Part 2

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.