A Deal with the Devil

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.

1. [Grandfather's Birthday]
2. [In the Cupboard]
3. [Cold Comfort]
4. [Hidden in London]
5. [The People next Door]
6. [Retreat]
7. ["Vote for Dolphin"]
8. [Marie Rogers]
9. [In London once more]
10. [The Crusade]
11. [A New Leaf turned]
12. [A Suggestion]
13. [The Squire's Daughter]
14. [At Upper Norwood]
15. [Susan Marks]
16. [On the River]
17. [Phyllis]
18. [I forbid the Banns]
19. [Counsel's Opinion]
20. [A Climax]
21. [My Nightmare]
22. [The Dwindling of Grandpapa]
23. ["Fine by Degrees and Beautifully Less"]
24. [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."

He came back in a terrible rage, and used three new expletives, and hinted at murder. It appeared that his defeated rivals on the Local Board had lodged a protest against him for bribery and corruption. Grandpapa nearly went mad with rage. He knocked a man down in the open street, and was summoned and appeared at a police court, and had to be bound over to keep the peace. Finally he lost his seat on the Local Board, the case going against him; and as he dashed into the kitchen, where I was showing the cook how to make something, he absolutely foamed at the mouth. He threatened to buy dynamite, to blow Chislehurst to the skies, to destroy his political opponents with poison. Then he talked seriously of ending his own existence, from which step I dissuaded him, feeling at the same time, that he could hardly make worse arrangements for his future than he had already done. After dinner on that day he said he should give up trying to do good, and he kept his word. He took to living at the Eight Bells, and to writing insulting letters to the local papers. One of these cost him a hundred pounds in a libel action. Then (and I was not sorry for it) he found some brown hair on his head. This threatened to spread and attract attention, so I considered that the time had come for us to make another move, and begin life upon a new plan with altered relationships.

CHAPTER VIII.

MARIE ROGERS.

Heaven knows that I do not wish to show up grandpapa in this narrative, or make the unhappy old sufferer appear worse than he was. Indeed, my desire is to write with a dispassionate pen, to state facts, and leave scientists, legal experts, and students of ethics to draw their own conclusions. But I do not intend that anything shall blind me to what I owe my grandpapa; and I will say that in the matter of Marie Rogers he was not entirely to blame. The girl set her cap at him, haunted him in the tap-room at her father's place of entertainment, sent him flowers, gushed about him to me, and did everything she could to flatter his vanity. This had always been extremely easy. He was still old enough to feel tickled by the attention of a woman of thirty. Miss Rogers had a childish prettiness of manner, which might have been effective when she was younger, but struck me as rather ridiculous now. She talked young and dressed young, and pretended a general ignorance of the seamy side of the world which took in my grandpapa completely. No doubt it had similarly deceived the life insurance agent. That young man lost his temper with Miss Rogers over the matter of my grandpapa, and received short notice in consequence.

"Gad!" said grandfather, "it's very gratifying--an old buffer of a hundred and six to cut out this youngster. What d' ye think of her, Martha? Not a day older than thirty--eh?"

"I think you are on the verge of a volcano, grandpapa. You are doing a most dangerous thing by stopping here. Already people laugh at your new piebald wig, as they call it. You ought to have left Chislehurst three months ago, as I urged you at the time."

"Well, well, let 'em laugh. Who cares? I'm sure I don't. This girl takes my fancy, and that's a fact. She's in love with me, and can't hide it, and Rogers hasn't any objection."

"Of course not; he knows what you're worth."

"I've been wondering if I could run away with her and marry her somewhere in Scotland," said grandpapa, winking at me. I did not understand the wink, and asked him what he meant.

"It doesn't matter," he answered, "only she might get tired of me when I grow younger; and I myself might fancy something a little fresher later on."

"Once and for all," I said, "this inclination towards matrimony is reprehensible and must be crushed, dear grandpapa. I implore of you to fight against it. Don't let every woman you meet fool you into a declaration. Do be circumspect; for Heaven's sake, look on ahead."

"It's brutal always asking me to do that," he answered, shedding tears, for it was one of his maudlin days; "I don't want to look ahead. The future can take care of itself. I'm spoiling for somebody who would be a comfort to me at home--somebody who would take a bright view of things and not always be ramming the future down my throat, like you do. I see no reason why I should not marry."

"Then let me give you some," I answered desperately. "You must remember what lies in store. No woman shall suffer as I have suffered and am suffering. This girl, Marie Rogers, is thirty or more; you are--say, five-and-fifty. In four years' time you will be fifteen! You cannot get away from that. The horrible fact is reached by simple arithmetic. Imagine yourself at that age saddled with a wife, and perhaps a family! If you can face such a prospect with a good conscience, I cannot. I'd rather die than see you in such a position."

He laughed bitterly.

"What relation would you be to them, I wonder? The brats would be your uncles and aunts, and my wife your grandmother! What a fool you'd look!"

I couldn't see it, and for the first time since the commencement of the New Scheme, I lost my temper with grandpapa.

"Oh, you horrid, depraved old man!" I cried, "will no words, or tears, or prayers, make you pause and reflect? Cannot your only surviving relation, your own son's child, carry any weight with you? Would you rather have this flighty female at your side than me? Cannot you realise what I am doing for you, what you would be without me? I blush for you; I blush for your disgraceful tastes and wicked ambitions. You, who ought to spend all your time on your knees and in church, calling on Providence to avert this doom! You shall not marry. Hear me, I say, once and for all, you shall not. If you dare to get engaged again, I'll tell the woman's people. I'll make a clean breast of it to Mr. Rogers. Then you'll have to leave this place whether you like it or not. I've done a great deal for you, but I'm only human, and you've stung me beyond endurance to-day. Let us have no repetition of this terrible conversation. Make your choice once for all. Take Marie Rogers, or let me stay with you, and fight for you. But you cannot have both of us."

He was rather cowed by my vehemence.

"Of course, if you're going to make such a a fuss, I must debate with myself," he said. "Only it's rather awkward now. Why didn't you speak sooner? You must have seen the woman adoring me for the last six weeks."

"I gave you credit for a certain amount of proper feeling," I answered.

"That was weak," he said. "I've made a law unto myself lately. As a matter of fact we are engaged. I popped the question yesterday in the bar-parlour, and she cried and asked me to see the old man. He was delighted. I didn't explain things to him, but it's a very good bargain--for Marie. She'll have a rum time of it certainly for five years and six months; then I shall fade away, or be carried off in a fiery chariot or something, and she can take the money. Still, I may be doing a foolish thing. My tastes are changing so readily. I'm certain to drop my eye on something more up-to-date as soon as I'm booked to her."

"I implore you, grandpapa, to throw her over. She doesn't love you. She is marrying you for your money. Her regard will never stand against the shock of finding out the New Scheme. She will confide in others and ruin your peace of mind. Possibly she will run away altogether when you begin to--to shrink, as you must. I, on the contrary, am prepared to face everything. Tear her image from your heart! Fight the passion and conquer it. Rest on me!"

My grandpapa smoked and drank whisky, while I sat up into the small hours and argued with him.

"I believe you're right," he said at last. "I can't face the girl, nor yet her father now; but I really think we'd better drop the connection. Socially, of course, it's not satisfactory at all. No doubt young Widdicombe, the life insurance agent, will come back when I'm gone. Yes, we'd better make tracks, perhaps. She hasn't got anything in writing. Besides, I'm sick of this place. I've quarrelled with pretty nearly everybody in it, and I'm owing some money too--some debts of honour--that I think I can wriggle out of paying. I'll try and forget Marie. We'll 'shoot the moon' before quarter-day."

By "shooting the moon," my grandpapa explained that he employed a well-known technicality which meant leaving Chislehurst at night, in an abrupt manner, without letting our departure be known beforehand or advertising our new address in the local newspapers, or even mentioning it at the post-office.

CHAPTER IX.

IN LONDON ONCE MORE.

Of course, a hale man with a strong will of his own, numerous vices, rapidly-decreasing years, and strong, if misplaced, convictions, was more than an unmarried, inexperienced, woman of my age could be expected to manage.

As time progressed I gave up attempting to reform grandpapa, and simply contented myself with praying that he might complete his career without falling into absolute crime. The thought of seeing him in a felon's dock at the last haunted me like a nightmare. He would get younger and less familiar with the wicked ways of the world daily. As a young man, he was one for whom traps, snares, and pitfalls had never been set in vain. When he reached a hundred and eight he would look and feel twenty years of age under the New Scheme. Then, how probable that the poor old man might fall a prey to some iniquitous schemer! I told him my fears, and he sneered bitterly, and said:

"Yes, a pretty old cough-drop I should look, shouldn't I, being sentenced to penal servitude for life--at a hundred and nine years of age? Then you'd see an advertisement in the papers, 'Wanted, at Portland Prison, a wet nurse for the notorious forger and embezzler, Daniel Dolphin.' Bless you, Martha, there's some real fun in store for you and me yet."

I cried and begged him not to say such things. It was a horrible thought, and yet had a ray of comfort in it, that if I could only keep the old man fairly straight for the next five years, or less, he would then be at my mercy again. By that time somebody would certainly have to be a second mother to grandpapa.

We "shot the moon" on a night when there was none. Our next move took us back to town. I hired a little flat, No. 1, Oxford Mansions, a snug place enough, near Earl's Court. According to custom, we left no address behind us, and began life anew. I was obliged to drop all my old friends in Peckham Rye and Ealing for grandpapa's sake. I had met Mrs. Hopkins at Whiteley's, and told her the old man was dead. She pressed me to come and see her, and I answered that I would write. Then I hastened away to the Drugs Department, leaving her in the Haberdashery, astonished and disappointed. My heart sorrowed, for I loved the good woman; but there was nothing else to be done. On another occasion grandpapa took me to the Royal Figi Exhibition at Earl's Court, and we ran right on top of the Bangley-Browns. The girls recognised me, and whispered to their mother; but, of course, they did not know grandpapa. He was twenty years younger than when they last saw him. Mrs. Bangley-Brown turned very red, and sailed towards me; but I dodged with my grandpapa round a refreshment building, and then dragged him through a crowd to the entrance of the Exhibition, finally escaping in a hansom cab.

"What do I care?" he said. "I'd like to have spoken to her again. I spotted 'em before you did. She wasn't half a bad old bounder. Those gals don't go off apparently; too much torso and not enough tin, eh?"

In this painful style did the old man speak of two perfect ladies, whose only crime was a hereditary inclination to enbonpoint. I toned him down when I could, but he rarely listened to me now. It was as his sister that I posed at No. 1, Oxford Mansions. He had grown into a very corpulent, big-bearded man. He wore white waistcoats, and followed fashion, and took particular pains with his person. He abandoned politics and began to develop interest in City affairs. Once he brought home a new friend who he said was on the Stock Exchange--a most gentlemanly, polite individual, who treated me with a courtesy and consideration to which I had long been a stranger. After he had gone, grandpapa told me he was somebody of great importance.

"He's floating a fine scheme that's got thousands in it," he explained. "We dined at Richmond with some friends last week, and, coming home in the drag, Phil Montague--that's his name--let me into a secret or two, and promised me shares. Mind, Martha, I'm doing this for you. Don't say I never think of you. When I'm gone, you'll draw many a fine dividend from the 'Automatic Postcard Company.' And when you draw 'em, think of me, far away--probably frying."

Mr. Phil Montague called again, and, finally, I know that grandpapa took at least a thousand pounds of his capital out of Something Three Per Cents, and put them into Automatic Postcards. Then he suddenly determined to go upon the Stock Exchange himself. I think that he would have carried out this mad project, but other affairs distracted his attention. Hardly was the company of Mr. Phil Montague well floated when that gentleman called again, dined by invitation, and broached a new scheme to grandpapa.

This man represents my own greatest failure as a student of character. I was utterly deceived in him. He simply laid himself out to deceive me. Doubtless he felt that if he could get me on his side he would be able to deal with grandpapa all the more easily. Outwardly Mr. Montague was both religious and modest; which qualities, openly paraded in a stockbroker, appeared very beautiful to me. He also quoted Scripture, not ostentatiously, but evidently from habit. He constantly alluded to his dead mother, and told me that he took exotics to her grave at Brompton every second Sunday afternoon. How many financiers would do that? He never talked business in front of me, and I found after he had known my grandpapa about a month that the old man began to grow very secretive and peculiar. A cunning furtive look appeared in his eye; he was away from home--in the City and elsewhere--a great deal; he avoided discussion of his affairs as far as possible. Once I asked him some question about Mr. Montague's own status, and he laughed, and answered in bad taste--

"Spoons, eh? Well, Martha, old chip, I believe he's gone on you, too, or else he's playing the fool because he thinks it will please me. 'Fine woman, your sister,' he said to me last week. 'Fine for her age--she's sixty,' I answered."

"Grandfather, you know I'm not!"

"Well, you look it, every hour of it. But he pretended to be surprised, and said it was strange you hadn't made some good man happy before now."

"I think he is a very worthy, honourable gentleman, grandfather, and I wish you would try and be more like him."

"Bless you, Phil's all right. We're great pals. And he's got some brains under that sanctified manner, too. We have a little bit of fun in hand just now that means a pile for us both, if I'm not mistaken."

At this moment Mr. Montague himself was announced, and, without waiting to enquire of grandpapa whether I might do so, I asked him boldly of what nature was his new enterprise.

CHAPTER X.

THE CRUSADE.

"I will tell you with great pleasure, dear Miss Dolphin," he said, in his sad, rather sweet voice.

He sat down, stroked his clean-shaven chin, drew up his trousers that their elegant appearance might not be spoiled by his sharp, thin knees, and then spoke:

"Your brother and I are engaged in a crusade. Is not that the word, Mr. Dolphin?"

"As good as any other," said my grandpapa.

"Better than any other. You have doubtless heard of Monte Carlo, Miss Dolphin? It is a plague-spot on the fair face of France. God made the Riviera; man is responsible for Monte Carlo. The Prince of Monaco is the landlord, so I understand; the Prince of Darkness is the tenant. Miss Dolphin, it is often necessary to fight the Devil with his own weapons. We are going to Monte Carlo with a golden sword. Your brother finds the sword--I wield it."

"In plain English, Martha, Montague's worked out a dead snip----"

"A system, pardon me."

"Well, a 'system,' that will take the stuffing out of the strongest bank that ever robbed innocents. We are both going."

"Grandf--! Daniel! Going to Monte Carlo!"

"Yes. Don't want you. It's simply a matter of business."

"Let me explain," said Mr. Montague. "You are rather startled, dear Miss Dolphin, and I cannot wonder at it."

He blew his nose. His handkerchiefs and shirt-cuffs and so on were always beautiful. He said:

"The facts are these. I have had an inspiration. Heaven has from my earliest youth been pleased to bestow upon me certain mathematical gifts denied to most men. This power of dealing with figures was not given me for nothing. It is a talent not to be hidden in a napkin."

"No fear," said grandpapa.

"I have long been seeking some outlet for my peculiar ability, and I have at length found it. In my hand is a power, that rightly exercised, will extinguish one of the greatest evils of the present day. Under Heaven I have been mercifully permitted to discover a system which rises naturally from certain processes in the higher mathematics. This system applied to the laws which govern chance produces a most startling result. It annihilates chance altogether, and substitutes certainty. Do I make myself clear?"

"Clear as crystal," said grandpapa, chuckling.

"A lady can hardly be interested in my deductions, but their conclusions, their practical results, will not fail to interest her," continued Mr. Montague. "My system, once grasped and accepted, becomes a law, and the effect of that law must be a revolution in human society. Think, dear Miss Dolphin, of a world from which all element of chance is eliminated! The vices of gambling and betting vanish. Mathematics will rise superior to human roguery. We know when to expect red or black--I refer to card-playing; we know which horse ought to win every race, and if it doesn't we know where to throw the blame; we know everything; we are become as gods!"

"But what has that to do with Monte Carlo, sir?" I ventured to ask.

"Good old Martha! Go up one," said grandpapa.

Then Mr. Montague turned to me and answered my question.

"I expected you would ask that, Miss Dolphin, and I gladly explain. Monte Carlo is the headquarters of this pestilential passion, this love of gambling which dominates mankind. We are going to begin a crusade there, and fight against the most powerful troops the enemy has at command."

"That's so! I'm planking down a thousand; and we're goin' to play a big game and make some of 'em hop, and wish they had never been born," said grandpapa.

"In other and more seemly words, Miss Dolphin, we design to crush Monte Carlo, to wipe that blot from the fair face of France. The gambling hell shall be no more; treachery, falsehood, knavery shall cease out of the land."

"And we'll come home with flags flying, in a triumphal car drawn by oof-birds," said grandpapa.

"That, of course, is a circumstance incidental to the scheme," explained Mr. Montague to me. "You do not understand your brother, naturally enough, but what he means is that a large sum of money will accrue to us. With this wealth we shall develop my system, and place it within the reach of the misguided speculators of all countries."

Grandpapa exploded with noisy laughter, and patted Mr. Montague on the back.

"Why not do so first?" I asked. "Why not publish this great discovery at once in the papers?"

"Give it away! Good Lord, Martha--and you a lawyer's daughter!" said grandpapa.

"I would do so willingly enough," answered Mr. Montague, "but advertisement is a costly business. To make the system sufficiently known would require an expenditure of many thousands of pounds. You see no better advertisement of it could be hit upon than breaking the bank at Monte Carlo. We shall go on breaking that bank until the proprietors are ruined and the place is shut up. Then we shall return home."

"By way of Paris," said grandpapa. "If you like to meet us there," he added, with his real affection for me bubbling up to the surface of his nature, "you may; and we'll make a bit of a splash among the frogs." But I had never been out of England in my life, and did not like the picture of splashing with grandpapa in Paris. At the same time the thought of him splashing there alone was even less pleasant.

Mr. Montague said a few more words, promised never to lose sight of my grandfather and then took his leave, kissing my hand on his departure, in a stately, old-fashioned way which was very pleasing to me.

I could not help contrasting him with grandpapa, to the disadvantage of the latter. They looked about the same age, yet how different in their conduct, language, and attitude towards the gentler sex! One behaved, and thought, and acted as though he was forty-five; the other, who ought, heaven knows, to have been old-fashioned, and staid, and sensible, conducted himself like a fast, silly boy of twenty-one. For about this time grandfather began to grow young for his years, even on the New Scheme.

He bought some showy clothes, cloth caps, and knickerbockers, a meerschaum pipe, a spirit-flask, and several other things at the Army and Navy Stores. For these he certainly paid, but he gave the people who served him an imaginary name and ticket number. Rather than spend five shillings in a member's voucher, he told a lie to the officials of-the Co-operative Society; which I should think was very unusual. Then the old man drew another precious thousand pounds out of Government securities, and went away with Mr. Montague to wipe out Monte Carlo.

I was fearful of the entire concern, but he told me to "keep up my pecker and watch the papers," and so departed in roaring spirits. The only thing which troubled him was that his time for "blueing the booty" would be so short. To this day I have never met anybody who could explain the meaning of the expression "blueing the booty."

CHAPTER XI.

A NEW LEAF TURNED.

I am a simple old woman, ready to see fine qualities in anybody, unwilling to doubt the honesty of fellow-creatures or the good faith of their assertions. Therefore I am not ashamed to confess that Mr. Montague entirely deceived me, and turned out, not merely no better than he should have been, but much worse. He deceived dear grandpapa, too, though in a different way.

"I thought he was a sly beggar who 'd found a plum in the pie," said grandfather to me afterwards; "but it wasn't so--a mere blackleg, a scamp, a devourer of orphans. Break the bank? No, we didn't break the bank, but I broke his nose, and scattered his false teeth from one end of the Casino to the other, and dusted the steps with him afterwards!"

These and other things grandpapa said when he returned from Monte Carlo. I watched the daily journals as he directed, and so was not wholly unprepared for the fiasco which resulted from his trip to the Continent.

Indeed two startling items, both involving dear grandpapa, met my eye on the same morning, in the same copy of the Daily Telegraph. Under the "agony column" of that periodical I read as follows:--

"Wanted, address of one Daniel Dolphin. The same to Rogers, 'Eight Bells,' Chislehurst, will meet with a reward."

And elsewhere, under the heading of "Scene at Monte Carlo," occurred this paragraph:

"The English here are making things lively. Two adventurers with a new 'system' began to play last night and lost a thousand pounds at a sitting. One appears to have been a knave, the other a fool. When their resources were exhausted they came to blows, and the bigger man, presumed to be the capitalist, fell upon his companion and thrashed him unmercifully. It appears they had come in great state with a flourish of trumpets; but their 'system,' like most others, though doubtless pretty on paper, broke down at the tables. Both men have disappeared."

Here was cause for alarm if you will. I could not be sure that the persons mentioned were my dear grandfather and his companion, but somehow I always fancied that the matter related to them. I also dimly guessed why Mr. Rogers wanted grandpapa's address. No doubt Marie's affections had been trifled with, and the law possesses power to estimate the value of such broken promises in pounds, shillings, and pence.

I waited a fortnight without hearing a word from grandpapa. Then he suddenly came home, penniless and destitute of everything but the clothes on his back. He had grown thinner, and nearly a year younger, but his health appeared excellent, though his memory seemed to be impaired. Of course time was winging backwards at such a hideous rate with grandpapa that events, which only seemed of yesterday to me, already grew dim in his memory.

I sent for the tailor to come and measure him for some new clothes, and then begged he would tell me all that had happened. He began immediately about Paris, but I reminded him of Monte Carlo and Mr. Phil Montague. Then he grew enraged, and explained to me how he had treated that gentleman.

"I left the place next day, and slipped back to Paris. There I've had a pretty good time, but it's an expensive place. I kept a few hundreds up my sleeve, you know, and after I'd lost the 'thou.,' which simply filtered away in a few hours, I reckoned I'd get better money's worth with what was left. So I went to Paris and had a gaudy fortnight."

"And now you will settle down, dearest, won't you, and drop all this 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."