speculation and money-making?"
"Yes, no more ’systems’ for me. First settle up, then settle down. We
must bolt out of London, anyhow."
"Why, grandpapa? We are safe for six months yet, if you keep quiet."
"I haven’t kept quiet," he acknowledged frankly. "You’d better hear the
truth. I’m in a very awkward position."
"Tell me everything, grandpapa. I can bear it."
"Well, I met her in Paris."
"Grandpapa! Another?"
"Listen. I met the woman in Paris. She was a Russian princess,
stopping at the Hotel Bristol. She could speak English--worse luck. So
we got on. No side at all about her. Let me take her everywhere and
pay. One of those golden-haired, expensive women, but beautiful as a
dream. Her husband still lives somewhere in Russia. He had a row with
the Czar about her. She was nobody herself. They were separated
through no fault of hers. She couldn’t stand him because he funked the
Czar. Plucky little woman; coming over to this country to play the harp
at the music-halls. We’re engaged."
"Grandpapa!"
"Don’t criticise, I can’t stand it to-day. She’s called the Princess
Hopskipchoff. She said it was the dream of her life to marry me; that
she’s seen me in her sleep and that a fortune-teller, now in Siberia,
had accurately described me to her years ago. She’s twenty-five and
true as steel. Socially it would have been a step in the right
direction, though Russian Princesses are rather a drug in the market.
But I can’t marry her, of course. I’ve thought better of it since we
parted, and I’ve had time to do up my accounts."
"You break hearts as a pastime, grandfather. Poor woman. I’m sorry for
her."
"As to that, it wasn’t a love match entirely either. She was fairly
cute. I rather hoodwinked the girl, perhaps; but all’s fair in love.
I--well--I pulled, the long bow, certainly."
"You disguised your true condition?"
"More than that. I hinted at twenty thousand a year and a park."
"You will kill me, grandpapa!"
"And I also told her I was a Viscount, Viscount Dolphin, heir to the
titles and estates of the Duke of Cornwall."
"Good heavens! The Prince of Wales is the Duke of Cornwall!"
"Is he, begad? I’d forgotten that," said grandpapa, with a painful,
cunning look on his face, "then she can go and worry ’em at Marlborough
House. She won’t get any information about me there. Don’t you bother.
We’ll smash her if she makes a row. I’ll say she’s a Russian spy or
something. Anyhow the simplest way will be for us to clear out of town
altogether. I’m sick of the wickedness of London. Every second man you
meet’s a swindler or a rogue. Give me the peaceful country--a bottle of
port at the squire’s mahogany, the _Field_ newspaper, a decent mount,
and pleasant feminine society. That’s good enough for me. I’m a
hundred and six in three days’ time; forty by the New Scheme. Yes, let
me go and dwindle from forty to thirty amidst quiet, rural, agricultural
surroundings."
I was delighted at this resolution. Grandpapa henceforth appeared as my
son, made me wear a wedding-ring, and carried me away to a little
honeysuckle-covered cottage near Salisbury.
*CHAPTER XII.*
_*A SUGGESTION.*_
When I mentioned Mr. Rogers’s advertisement to my grandfather he buried
himself in the past, and by great effort of memory re-called his career
at Chislehurst. It began to be a puzzle to him that time, which flew so
fast where he was concerned, should drag so extremely with the rest of
the world.
"Chislehurst! Why that’s twenty years ago, or near it," he said. "The
girl must be fifty if she’s a day. No judge would grant her a hearing
at all. Breach of promise indeed! But we’re perfectly safe, they
wouldn’t recognise me if I walked into the _Eight Bells_ to-morrow."
With fortunes to some extent impaired we set off for Rose Cottage, near
Salisbury. Grandpapa had forgotten all about the "Automatic Postcard
Company," but I reminded him of the affair, and he went to a meeting of
shareholders and said some nasty things, and was cheered by the other
victims. Of course we lost all the money he had put in.
And now, in the quiet country, my grandfather made his one solitary
effort towards reformation. It lasted three weeks, and ended in
failure, and a run up to town without me.
But grandpapa did try all he knew to be good. He lived a blameless
life, kept early hours, became a practical teetotaler, played a little
lawn-tennis at the vicarage, and went to church twice every Sunday. I
think he expected too much, and was too hopeful.
He said on one occasion:
"If heaven don’t take pity on me now, and put a spoke in the New Scheme,
then I shall say Providence is simply played out. Look at the life I’m
leading. Look at the way I talk; never a strong expression. I helped a
lame woman across the road yesterday. Is that to count for nothing?
One cigar a day, early hours, no liquor, no language, no
flirtation--why, if I was on my death-bed I couldn’t be leading a more
insipid life. It _must_ tell in the long run."
But he only got younger and handsomer. The early hours and exercise at
lawn-tennis did wonders. Men do not alter much between thirty and forty
as a rule, but grandpapa began to get absolutely boyish. Half the
pretty girls in the place were in love with him. Everybody thought he
was younger than even the New Scheme made him appear.
I felt all along that he was not conducting his reformation on right
lines, for what hope of success could be expected when the entire
structure of his life stood on foundations of falsehood?
At the end of a fortnight, finding no improvement, he grumbled at
Providence, and slipped for a moment into his old methods of expression.
Then I made a suggestion.
"You will never escape from this hideous predicament, dearest," said I,
taking his great, muscular hand between my thin ones, "you will never
put yourself on a proper footing with heaven again, unless you proclaim
the truth, banish all these false pretences which now hem us in on every
side, and explain your position to the world. Only old Mr. Murdoch, of
Ealing, knows the truth. Rise up and tell everybody, grandpapa!"
He shaved now, with the exception of his moustache. This he tugged and
twisted, and looked at me with undisguised contempt.
"Well, that fairly takes the crumb!" he said. "D’ you actually suggest
that I should go on the housetops and cry, ’Look at me, look at me, good
people; I’m nearly a hundred and seven years of age; I’ve signed a
treaty with the devil. He will have what is left of me in about three
years. This ancient woman is my granddaughter. Come, all of you, pray
for us’? Would you suggest I did that, Martha?"
"Something like it," I answered. "Then you would feel that you were
telling the truth, at all events."
"Pretty true ring about it, certainly. Everybody would believe it,
wouldn’t they?"
"I could substantiate the facts, grandpapa."
"Which would merely place you in a lunatic asylum as well as me. If you
are going to babble about telling the _truth_ we may as well pack up our
traps and take the train to Colney Hatch right away."
"But the world might watch you shrinking, grandpapa. A committee of
doctors would find out in six weeks that you were telling the truth."
"And have people paying sixpence a head to come in and see me dwindling?
I don’t mean to make a circus of myself for you or anybody. If
Providence can’t do anything, then we’ll just rip forward as we’re
going, and abide by the result. I’ll keep up this psalm-singing one
more week; then, if nothing happens, I shall go on the razzle-dazzle,
and chance it."
"What d’you mean, grandpapa?"
"It doesn’t matter what I mean. I shall do it anyhow."
And he did. A week later he went off for a couple of days "on the
razzle-dazzle." I asked our curate if he knew the idiom. He was but
recently ordained, after an undistinguished career at the University of
Oxford. He said that to "go on the razzle-dazzle" meant a round of
picture galleries, museums, and similar institutions, where healthy
amusement might be found mingled with instruction.
"Many and many a time have I done likewise myself, Mrs. Dolphin, in the
good old days of the Polytechnic," he said. "Your son will return all
the better for his trip."
This, coming from a cleric, comforted me not a little.
Grandpapa certainly did seem happier after his holiday. He presently
re-appeared devoid of money, but in an excellent temper. I trusted that
he would take more of these excursions in future, for they served to
distract his thoughts and do him good.
He was full of one topic.
"I saw the Hopskipchoff yesterday. She’s quite the rage, and her
romance about Viscount Dolphin is a regular joke in the music halls. I
sat pretty tight, I can tell you. Not that she would recognise me, now
my beard’s gone. Fancy liking her! What beastly bad taste old Johnnies
of five-and-forty have! Why, she’s all paint, and eyes, and false
hair--no more a princess than you are, Martha."
"I’m thankful you escaped that snare, dear grandpapa."
"Yes, but she’s hunting for Viscount Dolphin still. Several chance
acquaintances I made told me that she is. She tried Marlborough House,
but that didn’t wash. They shot her out mighty quick, and she says it’s
a conspiracy. Daresay she’ll find me some day trundling a hoop or
playing peg-top in the gutter. I shall be a legal infant before anybody
can look round."
*CHAPTER XIII.*
_*THE SQUIRE’S DAUGHTER.*_
On his hundred-and-seventh birthday grandpapa gave up hope, went to
London for some new clothes, started a groom and two horses, laid in a
stock of the choicest wines, and began to live on his capital. My
little portion had gone in the "Automatic Postcards."
"What there is left over after the final smash you can keep," said he to
me; "but I tell you frankly there won’t be much. I’ve got about five
thousand left, and I’m going to live at the rate of two thousand or more
a year. That will enable me to get into society if I spend it the right
way. In two years I shall be ten years old. Then you can look after me
again. But, during those two years, it might almost be better if you
left me and went to live somewhere else. You won’t get any solid
satisfaction out of watching me. I shall marry very likely, or do any
other fool’s trick that takes my fancy."
Of course I refused to leave him, and he said I might stay if I
particularly wished to, but he warned me never to interfere with him.
"And if you must stay," he added, "I will thank you to buy some better
clothes. You’re getting too much of a back number to suit me. I don’t
like bringing classy people into the house. You’re fifty years behind
the times. I’m a particular man myself, and I wish my relations to look
smart and prosperous. I’m sorry I didn’t give out you were a rich aunt,
and that I was your nephew, with expectations. Then it wouldn’t have
mattered. As it is, you must pull yourself together, and try to look as
little like a guy as possible. I can hang on here for another six
months--till I’m five-and-twenty. Then I suppose my moustache will
begin to moult, or something cheerful. When that happens, we’ll toddle
back to town, and I’ll finish my career there."
I humoured him, bought a silk dress in the latest fashion, and a few
pieces of jewellery, for which he supplied the money. This was done
with an object. Heaven is aware that precious stones gave me no
pleasure, but I looked forward to the time when we should be bankrupt,
or when grandpapa would depart, leaving me at the workhouse door, so to
speak. Against this evil hour I bought the jewels and silk dress. They
delighted my grandparent.
"Good old dowager!" he exclaimed at sight of me, "we are a proper old
box of tricks now! I tell you what, Martha, my tulip: this must be
shown to the county. We’ll give a dinner--a regular spread. Men laugh
at me for living on in this little hole, but I laugh back, and tell ’em
I like it. They believe I’m enormously wealthy, and fancy that to spend
but two thousand a year is miserly. Yes, they think me awfully
eccentric--well, let ’em; God knows I am. As to this feed, we’ll get
the grub from Salisbury, open the folding doors, and ask twenty people.
The Dawsons and the Westertons, and the parson and Squire Talbot and his
wife and daughter. Then we’ll invite a big clerical pot or two from
Salisbury, and certain men I know. The affair will distract me. You
must write the invitations and so on. If you don’t know how to, I’ll
buy you an etiquette book, with all the rotten rules and regulations."
"One point only, grandpapa. Please, for my sake, don’t ask the Talbots.
It isn’t right; it isn’t fair to the girl. You’re a man to make any
pretty child’s heart ache now. I know you ride with her, and spend half
your time at Talbot Priory. Recollect----"
"That’s enough," he said, shortly. "You remember, too. The Talbots are
to be asked. Mabel Talbot and I are friends. That is all."
"That never is all with you," I answered, and then continued, undismayed
by his frown. "If she comes here, and you dine well, and drink, and so
on, you’ll end by proposing. You’ll blight another heart, and then come
to me next morning, and say it is time we made another move. You may
well blush. I will not stay to see it, that I solemnly vow. If the
Talbots are to come, I leave the house."
"As you please--a good riddance."
My resolution was quickly formed. I left him, put on my bonnet, and
walked up to Talbot Priory, a distance of one mile. Fortune favoured
me, for Mabel Talbot, in a little pony carriage, alone save for the
company of a small groom behind her, came driving from the Priory. She
was fond of me for a private reason, and now she stopped her vehicle,
leapt out, and gave me a kiss. The girl was beautiful and good, and
hopelessly in love with my grandpapa. He worshipped her too, and
explained to me on one occasion, at great length, that this was, to all
intents and purposes, his first real love.
"Cupid’s a blind fool, we all know, and, of course, he didn’t realise
what he was doing when he dropped Mabel Talbot in my way," said
grandpapa one day.
The old man gave out now that he had five thousand a year, for I heard
the servants discussing it; and Squire Talbot, to whose ear came this
rumour, believed it, and greatly desired grandpapa for his son-in-law.
The Squire was a clever, cunning aristocrat, and played on poor
grandpapa’s love of admiration, and made much of him.
But to return; I met Miss Talbot, as I have said, and accepted her
invitation to drive awhile.
"I want to talk to you, Mabel, about my grand----about dear Daniel," I
began, as we trotted out on to Salisbury Plain. She blushed rosy red,
and nearly overturned the little carriage.
"Oh, dear, dear Mrs. Dolphin, has he told you?"
Then, of course, I knew they were engaged.
"How far has it gone?" I asked wearily.
No doubt the same old, sickening flight was upon us once more. The life
I led was killing me. I certainly began to grow old as fast as
grandpapa grew young. But this time they might be secretly married
already for all I knew.
"He is going to see papa. I know my father will consent. And you, dear
Mrs. Dolphin? May I be a little daughter to you? I will love you so
dearly. I do already."
"Child," I answered, "you must face the truth and be brave. Daniel is
much older--I mean younger--at least, he is different to what he seems.
He can never marry again. Daniel has a great mystery hanging over his
life. Supernatural agents are interested in him. He has violated all
the laws of Nature--at least, I fancy so. I am not his mother at all.
He is my grandfather. His real mother has been dead nearly a hundred
years."
The girl’s blue eyes grew quite round.
"Mrs. Dolphin!" she gasped.
"No; Miss Dolphin. He is my grandfather I tell you. I am unmarried.
He has signed an agreement with--it doesn’t matter. At any rate, he’s
already been married three times. He’s a widower, and he cannot live
more than three years, and----"
Mabel screamed, jumped from the pony carriage, and fell almost at the
feet of a horseman who had overtaken us. It was grandpapa.
The girl ran sobbing to him, and I got out of the pony carriage.
Grandfather, dismounting, took the trembling Mabel into his arms, on the
high road, near some Druidical remains, and openly hugged her before me
and the groom.
"What does this mean?" asked grandpapa fiercely, eyeing me with a scowl.
"She--she--oh, Daniel, she says you’re her grandfather, and a married
man, and--and I’m frightened--very frightened of her."
"You needn’t be, darling," he said, with a bitter laugh; "she’s quite
harmless, poor old thing. It’s only a passing attack. She has these
fits from time to time in the hot weather. She’s very mad to-day. Never
mind; I rode out to find her, and I’m glad I have. I’ve tried to keep
the malady a secret, but female lunatics are so cunning."
"Madness is hereditary. Oh, Dan, Dan, if papa knows that your poor
mother is so very eccentric, he will never consent."
"He has consented, my darling. Fear nothing. My mother’s insanity is
not hereditary. She fell out of a three-storey window on to her head
when she was seventeen. Since then the ailment has appeared
occasionally. Her customary hallucination is blue rats. You say she
thinks I am her grandpapa! Poor old soul! Go home, dear joy of my
life! We meet to-morrow, after the Squire and I have seen the lawyers."
He kissed her, put her back in her pony carriage, and then turned to me,
after she had driven away.
"Now, you old devil," he said, making his heavy hunting crop whistle in
my ear, "you march home in front of me. And mark this, if you _dare_ to
come between me and my amusements again, I’ll get two doctors to sign a
certificate, and have you under lock and key in Bedlam or Hanwell,
before you can say ’knife.’"
*CHAPTER XIV.*
_*AT UPPER NORWOOD.*_
In a week from that horrible day grandpapa and I were on affectionate
terms again, and living in furnished apartments at Upper Norwood, near
the Crystal Palace. Events followed each other with such bewildering
rapidity now, that I have a difficulty in remembering their correct
sequence.
After grandpapa’s brutal threat I felt my liberty, and even my life
itself, began to be in danger; so that night, after a silent dinner, I
waited until he went down to the stables to smoke, and then sending
hastily for a cab, put one box, which I had already packed, into it, and
drove away to Salisbury. I caught a late train to town, and lodged for
the night at a little hotel near Waterloo. From here, next morning, I
wrote to grandpapa, giving him my address, and telling him I was as
ready as ever to help him and fight for him if he needed me. Then I went
out and sold a brooch for five-and-twenty pounds, and bought myself a
bottle of brandy. I want to hide nothing in this narrative. Of late my
nerves had suffered not a little. Stimulant was the only thing that
steadied them. I took more and more of it.
Three days later grandpapa turned up at the hotel. He had shaved off
his moustache, was very frightened and cowed, and said the police were
after him. He insisted on our changing our names, and getting off
quietly into lodgings without delay. He studied an "A.B.C." Railway
Guide, and said that Upper Norwood was a respectable sort of place,
where they wouldn’t be likely to look for him. Not until we were settled
in furnished rooms, half-way up Gipsy Hill, and had ordered lunch, did
he explain what had happened. Then he told the story.
"The day after you bolted I met old Talbot and his lawyer about a
settlement. I talked rather big, and suggested fifty thousand. Then
the brute of a lawyer said, after he had heard my name, ’How odd. Now
there is a gentleman I have been wanting to find for the last two years
nearly, and he is called Daniel Dolphin!’ Like a fool, and forgetting
the man he wanted must be years older than me, I lost my nerve, and the
lawyer saw that I had. ’It’s an odd name--perhaps a relative?’ he said.
’The gentleman I mean used to live at Chislehurst. You will be doing me
a kindness if you can tell me anything of him.’ Instead of simply
answering that I had never heard of the man, I replied that he was my
uncle. ’How?’ exclaimed the Squire, ’I thought you had no relations but
your mother?’ Then I tried to explain, and bungled it--I’m growing so
damned young and silly now--and finally the matter dropped, but I could
see that lawyer meant getting the truth out of me later on. I arranged
the settlements and so on, and gave them a list of my imaginary
investments, which, of course, I’d just picked out of the money columns
in the papers. Then I wanted to marry at once, and get Mabel before
they had time to find out my game. But the Squire said he wouldn’t hear
of it till the autumn. That wasn’t good enough, so I saw Mabel and told
her a yarn or two, and worked on her love for romance, and finally got
her to run away with me. You needn’t jump. The plot fell through. She
weakly confided in a lady’s maid. I saddled my horses myself, and rode
out at midnight to abduct her in the good old style. I waited at a
certain point by the Priory walls, and presently she arrived. But
hardly had we galloped off--I meant to take her to Salisbury, and marry
her before the registrar next morning--when we were confronted on the
Plain by Squire Talbot and half-a-dozen mounted bounders he’d got to
help him. The Squire collared his daughter, and left his friends to
deal with me. They tried to take me prisoner, but I’m pretty fit just
now, and pretty reckless too. I was mad to think they’d scored off me
like this, and I hit out and knocked one chap off his horse, and nearly
strangled another, and fired my revolver at a third. I missed him, and
shot his mount. When they found I was armed, they cleared off. It was
an exciting, old-fashioned scrimmage, and I enjoyed it while it lasted.
But of course, there’s the devil to pay. I rode into Salisbury, put up
my horse at an inn, dodged around all night, and took the first train up
this morning. The bobbies were prowling about at Salisbury station, but
they didn’t recognise me. I’d cut off my moustache in the night, and
looked not more than eighteen in the morning. The lawyer, of course,
wants me for Marie Rogers; and Talbot will want me; and the chap whose
head I broke will want me; and the man whose horse I shot will want me.
Let ’em want!"
"This is the beginning of the end, grandpapa," I said, sadly enough.
"Not it! You wait and see what the next six months bring! I shouldn’t
wonder if I was in a tight place six months hence. This is nothing.
I’ll make some of ’em squeak yet before they’ve done with me."
It was in this wicked and reckless frame of mind that he prepared to
spend the remainder of his days. However, he rested from his labours
for about six weeks, notwithstanding his boast to make people "squeak."
He read the reports of his performance on Salisbury Plain with great
delight, and he found, as the matter developed, that sundry unexpected
names appeared in it. Daniel Dolphin was "wanted" by the
representatives of one Mrs. Bangley-Brown, to whom he had promised
marriage; a man of the same name had performed a similar action at
Chislehurst, the victim in that case being Miss Marie Rogers. It also
appeared that some impostor, calling himself Viscount Dolphin, and
claiming Royalty for his kindred, had met and proposed to Princess
Hopskipschoff in Paris. These were all different persons of different
ages, the newspapers admitted, but they might have a connection with the
vanished rascal of the Talbot Priory business near Salisbury. There was
a mystery of some kind, and the police naturally had a clue.
Grandpapa gloated over this confusion. He had changed his name now to
Abraham Whiting--"another prophet and another fish," as he put it--but
he longed to go back to his true cognomen and "keep the pot boiling."
This, with difficulty, I prevented him doing for a short time. His
monetary affairs were much simplified now: he had about three thousand
pounds in hand in notes and gold. All the furniture, and horses, and
effects at Salisbury were sold, and what moneys were not claimed, under
legal and other expenses, went, I believe, into Chancery. But grandpapa
had about three thousand pounds left, which, as he said, would last his
time with care.