Chapter II: Part 2

"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."

*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.

His moustache did not grow again to any extent. He took to wearing a straw hat with a bright ribbon, a blue and red "blazer," white flannel trousers, and tan boots. Thus attired he spent much of his time in the Crystal Palace, choosing undesirable friends at the different stalls and "growing blue devils under glass," as he tersely put it.

*CHAPTER XV.*

_*SUSAN MARKS.*_

I may say at once that the police never found grandpapa. Neither Le Coq nor Edgar Allen Poe’s amateur would have done so, for the simple reason that my grandparent was growing younger at the rate of one year every five weeks or so; and though there is not much difference between one year and the next in adult life, yet when we deal with the period of adolescence, great changes become visible in brief periods. He was about five-and-twenty when we went to Upper Norwood, and two-and-twenty when we left that desirable neighbourhood, after a residence of about three months.

"You look your age; there’s no doubt about that, Martha," he said to me once, in a very uncalled-for way.

"So do most respectable people," I answered sharply. "We can’t all go backwards. The terms wouldn’t suit everybody."

"You needn’t be personal," he answered; "and you needn’t lose your temper. I say you look your age, and more than your age; and I’ll tell you why----"

He broke off and tapped a bottle significantly. "Go your own way, of course, but don’t say nobody ever tried to save you. Don’t say your grandfather didn’t warn you in time. You were as stupid as an owl last night when I came in. Yes, I know what you’re going to say: I had better look to myself before I criticise other people. But, remember, I don’t matter; my tour’s booked through. Things are different with you, and I tell you frankly it’s a sorry sight to see an old woman of your age going down the hill so fast. No grandfather could view such a spectacle calmly."

How I wept to be sure. It was the first kind, thoughtful word I had ever heard from him since the commencement of the New Scheme. For several days afterwards his manner quite changed. He devoted himself to me, and, amongst other things, purchased me two dozen bottles of non-alcoholic bitter beer, and a book of intemperate temperance addresses.

All too soon, however, I discovered the reasons for this sudden outburst of affection. Dear grandpapa began to feel that he could not get on without me, and he had another little affair in hand.