Part 6

"Yes, very likely; young men say foolish things. You can’t help fate. Marriages are made in heaven wholesale, though I admit they never guarantee the quality, and turn out a lot of goods that don’t wear. You observe that lock ahead? We’re going to lunch there. The lock-keeper is called Rose, and he has a daughter named Phyllis. She’s the daintiest, most exquisite, human thing I ever saw. No brains, thank God--I’ve had enough of clever women--but the disposition of an angel, eyes like grey rainclouds with sunshine in ’em, hair brown, lily-white hands, tiny feet, and everything complete. What’s more, the girl understands me."

"I may assume, then, grandfather, that you are engaged?"

"I will not deceive you, Martha; we are."

"How far has it gone?"

"To the ’second time of asking.’ I mean business this journey. We’re to be married after Henley. I didn’t tell you, because it would only have worried you, and, I fear, make you take kinder than ever to stimulant. I’ve arranged it all. We’re going to Scotland. Then, when I get a bit younger, I shall leave her a letter with all my money in it, and clear out and make away with myself. I was only pretending just now. I couldn’t stand childhood again, not even with you, let alone as a married man. I want you to be friends with her, and live with her after I am gone."

His voice broke, and, at the same moment we reached the lock.

*CHAPTER XVIII.*

_*I FORBID THE BANNS.*_

"There you are!" said a soft, musical voice above us, and glancing up I saw Phyllis Rose. She was in truth a beautiful girl, dressed in her Sunday clothes, looking the pink of health and happiness.

"I’ve watched you ever so long, dear Dan; and this is your dear, dear grandmother? Oh, I hope she will let me love her for your sake."

She kissed me, and, I confess, my heart warmed to her. She was as pretty and tender a little soul as ever lived to make sunshine for other people. I soon found that she worshipped the ground my grandfather trod upon. She slipped her little hand into his as she walked up to her father’s cottage, and talked pleasantly and happily with a London accent.

At her modest habitation an excellent meal and a bottle of very passable red wine were prepared. The girl’s parents seemed delighted to see us, and welcomed me in a most hearty, but at the same time respectful manner. I tried to banish the real, fatal aspect of the position and live in the passing hour. Grandpapa seemed very cheerful.

"Were the banns called again to-day?" he asked.

"That they was," said Mr. Rose; "and Phyllis, the little silly, got as red as a peony, and her mother, no better, blushed like a school-girl, too. That’s the second time of asking. Don’t you have no more fruit pie, Dan. Remember Henley."

But my grandfather explained he had not gone into regular training yet. "Sam Sturgess and I begin hard work together on Monday week," he said. "We’re both very fit, and if I don’t pull off the ’Diamonds,’ I ought to go near winning the ’double sculls’ with Sam. It’s a month next Monday."

The young things went off together presently, and I had a thimbleful of cold punch with Mr. and Mrs. Rose, and chatted to them. It was seldom I got an opportunity to talk to my fellow-creatures now, and I must admit that I enjoyed doing so. They were quite willing to listen, and tried to turn our talk to grandfather; but I said as little on that head as possible.

"What d’ you think of her?" my grandfather asked, as he rowed me home in the evening.

"She is a pearl of a girl. But it must not be, grandfather. You contemplate a most wicked action. I pray you abandon the idea. Stop till Henley, if you must; then let us hurry away. We can write and break it off, and send her a present in money. They are poor, and it would be very welcome."

"You may talk yourself inside out, Martha, but it won’t alter me," he said, with quiet determination. "This is the only girl I’ve ever really loved, and the Devil himself won’t stop me. For that matter, he’s the last who ’d try to, no doubt."

"It is necessary to have your banns called in your own parish as well, grandpapa."

"I know, I know. I wasn’t married three times without getting a pretty good knowledge of the ropes. My banns have been called twice at St. Jude’s. You never go to church now, or you’d have heard ’em."

"St. Jude’s is not much patronised. The service is long and low, and the church half empty."

"So much the better."

Then he changed the subject, and as the moon rose and made the river look romantic, grandpapa tried to invent a bit of poetry about Phyllis, and failed.

"Oh, Phyllis mine, come let us twine our arms about each other’s necks," he began. Then he turned to me and said--

"Put that flask away, Martha; you think I can’t see you, but I can. ’Our arms about each other’s necks.’ Then, let me see, what rhymes with ’necks’?"

"Cheques," I answered, humouring him.

"Ah, that would come in if this was an ordinary, modern sort of love match, but it isn’t. I want something pastoral or idyllic. Let me see, where ’d I got to? ’Come, Phyllis mine, and let us twine our arms about each other’s necks.’ Wrecks, decks, specks, flecks, pecks. Necks is ’off.’ Let’s try ’each other’s waists.’ Waste, raced, paste, taste, graced, laced, haste----"

Then he ran into the bank and abandoned verse, and fell back upon lurid prose, which he applied to me and my management of the rudder lines.

"What d’ you think you’re doing, you muddle-headed old mummy? Sit straight and look at the river, not at the moon. I’ll make you sign the pledge to-morrow, blessed if I don’t! You’ll have more water with your whisky than you want in a moment. Oh, Lord! never again--never. Pull the right string--the right. Holy mouse! On Sunday evening too!"

Finally I gave up the lines, being really far from well, and he unshipped the rudder and made me sit in the bottom of the boat. I don’t know what possessed me, but I felt quite happy in spite of my passing dizziness, and when a boat went by us, with a young man in it playing on a banjo and singing, I sang too. It was the first time I had done so for forty years.

"Shut up, you ruin!" gasped grandfather. "Stop it, for the love of the Lord. D’ you think I want the whole river to know? It’s like a cargo of corncrakes. You’re enough to frighten a steam launch!"

I stopped then and cried at his cruelty.

"Don’t be harsh, grandfather--don’t be brutal to your only grandchild," I sobbed.

"Behave yourself, then. When you take to singing in public it’s about time I spoke out."

We got home somehow, and never returned to the subject. He did not desire to be reminded of his poetry, and therefore was careful not to allude to my passing indisposition.

But I never hesitated to speak on the subject of poor Phyllis. I implored him, by everything that was sacred, to abandon this undertaking. Each day throughout that week I attacked him, until in sheer despair and rage he would take his hat and fly from the house. But nothing availed--grandfather would not alter his intention; and I therefore determined to forbid the banns. The thought was naturally very distasteful to me, but I could see no alternative. Grandpapa, never dreaming of such a thing, rowed up the river as usual on the following Sunday, and I went to St. Jude’s.

In due course the minister published the banns of marriage "between Daniel Dolphin, of this parish, bachelor, and Phyllis Rose, of"--somewhere else, I forget the name of the place--"spinster." It was for the third and last time of asking.

I got up, grasped the pew in front of me, and exclaimed:

"This--this mustn’t go on. I forbid the banns!"

"Which?" asked the minister. He had read out a string of names.

"Those between my grand--between Daniel Dolphin and Phyllis Rose."

"Will the individual who has forbidden these banns of marriage meet me in the vestry at the end of the service?" said the clergyman. Then he proceeded.

In the vestry he asked me for particulars.

"In the first place," I answered, "Mr. Dolphin is not a bachelor at all. He is married. He has been married three times."

"D’ you mean to say that mere boy’s been married three times?"

"It’s the solemn truth."

"No wife alive, I trust?"

"Oh, no--the last died sixty years ago--at least--that is----"

"Woman," said the pastor sternly, "what do you mean? Mr. Dolphin came to see me himself. He is twenty, so he says, but does not look that. You have told me a transparent lie. Do you know Mr. Dolphin?"

"Know him! He’s my grandfather."

The Vicar looked round to see if the coast was clear. He prepared to escape if I should grow violent. His manner instantly changed.

"Keep cool, dear madam. I quite understand. Let me get you a glass of water to drink."

Then he withdrew, and I heard him whispering to an old woman who opened the pews. He bid her run for a doctor and a policeman. Upon this I rose and came home.

To my surprise, grandpapa rowed back pretty early in the afternoon. He was in a terribly depressed and agitated condition, so I did not tell him just then what I had clone.

"What’s the matter, grandfather? Phyllis is well?"

"No, she’s not well. A brute got up at her wretched church and forbid the banns. She fainted, and her father met the person and somebody else afterwards. Whether it was Tomkins, or Talbot, or Rogers, or the Princess, I don’t know. But it’s all up. Old Rose is going to arrange an action for breach of promise. His wife came home from church and gave me the particulars, and some pretty peppery criticism at the same time. We must clear out of this, but I’ll row for the ’Diamonds’ if the heavens fall. Get your traps. We’ll go up the river by easy stages, and lie low in the day-time. I can enter for the regatta under a feigned name."

Thus had my poor grandparent’s banns been forbidden at both places of worship simultaneously.

*CHAPTER XIX.*

_*COUNSEL’S OPINION.*_

Grandpapa decided that Sunbury would be a likely sort of place to "lie low" in, so we went up after dark that same Sunday evening, reached our new halting-place soon after midnight, and took some lodgings by the water-side. The affair was in the papers next day, and the name of Daniel Dolphin echoed in people’s mouths once more.

Grandfather now called himself Elisha Spratt, and he entered under that name at Henley. By a curious coincidence, the first heat for the Diamond Sculls fell on grandpapa’s birthday. Nearly a month, however, had yet to pass by before that elate. Mr. Rose’s added another to the long list of indictments against grandfather, but the old man cared nothing. He went on steadily and quietly with his practice and training, and the harder he trained, the younger he began to look.

A painful incident, out of which arose another still more trying, has here to be recorded. Grandpapa, while discussing the different processes at law which he had incurred, told me, in some glee, of matters I did not know.

"I did a smart thing recently," he began. "Of course, a man must help his chums where he can, and I’ve been able to do so without any hurt to myself. People on the river think I’ve got pots of money, because I spend very freely. On the strength of this I’ve been asked to lend my security on about twenty different occasions. I never refused. Men thought I was a fool, but I knew what I was about very well."

The old, cunning look came back into his eyes once more. It had a very painful appearance on the face of so young a man.

"What have you done now, dear grandfather? Hide nothing from me," I said.

"I’ve backed a lot of bills, and gone security for thousands and thousands. A good few of the Johnnies can’t pay, and they’ll come down on me like a ton of bricks. Ha, ha!"

"I don’t see what there is to laugh at, grandpapa. So little amuses you now."

"Why, _I’m under age_. That’s where the laugh comes in. I’m a legal infant, or something of that sort. They can’t touch me."

"A legal infant! Why, grandfather, you’re a hundred and eight years old in a few weeks’ time."

"Not by the New Scheme."

"What’s the New Scheme got to do with the money-lenders? They’ll fight it out on the Old Scheme, and trace you back and back, and confront you with your past career. It was madness to do such a thing."

The old man grew rather wretched and uneasy, but he soon cheered up again.

"I thought it was such a smart move; and, after all, no harm’s done, for I haven’t got the money. In fact, fifteen hundred or less is about my limit now. I’m safe enough if you don’t go and give me away. People recognise you, but, of course, I shall begin changing and dwindling at a deuce of a rate, after Henley. To think that my mental powers will begin to fade, too--that’s what cuts me up."

What he called his mental powers had already begun to fade. He was stupid for his age now, and would be a mere clown of a boy in six months’ time. But I did not tell him so. I said nothing; and soon afterwards he went to bed.

In the morning he came down to breakfast, fired with an extraordinary new project. And yet, in justice to myself, I cannot say strictly that it was a fresh idea. I had advised him to take the step he now contemplated any time this five years.

"I have been reading the agreement," said grandpapa, "and, upon my soul, it looks to me, duffer though I am, as if the thing didn’t hold water. I don’t know anything about law, but the question is simply a legal one, after all; and if there’s a flaw anywhere, I don’t see why I shouldn’t benefit by it. Any way, it’s good enough to get an opinion on. I shall go up to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and see Messrs. Tarrant and Hawker. They helped me in the matter of the Automatic Postcard swindle, if you remember. I shall pretend the agreement is a joke, and, of course, they won’t know me from Adam. Just think if they discovered a flaw, now, at the eleventh hour, so to speak!"

"Go, by all means, grandpapa, but don’t buoy yourself, my dearest. Recollect Who wrote that agreement. He may not be skilled in legal matters himself, but he must have had ample opportunities for submitting the draft to experts."

"That’s the point," answered grandpapa. "He expressly said he’d drawn it up himself. It was a new thing in agreements, even for him. He fancied it too. But there may be a slip somewhere. I want a day off the river, and I’ll go up with this document after lunch. You sit tight at home and don’t show yourself. If people see you--Rose or any of the rest--they’ll know I’m not far off."

"And take care yourself, grandpapa. They are on the look out, no doubt. If you are arrested, I shall go mad."

He started, and I spent the afternoon reading disquieting paragraphs about Daniel Dolphin. Many papers made mention of him, and certain of the comic organs printed what they doubtless regarded as jokes. My name appeared. There was much diversity of opinion about me. Some said that I was his daughter; others that we were brother and sister; others, again, that Daniel Dolphin’s mother or grandmother or great-aunt assisted him in his pernicious career. The _Star_ fancied that Daniel Dolphin often masqueraded as an old woman. Everybody agreed that the truth would soon be known, because the police had an undoubted clue, and the matter was in most experienced hands.

My grandpapa returned to dinner. He wept into his plate all through that meal, and showed me in a thousand ways that his enterprise had produced no good results.

"Speak, my treasure!" I cried at length, unable to bear the suspense; "is it as bad as you thought?"

"A million times worse!"

"Worse! What could be worse, grandpapa?"

"I’ll explain. This fool--Nick, I mean--has drawn out the thing single-handed, and defeated his own object, and wrecked me utterly. I saw Mr. Hawker himself. He studied the agreement for an hour, then gave judgment on it. He said, tapping it with his eyeglass, ’Now this document is curious--very much so. The--the person who wrote it appears to have had a certain smattering of law terms, which he sprinkles over his remarks without any legal knowledge, without any familiarity with their forensic significance. The most remarkable thing about this agreement, however, is that by the processes to be applied to Daniel Dolphin, the said gentleman will absolutely cease to exist at the end of the specified time. The deed is amateurish in many respects, but in none more than this. It defeats its own object, for on the completion of the period herein set out, _there will be nothing of Mr. Daniel Dolphin left to go anywhere_! He said that, and I thanked him and paid six-and-eightpence, and came away, feeling about as cheap as a bad egg."

My grandfather flung himself on a sofa, and cried again.

"Then you can’t go to--to--!" I said, with a thrill of exultation.

"I can’t go anywhere at all," he moaned; "I go out like gas when it’s turned off at the tap. You don’t understand--it’s terrible, it’s unheard of. I’d rather have gone down below than nowhere at all--anybody would. But now--now I shall become as extinct as the dodo. He’s spoofed himself, and squelched me. Talk about justice!"

I cannot dwell upon his sufferings. He had always believed firmly in a life beyond the grave. Now it was snatched from him by a juggling, muddle-headed, self-sufficient fiend, who ought never to have been allowed the use of writing materials. The matter was a logical one; the end of the New Scheme simply meant eternal annihilation for my unhappy old grandfather.

*CHAPTER XX.*

_*A CLIMAX.*_

Grandfather had little time to concern himself with his new and terrible sorrows. All his hopes and ambitions now centred in the race at Henley; but adequate training became very difficult, because we were marked people now, despite the fact that we had changed our names. Detectives were constantly watching us and taking photographs of us in a hand-camera, and doing all they could to identify grandpapa with Daniel Dolphin. We moved higher up the river, then proceeded above Henley, then retreated back again to Kew. This threw the police out for awhile, but as time went on they found us again, and finally the first writ arrived. But this and others concerned money affairs, and grandpapa brushed them away with contempt. Anon, however, a more serious injunction fell upon us. Mr. Rose, satisfied that grandfather was no other than Daniel Dolphin, and doubtless advised by those familiar with the law, brought an action in the name of his daughter for breach of promise of marriage.

"It’s pretty rough on me," said grandpapa, "that the one girl of the lot that I really was faithful to, and wanted to marry, and meant to marry, should jump on me like this. I couldn’t help the banns being forbidden. And now I have got to appear in the Queen’s Bench Division, and very likely get run in for all I’m worth, and a bit over."

"D’you observe the date?" I asked, after looking at the document.

"By Jove! my twentieth birthday by the New Scheme--same date as first heat of the ’Diamonds.’ Well, I can’t attend, that’s all. They’ll have to put it off."

A sort of fatality attached to subsequent summonses for grandpapa. The Salisbury people got wind of his address too, and he was ordered to repair to that city on divers charges. I think about six detectives, all working in different interests, were now employed upon grandfather. He was commanded to appear in the Queen’s Bench Division on no less than three different counts, for Marie Rogers brought a case against Daniel Dolphin, and Mrs. Bangley-Brown did the same.

"They’ll look pretty complete fools, those women," said grandpapa grimly, "when I do turn up in the box--a callow, lanky lout of twenty. The detectives have marked you down, Martha, and associate you with the missing Daniel Dolphin. So they think they are on the right track. You’ll have to come and swear anything I tell you to."

But I had my own troubles. There were several summonses out against me for "aiding and abetting" grandpapa in his different enterprises.

"Shall you employ a solicitor?" I asked.

"Not I," he answered. "No good chucking money away. I shall plead infancy, and if that won’t wash, I shall throw myself on the mercy of the Court. I shall get up some legal expressions, like _ultra vires_, and _sub judice_, and _suggestio falsi_, and _prima facie_, and so on. With these I shall endeavour to conduct my own case. As a last resort I shall try an alibi. But my own impression is that these fools of women will cry off the moment they see me. I don’t want to drag in the New Scheme if I can possibly help it. What a cur Nick is not to lend a hand at a time like this!"

"And what am I to do, grandfather?"

"Well, you’ll have to stand your trial. As far as I can see, you’ll get about five years if they’re lenient. You might bounce it with an alibi. After all, what does it matter? Quiet rest in a prison cell would be luxury after this life. I’ve foreseen it for some time. In your case it might be the best thing that could happen. You’ll have to be steady there. It’s about the only thought that really worries me, to remember that when I’m a defenceless babe I shall be in the hands of a woman who drinks."

"Grandpapa! you know how I try."

"I know how you succeed. Any excuse is good enough for a whack with you now. Every time a new injunction or process or writ drops in, off you go to the brandy bottle and carouse, as though they were matters to rejoice about. What was the good of signing the pledge if you never meant to keep it?"

"I find my system must have stimulant now, and I take it medicinally."

"Oh, of course--the same old lie that’s been on people’s tongues ever since Noah invented it. It’s your business after all, only you might look on ahead a little. Not long ago you were always telling me to do so. One of these days, after I’m a poor bawling infant in arms, you’ll see purple centipedes or something just when I want your attention, and I shall get left."

The subject dropped, and I turned the conversation to a pleasanter theme. We were within a week of the race, and grandpapa, in the pink of condition, only hoped and prayed that the law would not put violent hands upon him before Henley Regatta. The complications of the position had now become impossible to describe in words. We were lodging at Henley, and already letters, signed "Verax" and "Scrutator," were appearing in the sporting papers hinting at matters mysteriously connecting the young sculler, Elisha Spratt, with the scoundrel, Daniel Dolphin. Mr. Rose was responsible for these; at least, grandpapa thought so.

But nobody interfered with him. He wound up his training, and backed himself with a thousand pounds, which was all we had left in the world. On the night before the race some policemen made an endeavour to arrest grandpapa, but he escaped, and joined me at a mean hotel near the river, where with great difficulty we succeeded in getting two adjoining bedrooms. A good night’s rest was absolutely necessary for him.

"You see, I’ve got to win the Sculls at Henley, and answer for myself at Salisbury and in the Queen’s Bench Division, and before a magistrate at Twickenham, and in three police-courts elsewhere, so I shall be fairly busy to-morrow," he said, with a rather pathetic smile. Then he kissed me, and went to bed in perfect good-temper. He was happily too young now to thoroughly realise his awful position.

*CHAPTER XXI.*

_*MY NIGHTMARE.*_

I did not sleep that night for many hours, and when I finally slumbered there came to me a nightmare, involving grandpapa, which took ten years off my life.