Part 4

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.