESH AIR;"
"SOME EVERY-DAY FOLKS;"
ETC.
_LONDON_
BLISS, SANDS AND FOSTER
CRAVEN STREET, STRAND, W.C.
1895
*CONTENTS.*
I. Grandfather’s Birthday
II. In the Cupboard
III. Cold Comfort
IV. Hidden in London
V. The People next Door
VI. Retreat
VII. "Vote for Dolphin"
VIII. Marie Rogers
IX. In London once more
X. The Crusade
XI. A New Leaf turned
XII. A Suggestion
XIII. The Squire’s Daughter
XIV. At Upper Norwood
XV. Susan Marks
XVI. On the River
XVII. Phyllis
XVIII. I forbid the Banns
XIX. Counsel’s Opinion
XX. A Climax
XXI. My Nightmare
XXII. The Dwindling of Grandpapa
XXIII. "Fine by Degrees and Beautifully Less"
XXIV. The Passing of Grandpapa
_*A Deal with the Devil.*_
*CHAPTER I.*
_*GRANDFATHER’S BIRTHDAY.*_
Before my grandpapa, Mr. Daniel Dolphin, comes down to breakfast on the
morning of his hundredth birthday, I may tell you something about him.
He has been married three times; he has buried all his wives and all his
children. There were five of the latter, resulting from grandpapa’s
three marriages; but now I, Martha Dolphin, the only child of
grandpapa’s eldest son, am the sole survivor and living descendant of
Daniel Dolphin.
Frankly it must be confessed that grandpapa has been an unprincipled man
in his time. Among other inconveniences, resulting from unedifying
conduct, he suffered five years’ imprisonment for forgery before I was
born; but when he turned ninety-five I think he honestly began to
realise that this world is, after all, a mere temporary place of
preparation, and from that age up to the present moment (I am dealing
with the morning of his hundredth birthday) he abandoned the things
which once gave him pleasure, and began to look seriously towards
another and a better life beyond the grave. Indeed, thanks to my
ever-present warnings, and the Rev. John Murdoch’s ministrations,
grandpapa, from the time he was ninety-five, kept as sober, as honest,
and as innocent as one could wish to see any nonagenarian. He regarded
the future with quiet confidence now, feared death no longer, and
alleged that his approaching end had no terrors for him. The dear old
fellow was very fond of me, and he often said that, but for his patient
granddaughter, he should never have turned from the broad downward road
at all. I can see him now coming in to breakfast--a marvellous man for
his age. Bent he was, and shrivelled as a brown pippin from last year
looks in June, but his eyes were bright, his intelligence was keen, his
wit and humour ever active, his jokes most creditable for a man of such
advanced age. In his antique frilled shirt, black stock, long
snuff-coloured coat, and velvet cap, grandpapa looked a perfect picture.
I cannot say there was anything venerable about him, but he would have
made a splendid model for a miser or something of that sort.
"Many, many happy returns of the day, dear grandpapa," said I, hastening
to kiss his withered cheek and to place a white rose from our little
garden in his button-hole.
"Thank you, thank you, Martha. Have you got a present for the old man?"
he asked, in his sharp, piping treble.
"That I have, dear grandpapa--a big packet of the real rappee you always
like so much."
"Good girl. And this--Lord! Lord!--this is my hundredth birthday!"
Presently he wrestled with a poached egg and some bread-and-milk. He
spoiled his beautiful frilled shirt with the egg, and used an expletive.
Then he remembered a comic incident, and began to chuckle in the middle
of tea-drinking, and so choked.
I patted him on the back, cleaned him up, and pulled him together.
Then, spluttering and laughing, all in a breath, he turned to me,
gradually calmed down, and spoke:
"A dream--it was a dream that came to me last night--a vivid incubus,
mighty clear and mighty real. It must have been the tapioca pudden at
supper. I told you it was awful tough."
"Indeed, dearest one, I made it myself."
"Well, well. To the dream. I thought a figure stood at my bedside--a
figure much like that in the flames on the old stained-glass window at
St. Paul’s. He wore horns too, but certainly he had the manners of a
gentleman. Of course we all know he is one. It’s in the Bible, or
Shakespeare, or somewhere."
"A fiend, grandpapa!"
"The devil himself, my dear, and a very tidy personage too. Bless your
life, he bowed and scraped like a Frenchman, apologised for troubling me
at such a late hour, handed me my glasses, that I might the better see
the friendly look on his face, and then asked me if I could spare him
ten minutes. You know nothing ever alarms me. I’m ’saved,’ if I
understand Parson Murdoch rightly; and, therefore I’ve no need to be
bothered about the other place or anybody in it."
"Don’t talk like that, grandpapa."
"Why not? ’Well, fire away, Nicholas,’ I said, ’but candidly you’ve
come to the wrong man, if you imagine you’ll do any business here. I
was off your books five years ago. You know that well enough.’
’Daniel,’ he answered, with more familiarity than I cared about,
’Daniel, it is only because you were on my books for ninety-five years
that I’ve dropped in this evening. One good turn deserves another. You
are probably not aware that, in the ordinary course of events, to-morrow
morning--the morning of your hundredth birthday--will never come for
you. The sun will rise and find you lifeless clay; your granddaughter
will knock at your chamber door and receive no answer; for your days are
numbered, your span of life, handsome enough in all conscience, is done.
But listen, I can guarantee ten more years. We only do these things for
very old customers. Put yourself in my hands and ten more mundane years
of life shall be yours.’"
Here my grandpapa broke off to chuckle, which he did very heartily.
Then he took snuff, and it dropped about his shirt-front, where the
poached egg had already fallen, and imparted to the dear old man his
usual appearance.
"’What are the terms, Nick?’ I asked," continued grandpapa. "’The
ordinary terms, Daniel,’ he answered. ’This is a little private
speculation of my own, and I want to point out the beauties of it to
you, because it’s a bit out of the common, even for me. You see,
Daniel, as a rule we grant these extensions only to gentlemen in dire
distress--on the days before executions and so forth. But in your case
you might justly consider that no offer of increased life was worth
accepting. You are right. More it would be. A man cannot get any solid
satisfaction out of life after he is a hundred years old. The body at
that age is a mere clog; eating and drinking become a farce; the
pleasures of sense are dead. As to brain, even that’s only a broken box
full of tangled threads. Intellectual enjoyments are no longer for you.
Not, of course, that they were ever your strong point. You can only sit
in the chimney corner now, and blink and sleep, and wait for Death to
come and roll you over with his pole-axe, like the worn-out old animal
you are. No, you shan’t grow older, Dan, you shall grow younger if you
please. You shall cram another lifetime into the ten years which I
promise. Each of them will extend over a period of ten earthly years.
That is the offer. It should work out well for both of us. Read this.
I had the thing drafted; in fact, I did it myself to save time.’ Then
he handed me a form of agreement duly stamped."
"My dear grandpapa, what an extraordinary nightmare!"
"It was. I read the bond critically, and, for reasons which I cannot
now remember, determined to sign it."
"Grandfather!"
"Well, it was only a dream. Ten years more life, remember. That was
worth a slight sacrifice."
"A _slight_ sacrifice, grandpapa!"
"Anyhow, I said I’d sign, and Nick took a red feather out of his cap in
a twinkling. ’A matter of form,’ he said, ’one drop of venous blood is
all we shall require.’ Then he dug the pen into my shoulder and
politely handed it to me. ’Of course witnesses in these cases are very
inconvenient,’ proceeded Nick, ’but between gentlemen our bonds will be
sufficiently binding.’ So I signed, and he bowed and wished me joy and
went up the chimney. But a funny coincidence is that this morning my
shoulder has a round red mark upon it like a burn."
"A flea, dearest one."
"Possibly. In fact that is how I explained it to myself. As you know,
a dream often occupies the briefest flash of time, and it may be that
some chance insect biting my shoulder produced a moment’s irritation,
and was responsible for the entire vision. But I still think it may
have been that tapioca pudden. Mind you are more careful with my food in
the future."
*CHAPTER II.*
_*IN THE CUPBOARD.*_
We laughed the matter off, and should probably have forgotten all about
it but that grandpapa suffered a great deal of inconvenience with his
shoulder. The round, red mark gathered and grew very painful. Indeed it
only yielded to a long course of bread poultices. Thanks to tonics,
however, he soon recovered his health; and then it seemed that his
splendid constitution had almost enabled him to take a new lease of
life. He actually gained strength instead of losing it, and his
faculties became clearer if anything. We lived in Ealing, Middlesex, at
the time, and when my grandpapa’s health was thoroughly re-established,
his medical man wrote to the _Lancet_, and a deputation waited on my
grandfather from the local Liberal Club to congratulate him. The dear
old fellow became quite a celebrity in his way, and, what is more, there
was no backsliding; he went to church with me every Sunday in a bath
chair, and at home he kept his temper better, and nearly always did what
he was told.
But six months after his birthday the thunder-cloud burst upon our
little home. I was sitting in the parlour, doing household accounts,
and grandpapa was in his own room, playing the flute. He had not
touched this instrument for at least five years, but to my amazement,
that afternoon he dragged it out of some old cupboard and began to play
it, with runs and shakes and false notes, just in the old pleasant way.
He stopped suddenly, however, after giving a very creditable rendering
of the "Old Hundredth." I feared this effort had been too much for him,
and was just hastening upstairs when he came hurrying down and tottered
into the room. Fright and dismay sat on his wrinkled face; his knees
shook and knocked together, his eyes protruded like a crab’s, and his
poor old jaws were going like a pair of nut-crackers, but he could not
speak.
"My dearest, _what_ is it?" I cried, running to him as he subsided on
the sofa. "Oh, why will you be so active at your time of life? You’ll
_kill_ yourself if you go on so. What have you done now? You’ve
strained something internal with that flute--I know you have."
"I’ve found it! I’ve found it!" he cried, trembling all over.
"Of course, or else you couldn’t play it," I replied.
"I’ve found IT," he repeated, raising his hand wildly and waving a
manuscript over his head. "Read that--Oh, why was I ever born? Read
it, I tell you. It’s a real agreement, on parchment, not a nightmare at
all. He’s got the other, no doubt; the one I signed. I’ve bartered away
my immortal soul for ten more years of horrible life, and _I’m growing
younger every moment!_"
"Where did this come from?" was all I could say, taking a parchment
scroll from my grandpapa’s shaking hand.
"It fell out of the cupboard where I keep my flute music," he groaned.
"Read it, read it slowly, aloud. Is there any escape? It seems very
loosely worded. Oh why, why didn’t Jack live? He would have got me out
of this appalling fix if anybody could."
Jack, or John, was my father--a very able solicitor; but what law is
capable of coping with utterly unprincipled people who live in another
world? I read the thing. It was written in English, and signed with a
strange scrawl, like a flash of black lightning. Attached to it hung a
seal of flame-coloured wax. To show my unhappy grandparent’s exact
position I had better transcribe this document. Thus it ran:
"Know all men, and others, by these presents that in consideration of a
compact, signed, sealed, and delivered by Daniel Dolphin, of No. 114,
Windsor Road, Ealing, County of Middlesex, England, I hereby undertake
to provide him with certain years of life, to the number of ten, over,
above, and beyond the number (of one hundred) which it was originally
predestined that he should exist. And, further, it is to be noted,
observed, and understood that each of the said ten years hereinbefore
abovementioned shall embrace a period of life formerly extending over a
decade of ordinary mundane years; and it is also understood, granted,
and agreed that the aforementioned Daniel Dolphin do henceforth and
hereafter grow younger instead of older, which provision I hereby
undertake for the reason that human life protracted beyond a century,
ceases to give the possessor thereof pleasure or gratification in any
sort."
Then followed the date, the signature, and an address, which need not be
insisted upon, but which was sufficiently clear.
"What does it mean, grandpapa?" I asked faintly.
"Mean?" he screamed, "it means that in less than ten years’ time I shall
be a bald-headed baby again. It means that I shall live a hundred years
in ten and _go backwards_ all the while. It means I’m faced with about
the most hideous prospect ever heard of. And I’ve got nothing to make
me suffer with Christian fortitude either, for look at the end of it!
It’s a shameful programme--frightful and demoniacal: ten years of the
most fantastic existence that ever a devil designed, and then--then _my_
part of the bond has to be complied with. This is the result of turning
over a new leaf at ninety-five. Why didn’t I go on as I was going, and
only reform on my death-bed like other people?"
My grandfather sat in a haggard heap on the sofa, cried senile tears,
wrung his bony hands, and, I regret to say, used the only language which
was in his opinion equal to describing his shocking discovery. I
procured brandy and water, tried to say a few hopeful words, and then
went out to seek professional aid of some sort.
I was a woman of fifty then--accounted practical and far-seeing too.
But the terror of this stupendous misfortune fairly set my mind in a
whirl and quite clouded my generally lucid judgment. I hardly knew
where I should apply. My thoughts wavered between a clergyman, a
doctor, and a solicitor. In some measure it seemed a case for them all.
Finally I determined to speak to our Vicar. He was an old man, and
mainly responsible for grandpapa’s conversion. I must have been quite
hysterical by the time I reached the vicarage. At any rate, all I can
remember is that I sank down in Mr. Murdoch’s study, and wept bitterly
and sobbed out:
"Such a dreadful thing--such a dreadful thing. Grandpapa’s growing
younger every minute; and he’s gone and sold himself to the Devil!"
*CHAPTER III.*
_*COLD COMFORT.*_
Mr. Murdoch came round and saw my poor grandpapa at once. He was a
pompous, kind-hearted man, but proved of little service to us, being
unpractical, and unable apparently to grasp the horrid facts. Grandpapa
felt better, and rather more hopeful when we returned to him; but I fear
that alcohol alone was responsible for his improved spirits. I usually
kept the brandy locked up, because the dear old man never would
understand that it should only be taken as medicine; but I forgot to
remove it before going for the Vicar, and grandpapa had helped himself.
"Here’s a rum go!" he said, as Mr. Murdoch arrived, with his face a yard
long.
"My poor friend, my dear Dolphin, I cannot believe it; I refuse to
credit it."
"Read that then," said grandfather, kicking the Agreement across the
room with his felt slipper. Mr. Murdoch puzzled over it. Presently he
dropped the thing and smelt his gloves.
"It has an evil odour," he said. Then he sighed and shook his head and
seemed more concerned for the parish than for grandpapa.
"That such a thing should have happened in Ealing, of all places, is a
source of unutterable grief to me," murmured the Vicar.
"Smother Ealing!" piped out poor grandpapa. "Think of _me_!
Generalities are no good. Be practical if you can. Is it a ghastly hoax
or a hideous fact? Hasn’t anything of the kind ever happened before?
And couldn’t something be done to wriggle out of it? Regard the thing
professionally. You’re always talking about fighting the Evil One.
Well, here’s a chance to do it."
"I shall mention the matter in my private devotions," said Mr. Murdoch
mildly.
"Don’t do anything of the sort," snapped back grandpapa. "This affair
shan’t get about if I can help it--least of all in the next world. If
you can’t do anything definite, keep quiet. It must not be known. I
believe the thing’s a paltry joke myself. I don’t feel a day
younger--not an hour. We shall see. I’m going to let Nature take its
course for six months more; then I shall be a hundred and one, or else
only ninety, if this dastardly Deed speaks the truth. Then, should I
find I’m growing younger, I shall take steps and see George Lewis, and
the Bishop of London, and Andrew Clark. I’ll back them to thrash this
thing out for me anyhow. Meanwhile, please refrain from alluding to the
subject anywhere. Give me some more brandy, Martha."
So Mr. Murdoch, promising to preserve absolute silence, went away like a
man recovering from a bad dream, and grandpapa, having taken a great
deal more spirit than was good for him, slumbered uneasily on the sofa.
In his dreams I could hear him wrangling with something supernatural,
and evidently getting the worst of the argument. "It’s too bad," I
heard him say. "It’s simple sharp practice to jump on an old man like
me, and make him sign a one-sided thing like that when he was half
asleep!"
The cook and I presently helped the unhappy old sufferer to bed. Then,
locking up the Agreement, I sat down to think. We were alone in the
world, grandpapa and I. He looked to me for everything, and I devoted
my life to him. In person I was a plain woman, with simple tastes and a
tolerable temper. My life had been uneventful up to the present time,
but it looked as though a fair share of earthly excitement lay before me
now. I tried to picture the future, and my brain reeled. I saw my
grandfather renewing his youth day by day and hour by hour. I pictured
him going back to his old, unsatisfactory ways, with nothing whatever to
check him, and nobody to speak a word of warning. I saw Time winging
backwards with grandpapa and onwards with me. When I was fifty-five he
would be fifty; when I was fifty-six he would be forty; when I was
fifty-seven he would be thirty, and so on. As his future was now
definitely arranged for, no existing force of any sort remained to keep
grandpapa straight--none, at least, excepting the police force. He
would get out of my control when he was eighty, or thereabouts. From
that time forward I shuddered for him, and for myself. We belonged to
the lower middle-class, and had made a good many friends since
grandpapa’s reformation; but now our relations with our fellow-creatures
promised to present some rather exceptional difficulties. In fact, I
wept as I thought of the future. If I had known a quarter of what
awaited me, I should probably have screamed also. Somehow it was borne
in upon me from the first that we were faced with no imaginary problem.
The Agreement had a genuine, business-like look, in spite of the loose
wording.
"This woe will last ten years," I told myself. "Then something of a
definite nature must happen to grandpapa, and I shall be left to go into
the world once more--that is, if I outlive him, which is more or less
doubtful." For his dear sake I prayed and trusted I might be spared to
see him to the end of his complicated existence.
Dull gloom and dread and misery settled down upon our once happy little
establishment. Grandpapa appeared to lose all hope after the effects of
the brandy and water passed off, and he found that I had locked up the
bottle as usual. He eyed me, as though measuring his strength against
mine, but he did not attempt any encounter then. From that time forward
he spent the greater part of his days worrying in front of the
looking-glass and trying to find fresh signs of infirmity and decay. He
grew morose and moody, and used some harsh language to me because I
could not observe a new wrinkle which he alleged he had discovered.
"Any fool but you could see that I’m growing weaker every hour, both in
mind and body," he said; but the truth was that everything pointed in
the opposite direction. His appetite for solids improved, he slept less
by day, he began to "take notice" when people called, and showed little
gleams of returning memory. To my bitter regret he gave up going to
church, and resumed the habit of smoking tobacco. He tried one of his
old, favourite "churchwarden" clay pipes, but it was a failure, and he
told me next morning with delight that the thing had been too much for
him.
"That’s a sign I’m growing older, anyhow," he declared. But he was not.
I could see the early dawn of middle-age already creeping back over him,
and sick at heart it made me.
I pass rapidly to his hundred-and-first birthday, upon which anniversary
there was a scene--the beginning of a series. My friend Mrs. Hopkins
called to drink tea. She has a good heart and always tries to please
people. We have known one another for many years, and she has no
secrets from me. She called, and ate, and drank, and, in her cheery
way, congratulated grandpapa upon his appearance.
"Positively, Mr. Dolphin, you grow younger instead of older. You don’t
look a day more than ninety, and I doubt if you feel as much," she said,
very kindly.
"Bah! Stuff and rubbish, woman! I feel a thousand and look more.
Don’t talk twaddle like that. It makes me sick. Personal remarks are
always common, and I’m sorry you can allow yourself to sink to ’em."
Then he went out of the room in a pet, and I saw that he hobbled away
quite easily without using his walking sticks at all.
"Lor, Martha!" said Mrs. Hopkins. "What corn have I trod on now? I
thought the old gentleman would have been pleased."
I explained that grandfather felt very keenly about his age, and did not
like people to imagine that he looked any younger than was in reality
the case.
But when she went away, he came down again and dared me to bring any
more old women in to snigger and make jokes at his expense, as he
angrily put it.
"And another thing," said grandfather, "you can give Jane and the cook
warning, and see about sub-letting the house. I’m leaving Ealing at the
quarter-day. Here’s half a column about me and my wonderful age in the
_West Middlesex County Times_. I’m not going to make a curiosity and a
raree show of myself in this place for you or anybody. They’ll have me
at Tussaud’s Waxworks next. We clear out of this on June 24. I’m going
back to town."
*CHAPTER IV.*
_*HIDDEN IN LONDON.*_
I was sorry to leave Mr. Murdoch, Mrs. Hopkins, and other kind friends
at Ealing; but, as I always said, I did not mind changing residences,
for No. 114, Windsor Road, was an old-fashioned dwelling house without a
bathroom, which is a great drawback.
Grandpapa’s hair began to come back now, in little silvery tufts over
his ears. He also lost something of his old stoop, and took to using
one walking-stick instead of a couple.
He grew terribly sensitive and bad-tempered as his powers increased; and
with access of mental strength the agony and horror of his position
naturally became more and more keen.
We had a long conversation as to where we should take ourselves and our
secret. Grandpapa first changed his mind about London, and wanted to
leave England. He had an unpractical yearning to sail away and hide his
approaching manhood on some desert island; and for my part I wish now I
had fallen in with this project, and taken the old man off to the heart
of the tropics, or the point of the Poles, or anywhere away from
civilization; but in a weak moment I urged him to abide by his original
opinion, that the metropolis was a place where he might best hide his
approaching transformation. I forgot my grandfather’s different
weaknesses, when I made this suggestion. I should, of course, have
recollected that the ruling passions of his life would reassert
themselves.
However, he consented to come to town, and away we went--suddenly,
mysteriously, without leaving any address, though not before I had
settled every outstanding account. Our means were fortunately ample for
all moderate comforts. We took a little house at West Kensington--No.
18, Wharton Terrace--and there, having engaged a cook and housemaid, we
settled down to face what problems the future might have in store for
us.
Grandpapa continued to hug his hideous secret, nor would he suffer me to
seek spiritual, legal, or medical aid. For the present he had abandoned
his design of consulting the Bishop of London, and the other celebrities
he had mentioned in the first agony of his discovery. In fact, as time
passed, I could see he was trying to banish his position from his mind.
He fought against his growing strength, and attempted excesses in the
matter of eating and drinking with a view to impair his constitution.
"Don’t be chattering about the matter, for heaven’s sake!" he said to me
on the occasion of his hundred-and-second birthday. "You’re always
whining and making stupid suggestions. Do try and look cheerful, even if
you don’t feel so. It’s bad enough to be the sport of fiends without
having a wet blanket like you crying and sighing about from morning till
night. You make every room in the house damp and draughty with your
groans and tears."
"You are now eighty," I said, "eighty, according to the New Scheme, and
you look less. Are you going on without making any effort to throw off
this abominable curse? Are you content to let matters take their
backward course? Do something--anything, I implore you. Take some
steps; _try_ to stem the tide; be a man, grandpapa!"
"A man!" He laughed bitterly. "Yes," he continued, "a man first, then
a conceited puppy with a moustache and ridiculous clothes; then a
long-legged lout of a boy, with a pimply face that blushes when the
girls pass by; then a little good-for-nothing devil at school; then a
fat, sweetmeat-eating child in a straw hat and knickerbockers; then a
small, red-cheeked beast in short frocks; then a limp, putty-faced,
indiarubber-sucking, howling fragment in long frocks; then--then--My
God! It’s terrible."
He hid his old face and cried. I noticed the blue veins that used to
cover the backs of his hands in a net-work, like the railway lines at
Clapham Junction, were dwindling. The shiny skin was filling out; the
muscles were developing once more.
"Terrible indeed, dear grandpapa; but I will never, never, leave you."
He brushed away his tears and stood erect.
"You may do what you please. And now I’ll tell you what _I’m_ going to
do. No more crying over spilt milk, anyhow. I’ve got eight years left,
and I’m going to use ’em. I’m a man without a future--at least without
a future I can make or mar. Everything’s settled, but I’m free for
eight years. We’ve got five hundred a year; that means a principal of
fifteen thousand pounds. I shall leave you five thousand, and spend the
other ten thousand during my lifetime."
"Grandpapa!"
"Yes, I’m going to enjoy myself. It isn’t as much money as I should
like, but my tastes are fairly simple. I shall keep the bulk of the
coin until three years hence. Then I shall be fifty. From that time,
for the next three years, until I’m twenty, I shall paint the town red.
Then, from twenty downwards, when I shall begin to shrink very rapidly,
you may look after me again, if you’re still alive."
"Thank you, grandpapa, but I shan’t be. Such a programme as you are
arranging would certainly kill me. I’m getting an old woman now. I
couldn’t stand it, I couldn’t see you dragging an honoured name in the
dust. Oh, think what this is you propose to do! What does your
conscience say? What would my father, your eldest son, have said?"
"My conscience!" he cried, "a pretty sweet thing in consciences I must
have! If my conscience couldn’t keep me out of this hole I should think
he had mistaken his vocation. You wait, that’s all. I’ll pay him back;
I’ll give him something to do presently! I’ll keep him busy. I guess
he’ll be about the most over-worked conscience, even in London, before
long."
It was in this bitter and irreligious way that grandpapa had now taken
to talk. He picked up all the modern slang, and waited with almost
fiendish impatience for his strength to reach a point when he would be
able to go out once more into the wicked world. But, of course, the
instincts and habits of old age were still to some extent upon him. He
continued to read the political articles in the papers, and give vent to
old-fashioned reflections. He was a Tory, left high and dry--a man who
even yet declared that the Reform Bill ought never to have been passed.
About every six weeks grandpapa had to change the strength of his
spectacles, for his sight became better daily; and with it, one by one,
the wrinkles were blotted out, the hearing grew sharper, the round, bald
patch on his head decreased, and a little grey already sprinkled the
silver of his hair.
He joined an old man’s club in our neighbourhood called the
"Fossils"--"as a preliminary canter," so he told me; and from this
questionable gathering, which met at a hostelry in Hammersmith Broadway,
he came home at night very late, and often so worn out and weary that he
had not strength to use his latch-key. I always let him in, and
supported him to bed on these occasions.
Then, when he was about seventy-five, according to the New Scheme, he
kissed Sophie, the housemaid--a most respectable girl and engaged. She
gave warning, and I felt that poor grandpapa had now definitely set out
on his great task of "painting the town red." This expression was often
in his mouth, and I began to dimly gather the significance of it.
*CHAPTER V.*
_*THE PEOPLE NEXT DOOR.*_
When the builders took a piece of Hammersmith and called it West
Kensington, no doubt they did a wise thing. I think a house in West
Kensington sounds very genteel myself, and Wharton Terrace was an
exceptionally genteel row even for that neighbourhood. Young men went
off to the City from it every morning, and young women walked out an
hour later, with little string bags, to do the shopping and arrange nice
dinners, and so on. They were mostly youthful married couples in
Wharton Terrace. One end of the row was not quite completed yet, but
the other extremity had been finished two years, and there were already
perambulators in the areas at that end. When perambulators set in, I
notice that the window-boxes begin to get shabby, and the pet cats have
to look after their own welfare.
At No. 16, next door to us (for the numbers ran even on one side of the
road, odd upon the other), were some very refined people, who called on
me the day after Mrs. Hopkins drove over to see us from Ealing, in a
hired brougham. Grandpapa said, in his cynical way, that they supposed
the brougham was Mrs. Hopkins’s own, and that, for his part, he didn’t
want to know the neighbours. But he soon changed his mind.
The Bangley-Browns were four in family: a widowed mother, florid, ample,
sixty, convincing in manner, full of the faded splendours of a past
prosperity; two daughters, also florid and ample, but quite refined with
it; and a son of thirty, who worked in a lawyer’s office by day, and
toiled at the banjo of an evening. They used to keep their drawing-room
blind up at night, so that people passing might see pink lamp-shades
throwing a beautiful reflection on their pretty things; and at such
times the Misses Bangley-Brown would sit in graceful attitudes in their
evening toilets, and Mr. Bangley-Brown, who wore a velvet coat after
dinner, would play the banjo and sing. There was often quite a little
audience outside on the pavement to watch them. They were most
high-bred gentlepeople, and one could see at a glance that evil fortune
alone brought them to Wharton Terrace.
The head of the family became very friendly with me. Her husband had
been most unfortunate in speculations on the Stock Exchange. They were
the Sussex Bangley-Browns, not the Essex people, so she explained. She
asked me if we were related to the Derbyshire Dolphins, and seemed
disappointed when I informed her that we had been Peckham Rye Dolphins
until the past five years.
She took a great fancy to grandpapa, and he showed pleasure in her
society. I cannot expend time on their gradual increase of friendship,
but it did increase rapidly, and I believe, towards the end of it, that
grandpapa had no secrets from Mrs. Bangley-Brown--none, that is,
excepting the one awful mystery of the New Scheme. But he told her
about his money and position, and she, taking him to be a well-preserved
man of seventy-five or so, met him half-way. Already the old love for
the sex was beginning to reappear in my grandfather. It soon became a
very trying sight for me. Grandfather constantly dropped in at No. 16
after dinner, and sat under the reflection of the pink lamp-shades, and
behaved in a manner which might have been gallant, but was also most
painful under the circumstances. The two poor girls soon confided in me.
They saw whither things were drifting. "It would never do," said they,
"for your father[#] to marry our mother. Such marriages are not happy,
and do not end well." I assured them that I was of the same opinion.
[#] _Father_. I may say here that, in public, I now posed as
grandpapa’s daughter. I was averse to the deception, but he insisted.
"I’m not going to have you giving me away at the very start," he said.
Our relationship changed every two years at first; afterwards, more
rapidly.
"There are sufficient reasons why such a match should not take place.
Indeed, I cannot think my father contemplates any such action," I said.
"What does he contemplate then?" asked Florence Bangley-Brown. "He
constantly gets us theatre tickets and so on, and I believe pays Fred to
take us off out of the way. He haunts the house. He buys us all sorts
of presents. It must mean something."
I knew well enough what it meant. It meant a move. It was high time we
left West Kensington: the pilgrimage must be begun. Like Noah’s dove,
there would probably be no more rest for the soles of our feet until the
end of dear grandpapa--according to the New Scheme.
*CHAPTER VI.*
_*RETREAT.*_
I had it out with him after breakfast, on the morning which followed my
conversation with the Bangley-Brown girls. He took it better than I
expected, and seemed more amused than angry.
"She is a fine woman, and would be a satisfaction to me for quite six
months. Then she’d pall. I only realised last night that she was not
growing younger. Whereas I am. I realised it about two minutes after
I’d proposed."
"’Proposed’! Oh, grandpapa!"
"Yes, while the gals were in here. Bless you, Martha, the gals begin to
interest me more than the mother now."
"But she--Mrs. Bangley-Brown--what did she say?"
"What do you think? Jumped at it. Was half in my lap before I’d
finished. You’re quite right: she’s not the woman for me. We’ll up
anchor before there’s trouble, and away. I don’t care how soon we go."
It was fully time. Apart from the monstrous step my grandfather had
taken, his own condition threw us more and more open to comment. The
servants noticed it, and imagined the old man got the effect with
hair-dyes and cosmetics. But as a matter of fact, every change was in
the ordinary, or rather extraordinary course which Nature now pursued
with grandpapa.
He was on thorns to be off after his engagement became known. "There’s
no fool like an old fool," he said. "I hope I shall soon outgrow this
sort of weakness. Marriage indeed! I rather think my time will be too
fully occupied during the next few years to waste much of it on a wife."
So he resigned his membership of the "Fossils," avoided Mrs.
Bangley-Brown as much as was possible under the circumstances, and sent
me out into the suburbs to find a new house. I pointed out the needless
expense of such a course; I explained that furnished lodgings would much
better meet the case. What was the good of taking another house, which
we should certainly have to vacate in a year? I explained that three
moves were generally held to be as bad as a fire, and so forth. In
fact, I used every argument I could think of, but he was firm.
"Find a house, and be smart," he said. "This old hen-dragon’s beginning
to worry me to name the day. We’ll flit by night. And when you do get
diggings, better keep the address extremely dark. I don’t want my
approaching manhood to be spoilt by the shadow of Mother Bangley-Brown."
Thus did he speak of a loving, if ample woman, to whom but a short
fortnight before he had offered his heart and fortunes. The Misses
Bangley-Brown cut me after the engagement was announced, and, for my
part, I was glad of it. It prevented the necessity for prevarication,
or perhaps untruth, because I could not have told them that I was going
to take grandpapa away, though doubtless they would have helped me to do
so very gladly.
But for the time I escaped much deliberate falsehood, although I already
saw, with a horrified prophetic eye, the awful pitfalls which lay before
me. Grandpapa was dragging me down with him. My religion, my morals,
my probity--nothing would avail. If I spent the next eight years with
him, it appeared certain that I should spend eternity with him also.
I felt myself gradually drifting away on to the broad, downward road
with grandpapa. And yet I would not leave him--I could not do so. His
horribly defenceless condition made me feel it must be simple cruelty to
let him fight this awful battle alone. And I will say for grandpapa
that, now and then, he quieted down and picked his language, and had
beautiful thoughts about the solemnity of his position. At such times he
was goodness itself to me. He thanked me for my attention, for the
courageous way in which I clung to him, for my cool judgment, and
invaluable advice.
"Be sure, Martha, that you will reap your reward some day," he said.
"Such attachment and devotion to a suffering grandparent will not be
forgotten."
I thought so too. If ever a woman deserved some consideration
hereafter, I was she; but, as I have said, I began to fear that blind
support of grandpapa would only serve to place me, in the long run,
under conditions of eternal discomfort with the poor old man himself.
Of course, he never talked about his own future, and I felt, under the
circumstances, that it would be bad taste for me to do so.
We went to Chislehurst, a pretty suburb in which I hoped that grandpapa
would occupy himself with the beauties of Nature, and dig in the garden
and plant seeds, and watch them come up, and be quiet and good. But
though he accompanied me willingly enough to the little red-brick,
modern, ’Queen Anne’ residence I found there, he refused to dig in the
garden, or plant seeds, or be quiet and good.
It was one of his bad days when I suggested horticultural operations.
"Seeds be shot!" he said. "I shall set about sowing my wild oats pretty
soon--that’s the only gardening for me!"
He had not threatened to paint the town red since we left it, but now
his constant allusion to wild oats caused me much uneasiness.
He was not interested in the works of Nature, but showed a craving to
get into society. Nobody called, however, and I was glad enough that
people did not come to see us. The longer we were left alone, the
longer we should be able to stop there. But grandpapa was now fast
reaching an age when no mere passive part on life’s stage would suit
him.
"I must be up and doing," he said to me. "’Satan finds some mischief
still,’ etc.," he added, with an unpleasant laugh. "You know the rest."
"I only wish you would try and occupy yourself in a profitable way, dear
grandpapa," I said, ignoring the allusion, which, to say the least, was
unhappy.
"I’m going to," he answered. "I’ve got eighteen months yet before I’m
fifty. For that period of time we shall be able to stop here. And I’m
going to take up pursuits fit for my age. I’m going to do a bit of good
if I can."
It was an answer to my prayers, no doubt. But for all that I could
scarcely believe my ears.
"You are going to teach in the Sunday-school!" I cried with sudden
conviction, flinging myself on my knees beside my dear old hero.
"Get up," he said, "and don’t be an idiot. I’m going to run for the
Local Board; and if I get on, as I think I shall, I’ll raise Cain in
this place. We’re all asleep here."
The Chislehurst air, which is bracing, had simply taken years off my
grandfather’s life, and I was conscious that he would make himself heard
on the Local Board pretty loudly if they really elected him. This, I
doubted not, was what he meant by the peculiar idiom that he would raise
Cain. The old man was always picking up new expressions now. His
refined, old-world diction had almost entirely departed from his tongue.
*CHAPTER VII.*
*"*_*VOTE FOR DOLPHIN.*_*"*
"The truth is," said grandpapa, "that I have got to know some of the
shop people here. Not the stuck-up cads who live in the big houses by
night and sneak up to London to sell boots and beer and underclothing by
day; not the purse-proud rubbish that sticks ’Esquire’ after its name
without any right; but genuine people, who live over their shops in
Chislehurst, and sell boots and beer and underclothing openly, and don’t
mind admitting it. Mr. Lomax, our butcher, is proposing me, and Rogers,
the landlord of the _Eight Bells Inn_, has seconded my nomination. I’m
going to write an address to the electors, and leave no stone unturned
to get in."
"Is it worth while, my dearest?" I ventured to ask.
"Of course it’s worth while," he answered testily. "You’re always
nagging at me in a quiet way to use my precious time; and when I
undertake a big enterprise like this you throw cold water on it. And
another thing: it’s rather doubtful taste your questioning my actions at
all. I look sixty and I feel sixty, but I am a hundred and four and
your grandfather. Don’t let appearances make you forget that. Rogers
says I’m safe to get in. Then I shall wake this place up a bit, and say
a thing or two that wants saying."
He had Mr. Rogers and his wife and daughter in to dine. "Socially they
are nothing," my grandpapa admitted; "but when you’re running for a
public appointment you must be all things to all men, and not disdain to
make use of mere _canaille_."
Mr. Rogers was a very vulgar, plain-spoken man, and his wife had caught
his manner. Their daughter I liked less than them. She allowed herself
to worry too much over her parents’ ignorance. She corrected their
grammar openly; shivered ostentatiously when they dropped an "h" or
inserted the aspirate unexpectedly; told them plainly where to use a
fork when habit and inclination led them to employ a knife, and so
forth. After the meal we went to the drawing-room, and when her mother
had gone to sleep in a corner, Miss Rogers told me that her parents were
a source of great sorrow to her. They had given her an education of
exceptional thoroughness and gentility; which was weak of them, because
it enabled her to see their shortcomings, but had not made her a lady or
anything like one. She was called Marie--christened Mary no doubt--and
she was engaged to a life insurance agent in a fair way of business--so
he said.
This young man--one Mr. Walter Widdicombe--and his prospective
father-in-law, the innkeeper, worked very hard on grandpapa’s behalf.
Mr. Widdicombe understood canvassing, and he gladly accepted a sovereign
a day for his expenses, and went about beating up voters and making
people promise to poll for Daniel Dolphin. Grandpapa’s election motto
was "Advance," and he wrote a manifesto in the local paper. It was full
of suggested reforms and plain-speaking and hard hitting, and made the
old man a great many enemies.
If grandfather had been a peaceful, unassertive person, he might have
slunk through those terrible years of his existence without attracting
undue attention; if he had even been a moral and fairly religious man,
his position (and mine) would have presented less frightful
complications. But he began to grow more boisterous and unprincipled as
his vital energy returned. His disposition had always been at once
cantankerous and pushing, and now the circumstance of his prospects only
embittered and accentuated the worse traits in his character. He was
reckless, unbound by any ordinary guiding and controlling views of this
life or the next, simply determined to "make the running," "go it up to
the knocker," and so on. The expressions, of course, are his own. I
was ignorant of their exact meaning until he practically illustrated
them.
Grandpapa got in by twenty votes, after a great struggle. He gave a
dinner, to men only, at the _Eight Bells_. They had a large public room
there, used for important occasions; and ladies were allowed to sit in a
little gallery which ran round it, and listen to the speeches and watch
their heroes dine. The same thing is done on a bigger scale by more
important people.
I sat by Miss Rogers, who nearly fell out of the gallery on to the table
below when her papa began to eat peas with a knife. She suffered also
during his speech, which was faulty in manner, though I thought the
matter excellent. He praised grandpapa’s good qualities, noted his
fiery, manly spirit, hinted that in approaching old institutions the
reformer must begin with caution and the thin end of the wedge. But
grandpapa showed by the tone of certain remarks, in which he responded
to the toast of his health, that "caution" was not going to be his
watchword by any means. He was flushed with success, and hardly looked a
day more than fifty. He alluded to the "bright-eyed angels" hovering
above him in the gallery, and hinted at garden parties in our back
garden, and made me extremely uncomfortable by ordering a dozen of
champagne to be sent up to us.
I left him smoking cigars, and getting very noisy and excited. He came
home at half-past one o’clock, between Mr. Rogers and Mr. Lomax, our
butcher. I need not dwell upon his condition. I saw everything in the
moonlight through my Venetian blind. One of his supporters found
grandfather’s latch-key and opened the door with it. Then both dragged
him up to his room and went home, shutting the front door behind them.
Grandpapa was very poorly indeed during the night, but refused my aid.
I offered to fetch a medical man, but he told me to let him alone and go
and bury myself. Of course I could not disguise the truth. Grandpapa
had taken too much to drink. The thought went through me like a knife.
Indeed, I cried all night, and when I rose my pillow was still wet with
tears.
In the morning he was looking ten years older, and for a short time I
thought and hoped the New Scheme had broken down. But, after a glass of
brandy and soda-water, he brightened up, and his headache went off. He
declared that he had enjoyed himself extremely, spent a royal night, and
felt all the better for it.
"I find," he said, "that I don’t care a straw for wine yet, but the old
taste for spirits has come back. We must get in a few gallons at once.
And cigars, too; I’m taking to cigars again."
He was rather sulky when I did up his accounts, but he considered it
money well spent. Then he put on his hat and went out "to see the
boys."