  Produced by Al Haines. [image] Cover art A DEAL By EDEN PHILLPOTTS AUTHOR OF LONDON CONTENTS.
A Deal with the Devil. CHAPTER I. GRANDFATHER'S BIRTHDAY. Before my grandpapa, Mr. Daniel Dolphin, comes down to breakfast on the morning of his hundredth birthday, I may tell you something about him. He has been married three times; he has buried all his wives and all his children. There were five of the latter, resulting from grandpapa's three marriages; but now I, Martha Dolphin, the only child of grandpapa's eldest son, am the sole survivor and living descendant of Daniel Dolphin. Frankly it must be confessed that grandpapa has been an unprincipled man in his time. Among other inconveniences, resulting from unedifying conduct, he suffered five years' imprisonment for forgery before I was born; but when he turned ninety-five I think he honestly began to realise that this world is, after all, a mere temporary place of preparation, and from that age up to the present moment (I am dealing with the morning of his hundredth birthday) he abandoned the things which once gave him pleasure, and began to look seriously towards another and a better life beyond the grave. Indeed, thanks to my ever-present warnings, and the Rev. John Murdoch's ministrations, grandpapa, from the time he was ninety-five, kept as sober, as honest, and as innocent as one could wish to see any nonagenarian. He regarded the future with quiet confidence now, feared death no longer, and alleged that his approaching end had no terrors for him. The dear old fellow was very fond of me, and he often said that, but for his patient granddaughter, he should never have turned from the broad downward road at all. I can see him now coming in to breakfast--a marvellous man for his age. Bent he was, and shrivelled as a brown pippin from last year looks in June, but his eyes were bright, his intelligence was keen, his wit and humour ever active, his jokes most creditable for a man of such advanced age. In his antique frilled shirt, black stock, long snuff-coloured coat, and velvet cap, grandpapa looked a perfect picture. I cannot say there was anything venerable about him, but he would have made a splendid model for a miser or something of that sort. "Many, many happy returns of the day, dear grandpapa," said I, hastening to kiss his withered cheek and to place a white rose from our little garden in his button-hole. "Thank you, thank you, Martha. Have you got a present for the old man?" he asked, in his sharp, piping treble. "That I have, dear grandpapa--a big packet of the real rappee you always like so much." "Good girl. And this--Lord! Lord!--this is my hundredth birthday!" Presently he wrestled with a poached egg and some bread-and-milk. He spoiled his beautiful frilled shirt with the egg, and used an expletive. Then he remembered a comic incident, and began to chuckle in the middle of tea-drinking, and so choked. I patted him on the back, cleaned him up, and pulled him together. Then, spluttering and laughing, all in a breath, he turned to me, gradually calmed down, and spoke: "A dream--it was a dream that came to me last night--a vivid incubus, mighty clear and mighty real. It must have been the tapioca pudden at supper. I told you it was awful tough." "Indeed, dearest one, I made it myself." "Well, well. To the dream. I thought a figure stood at my bedside--a figure much like that in the flames on the old stained-glass window at St. Paul's. He wore horns too, but certainly he had the manners of a gentleman. Of course we all know he is one. It's in the Bible, or Shakespeare, or somewhere." "A fiend, grandpapa!" "The devil himself, my dear, and a very tidy personage too. Bless your life, he bowed and scraped like a Frenchman, apologised for troubling me at such a late hour, handed me my glasses, that I might the better see the friendly look on his face, and then asked me if I could spare him ten minutes. You know nothing ever alarms me. I'm 'saved,' if I understand Parson Murdoch rightly; and, therefore I've no need to be bothered about the other place or anybody in it." "Don't talk like that, grandpapa." "Why not? 'Well, fire away, Nicholas,' I said, 'but candidly you've come to the wrong man, if you imagine you'll do any business here. I was off your books five years ago. You know that well enough.' 'Daniel,' he answered, with more familiarity than I cared about, 'Daniel, it is only because you were on my books for ninety-five years that I've dropped in this evening. One good turn deserves another. You are probably not aware that, in the ordinary course of events, to-morrow morning--the morning of your hundredth birthday--will never come for you. The sun will rise and find you lifeless clay; your granddaughter will knock at your chamber door and receive no answer; for your days are numbered, your span of life, handsome enough in all conscience, is done. But listen, I can guarantee ten more years. We only do these things for very old customers. Put yourself in my hands and ten more mundane years of life shall be yours.'" Here my grandpapa broke off to chuckle, which he did very heartily. Then he took snuff, and it dropped about his shirt-front, where the poached egg had already fallen, and imparted to the dear old man his usual appearance. "'What are the terms, Nick?' I asked," continued grandpapa. "'The ordinary terms, Daniel,' he answered. 'This is a little private speculation of my own, and I want to point out the beauties of it to you, because it's a bit out of the common, even for me. You see, Daniel, as a rule we grant these extensions only to gentlemen in dire distress--on the days before executions and so forth. But in your case you might justly consider that no offer of increased life was worth accepting. You are right. More it would be. A man cannot get any solid satisfaction out of life after he is a hundred years old. The body at that age is a mere clog; eating and drinking become a farce; the pleasures of sense are dead. As to brain, even that's only a broken box full of tangled threads. Intellectual enjoyments are no longer for you. Not, of course, that they were ever your strong point. You can only sit in the chimney corner now, and blink and sleep, and wait for Death to come and roll you over with his pole-axe, like the worn-out old animal you are. No, you shan't grow older, Dan, you shall grow younger if you please. You shall cram another lifetime into the ten years which I promise. Each of them will extend over a period of ten earthly years. That is the offer. It should work out well for both of us. Read this. I had the thing drafted; in fact, I did it myself to save time.' Then he handed me a form of agreement duly stamped." "My dear grandpapa, what an extraordinary nightmare!" "It was. I read the bond critically, and, for reasons which I cannot now remember, determined to sign it." "Grandfather!" "Well, it was only a dream. Ten years more life, remember. That was worth a slight sacrifice." "A slight sacrifice, grandpapa!" "Anyhow, I said I'd sign, and Nick took a red feather out of his cap in a twinkling. 'A matter of form,' he said, 'one drop of venous blood is all we shall require.' Then he dug the pen into my shoulder and politely handed it to me. 'Of course witnesses in these cases are very inconvenient,' proceeded Nick, 'but between gentlemen our bonds will be sufficiently binding.' So I signed, and he bowed and wished me joy and went up the chimney. But a funny coincidence is that this morning my shoulder has a round red mark upon it like a burn." "A flea, dearest one." "Possibly. In fact that is how I explained it to myself. As you know, a dream often occupies the briefest flash of time, and it may be that some chance insect biting my shoulder produced a moment's irritation, and was responsible for the entire vision. But I still think it may have been that tapioca pudden. Mind you are more careful with my food in the future." CHAPTER II. IN THE CUPBOARD. We laughed the matter off, and should probably have forgotten all about it but that grandpapa suffered a great deal of inconvenience with his shoulder. The round, red mark gathered and grew very painful. Indeed it only yielded to a long course of bread poultices. Thanks to tonics, however, he soon recovered his health; and then it seemed that his splendid constitution had almost enabled him to take a new lease of life. He actually gained strength instead of losing it, and his faculties became clearer if anything. We lived in Ealing, Middlesex, at the time, and when my grandpapa's health was thoroughly re-established, his medical man wrote to the Lancet, and a deputation waited on my grandfather from the local Liberal Club to congratulate him. The dear old fellow became quite a celebrity in his way, and, what is more, there was no backsliding; he went to church with me every Sunday in a bath chair, and at home he kept his temper better, and nearly always did what he was told. But six months after his birthday the thunder-cloud burst upon our little home. I was sitting in the parlour, doing household accounts, and grandpapa was in his own room, playing the flute. He had not touched this instrument for at least five years, but to my amazement, that afternoon he dragged it out of some old cupboard and began to play it, with runs and shakes and false notes, just in the old pleasant way. He stopped suddenly, however, after giving a very creditable rendering of the "Old Hundredth." I feared this effort had been too much for him, and was just hastening upstairs when he came hurrying down and tottered into the room. Fright and dismay sat on his wrinkled face; his knees shook and knocked together, his eyes protruded like a crab's, and his poor old jaws were going like a pair of nut-crackers, but he could not speak. "My dearest, what is it?" I cried, running to him as he subsided on the sofa. "Oh, why will you be so active at your time of life? You'll kill yourself if you go on so. What have you done now? You've strained something internal with that flute--I know you have." "I've found it! I've found it!" he cried, trembling all over. "Of course, or else you couldn't play it," I replied. "I've found IT," he repeated, raising his hand wildly and waving a manuscript over his head. "Read that--Oh, why was I ever born? Read it, I tell you. It's a real agreement, on parchment, not a nightmare at all. He's got the other, no doubt; the one I signed. I've bartered away my immortal soul for ten more years of horrible life, and I'm growing younger every moment!" "Where did this come from?" was all I could say, taking a parchment scroll from my grandpapa's shaking hand. "It fell out of the cupboard where I keep my flute music," he groaned. "Read it, read it slowly, aloud. Is there any escape? It seems very loosely worded. Oh why, why didn't Jack live? He would have got me out of this appalling fix if anybody could." Jack, or John, was my father--a very able solicitor; but what law is capable of coping with utterly unprincipled people who live in another world? I read the thing. It was written in English, and signed with a strange scrawl, like a flash of black lightning. Attached to it hung a seal of flame-coloured wax. To show my unhappy grandparent's exact position I had better transcribe this document. Thus it ran: "Know all men, and others, by these presents that in consideration of a compact, signed, sealed, and delivered by Daniel Dolphin, of No. 114, Windsor Road, Ealing, County of Middlesex, England, I hereby undertake to provide him with certain years of life, to the number of ten, over, above, and beyond the number (of one hundred) which it was originally predestined that he should exist. And, further, it is to be noted, observed, and understood that each of the said ten years hereinbefore abovementioned shall embrace a period of life formerly extending over a decade of ordinary mundane years; and it is also understood, granted, and agreed that the aforementioned Daniel Dolphin do henceforth and hereafter grow younger instead of older, which provision I hereby undertake for the reason that human life protracted beyond a century, ceases to give the possessor thereof pleasure or gratification in any sort." Then followed the date, the signature, and an address, which need not be insisted upon, but which was sufficiently clear. "What does it mean, grandpapa?" I asked faintly. "Mean?" he screamed, "it means that in less than ten years' time I shall be a bald-headed baby again. It means that I shall live a hundred years in ten and go backwards all the while. It means I'm faced with about the most hideous prospect ever heard of. And I've got nothing to make me suffer with Christian fortitude either, for look at the end of it! It's a shameful programme--frightful and demoniacal: ten years of the most fantastic existence that ever a devil designed, and then--then my part of the bond has to be complied with. This is the result of turning over a new leaf at ninety-five. Why didn't I go on as I was going, and only reform on my death-bed like other people?" My grandfather sat in a haggard heap on the sofa, cried senile tears, wrung his bony hands, and, I regret to say, used the only language which was in his opinion equal to describing his shocking discovery. I procured brandy and water, tried to say a few hopeful words, and then went out to seek professional aid of some sort. I was a woman of fifty then--accounted practical and far-seeing too. But the terror of this stupendous misfortune fairly set my mind in a whirl and quite clouded my generally lucid judgment. I hardly knew where I should apply. My thoughts wavered between a clergyman, a doctor, and a solicitor. In some measure it seemed a case for them all. Finally I determined to speak to our Vicar. He was an old man, and mainly responsible for grandpapa's conversion. I must have been quite hysterical by the time I reached the vicarage. At any rate, all I can remember is that I sank down in Mr. Murdoch's study, and wept bitterly and sobbed out: "Such a dreadful thing--such a dreadful thing. Grandpapa's growing younger every minute; and he's gone and sold himself to the Devil!" CHAPTER III. COLD COMFORT. Mr. Murdoch came round and saw my poor grandpapa at once. He was a pompous, kind-hearted man, but proved of little service to us, being unpractical, and unable apparently to grasp the horrid facts. Grandpapa felt better, and rather more hopeful when we returned to him; but I fear that alcohol alone was responsible for his improved spirits. I usually kept the brandy locked up, because the dear old man never would understand that it should only be taken as medicine; but I forgot to remove it before going for the Vicar, and grandpapa had helped himself. "Here's a rum go!" he said, as Mr. Murdoch arrived, with his face a yard long. "My poor friend, my dear Dolphin, I cannot believe it; I refuse to credit it." "Read that then," said grandfather, kicking the Agreement across the room with his felt slipper. Mr. Murdoch puzzled over it. Presently he dropped the thing and smelt his gloves. "It has an evil odour," he said. Then he sighed and shook his head and seemed more concerned for the parish than for grandpapa. "That such a thing should have happened in Ealing, of all places, is a source of unutterable grief to me," murmured the Vicar. "Smother Ealing!" piped out poor grandpapa. "Think of me! Generalities are no good. Be practical if you can. Is it a ghastly hoax or a hideous fact? Hasn't anything of the kind ever happened before? And couldn't something be done to wriggle out of it? Regard the thing professionally. You're always talking about fighting the Evil One. Well, here's a chance to do it." "I shall mention the matter in my private devotions," said Mr. Murdoch mildly. "Don't do anything of the sort," snapped back grandpapa. "This affair shan't get about if I can help it--least of all in the next world. If you can't do anything definite, keep quiet. It must not be known. I believe the thing's a paltry joke myself. I don't feel a day younger--not an hour. We shall see. I'm going to let Nature take its course for six months more; then I shall be a hundred and one, or else only ninety, if this dastardly Deed speaks the truth. Then, should I find I'm growing younger, I shall take steps and see George Lewis, and the Bishop of London, and Andrew Clark. I'll back them to thrash this thing out for me anyhow. Meanwhile, please refrain from alluding to the subject anywhere. Give me some more brandy, Martha." So Mr. Murdoch, promising to preserve absolute silence, went away like a man recovering from a bad dream, and grandpapa, having taken a great deal more spirit than was good for him, slumbered uneasily on the sofa. In his dreams I could hear him wrangling with something supernatural, and evidently getting the worst of the argument. "It's too bad," I heard him say. "It's simple sharp practice to jump on an old man like me, and make him sign a one-sided thing like that when he was half asleep!" The cook and I presently helped the unhappy old sufferer to bed. Then, locking up the Agreement, I sat down to think. We were alone in the world, grandpapa and I. He looked to me for everything, and I devoted my life to him. In person I was a plain woman, with simple tastes and a tolerable temper. My life had been uneventful up to the present time, but it looked as though a fair share of earthly excitement lay before me now. I tried to picture the future, and my brain reeled. I saw my grandfather renewing his youth day by day and hour by hour. I pictured him going back to his old, unsatisfactory ways, with nothing whatever to check him, and nobody to speak a word of warning. I saw Time winging backwards with grandpapa and onwards with me. When I was fifty-five he would be fifty; when I was fifty-six he would be forty; when I was fifty-seven he would be thirty, and so on. As his future was now definitely arranged for, no existing force of any sort remained to keep grandpapa straight--none, at least, excepting the police force. He would get out of my control when he was eighty, or thereabouts. From that time forward I shuddered for him, and for myself. We belonged to the lower middle-class, and had made a good many friends since grandpapa's reformation; but now our relations with our fellow-creatures promised to present some rather exceptional difficulties. In fact, I wept as I thought of the future. If I had known a quarter of what awaited me, I should probably have screamed also. Somehow it was borne in upon me from the first that we were faced with no imaginary problem. The Agreement had a genuine, business-like look, in spite of the loose wording. "This woe will last ten years," I told myself. "Then something of a definite nature must happen to grandpapa, and I shall be left to go into the world once more--that is, if I outlive him, which is more or less doubtful." For his dear sake I prayed and trusted I might be spared to see him to the end of his complicated existence. Dull gloom and dread and misery settled down upon our once happy little establishment. Grandpapa appeared to lose all hope after the effects of the brandy and water passed off, and he found that I had locked up the bottle as usual. He eyed me, as though measuring his strength against mine, but he did not attempt any encounter then. From that time forward he spent the greater part of his days worrying in front of the looking-glass and trying to find fresh signs of infirmity and decay. He grew morose and moody, and used some harsh language to me because I could not observe a new wrinkle which he alleged he had discovered. "Any fool but you could see that I'm growing weaker every hour, both in mind and body," he said; but the truth was that everything pointed in the opposite direction. His appetite for solids improved, he slept less by day, he began to "take notice" when people called, and showed little gleams of returning memory. To my bitter regret he gave up going to church, and resumed the habit of smoking tobacco. He tried one of his old, favourite "churchwarden" clay pipes, but it was a failure, and he told me next morning with delight that the thing had been too much for him. "That's a sign I'm growing older, anyhow," he declared. But he was not. I could see the early dawn of middle-age already creeping back over him, and sick at heart it made me. I pass rapidly to his hundred-and-first birthday, upon which anniversary there was a scene--the beginning of a series. My friend Mrs. Hopkins called to drink tea. She has a good heart and always tries to please people. We have known one another for many years, and she has no secrets from me. She called, and ate, and drank, and, in her cheery way, congratulated grandpapa upon his appearance. "Positively, Mr. Dolphin, you grow younger instead of older. You don't look a day more than ninety, and I doubt if you feel as much," she said, very kindly. "Bah! Stuff and rubbish, woman! I feel a thousand and look more. Don't talk twaddle like that. It makes me sick. Personal remarks are always common, and I'm sorry you can allow yourself to sink to 'em." Then he went out of the room in a pet, and I saw that he hobbled away quite easily without using his walking sticks at all. "Lor, Martha!" said Mrs. Hopkins. "What corn have I trod on now? I thought the old gentleman would have been pleased." I explained that grandfather felt very keenly about his age, and did not like people to imagine that he looked any younger than was in reality the case. But when she went away, he came down again and dared me to bring any more old women in to snigger and make jokes at his expense, as he angrily put it. "And another thing," said grandfather, "you can give Jane and the cook warning, and see about sub-letting the house. I'm leaving Ealing at the quarter-day. Here's half a column about me and my wonderful age in the West Middlesex County Times. I'm not going to make a curiosity and a raree show of myself in this place for you or anybody. They'll have me at Tussaud's Waxworks next. We clear out of this on June 24. I'm going back to town." HIDDEN IN LONDON. I was sorry to leave Mr. Murdoch, Mrs. Hopkins, and other kind friends at Ealing; but, as I always said, I did not mind changing residences, for No. 114, Windsor Road, was an old-fashioned dwelling house without a bathroom, which is a great drawback. Grandpapa's hair began to come back now, in little silvery tufts over his ears. He also lost something of his old stoop, and took to using one walking-stick instead of a couple. He grew terribly sensitive and bad-tempered as his powers increased; and with access of mental strength the agony and horror of his position naturally became more and more keen. We had a long conversation as to where we should take ourselves and our secret. Grandpapa first changed his mind about London, and wanted to leave England. He had an unpractical yearning to sail away and hide his approaching manhood on some desert island; and for my part I wish now I had fallen in with this project, and taken the old man off to the heart of the tropics, or the point of the Poles, or anywhere away from civilization; but in a weak moment I urged him to abide by his original opinion, that the metropolis was a place where he might best hide his approaching transformation. I forgot my grandfather's different weaknesses, when I made this suggestion. I should, of course, have recollected that the ruling passions of his life would reassert themselves. However, he consented to come to town, and away we went--suddenly, mysteriously, without leaving any address, though not before I had settled every outstanding account. Our means were fortunately ample for all moderate comforts. We took a little house at West Kensington--No. 18, Wharton Terrace--and there, having engaged a cook and housemaid, we settled down to face what problems the future might have in store for us. Grandpapa continued to hug his hideous secret, nor would he suffer me to seek spiritual, legal, or medical aid. For the present he had abandoned his design of consulting the Bishop of London, and the other celebrities he had mentioned in the first agony of his discovery. In fact, as time passed, I could see he was trying to banish his position from his mind. He fought against his growing strength, and attempted excesses in the matter of eating and drinking with a view to impair his constitution. "Don't be chattering about the matter, for heaven's sake!" he said to me on the occasion of his hundred-and-second birthday. "You're always whining and making stupid suggestions. Do try and look cheerful, even if you don't feel so. It's bad enough to be the sport of fiends without having a wet blanket like you crying and sighing about from morning till night. You make every room in the house damp and draughty with your groans and tears." "You are now eighty," I said, "eighty, according to the New Scheme, and you look less. Are you going on without making any effort to throw off this abominable curse? Are you content to let matters take their backward course? Do something--anything, I implore you. Take some steps; try to stem the tide; be a man, grandpapa!" "A man!" He laughed bitterly. "Yes," he continued, "a man first, then a conceited puppy with a moustache and ridiculous clothes; then a long-legged lout of a boy, with a pimply face that blushes when the girls pass by; then a little good-for-nothing devil at school; then a fat, sweetmeat-eating child in a straw hat and knickerbockers; then a small, red-cheeked beast in short frocks; then a limp, putty-faced, indiarubber-sucking, howling fragment in long frocks; then--then--My God! It's terrible." He hid his old face and cried. I noticed the blue veins that used to cover the backs of his hands in a net-work, like the railway lines at Clapham Junction, were dwindling. The shiny skin was filling out; the muscles were developing once more. "Terrible indeed, dear grandpapa; but I will never, never, leave you." He brushed away his tears and stood erect. "You may do what you please. And now I'll tell you what I'm going to do. No more crying over spilt milk, anyhow. I've got eight years left, and I'm going to use 'em. I'm a man without a future--at least without a future I can make or mar. Everything's settled, but I'm free for eight years. We've got five hundred a year; that means a principal of fifteen thousand pounds. I shall leave you five thousand, and spend the other ten thousand during my lifetime." "Grandpapa!" "Yes, I'm going to enjoy myself. It isn't as much money as I should like, but my tastes are fairly simple. I shall keep the bulk of the coin until three years hence. Then I shall be fifty. From that time, for the next three years, until I'm twenty, I shall paint the town red. Then, from twenty downwards, when I shall begin to shrink very rapidly, you may look after me again, if you're still alive." "Thank you, grandpapa, but I shan't be. Such a programme as you are arranging would certainly kill me. I'm getting an old woman now. I couldn't stand it, I couldn't see you dragging an honoured name in the dust. Oh, think what this is you propose to do! What does your conscience say? What would my father, your eldest son, have said?" "My conscience!" he cried, "a pretty sweet thing in consciences I must have! If my conscience couldn't keep me out of this hole I should think he had mistaken his vocation. You wait, that's all. I'll pay him back; I'll give him something to do presently! I'll keep him busy. I guess he'll be about the most over-worked conscience, even in London, before long." It was in this bitter and irreligious way that grandpapa had now taken to talk. He picked up all the modern slang, and waited with almost fiendish impatience for his strength to reach a point when he would be able to go out once more into the wicked world. But, of course, the instincts and habits of old age were still to some extent upon him. He continued to read the political articles in the papers, and give vent to old-fashioned reflections. He was a Tory, left high and dry--a man who even yet declared that the Reform Bill ought never to have been passed. About every six weeks grandpapa had to change the strength of his spectacles, for his sight became better daily; and with it, one by one, the wrinkles were blotted out, the hearing grew sharper, the round, bald patch on his head decreased, and a little grey already sprinkled the silver of his hair. He joined an old man's club in our neighbourhood called the "Fossils"--"as a preliminary canter," so he told me; and from this questionable gathering, which met at a hostelry in Hammersmith Broadway, he came home at night very late, and often so worn out and weary that he had not strength to use his latch-key. I always let him in, and supported him to bed on these occasions. Then, when he was about seventy-five, according to the New Scheme, he kissed Sophie, the housemaid--a most respectable girl and engaged. She gave warning, and I felt that poor grandpapa had now definitely set out on his great task of "painting the town red." This expression was often in his mouth, and I began to dimly gather the significance of it. CHAPTER V. THE PEOPLE NEXT DOOR. When the builders took a piece of Hammersmith and called it West Kensington, no doubt they did a wise thing. I think a house in West Kensington sounds very genteel myself, and Wharton Terrace was an exceptionally genteel row even for that neighbourhood. Young men went off to the City from it every morning, and young women walked out an hour later, with little string bags, to do the shopping and arrange nice dinners, and so on. They were mostly youthful married couples in Wharton Terrace. One end of the row was not quite completed yet, but the other extremity had been finished two years, and there were already perambulators in the areas at that end. When perambulators set in, I notice that the window-boxes begin to get shabby, and the pet cats have to look after their own welfare. At No. 16, next door to us (for the numbers ran even on one side of the road, odd upon the other), were some very refined people, who called on me the day after Mrs. Hopkins drove over to see us from Ealing, in a hired brougham. Grandpapa said, in his cynical way, that they supposed the brougham was Mrs. Hopkins's own, and that, for his part, he didn't want to know the neighbours. But he soon changed his mind. The Bangley-Browns were four in family: a widowed mother, florid, ample, sixty, convincing in manner, full of the faded splendours of a past prosperity; two daughters, also florid and ample, but quite refined with it; and a son of thirty, who worked in a lawyer's office by day, and toiled at the banjo of an evening. They used to keep their drawing-room blind up at night, so that people passing might see pink lamp-shades throwing a beautiful reflection on their pretty things; and at such times the Misses Bangley-Brown would sit in graceful attitudes in their evening toilets, and Mr. Bangley-Brown, who wore a velvet coat after dinner, would play the banjo and sing. There was often quite a little audience outside on the pavement to watch them. They were most high-bred gentlepeople, and one could see at a glance that evil fortune alone brought them to Wharton Terrace. The head of the family became very friendly with me. Her husband had been most unfortunate in speculations on the Stock Exchange. They were the Sussex Bangley-Browns, not the Essex people, so she explained. She asked me if we were related to the Derbyshire Dolphins, and seemed disappointed when I informed her that we had been Peckham Rye Dolphins until the past five years. She took a great fancy to grandpapa, and he showed pleasure in her society. I cannot expend time on their gradual increase of friendship, but it did increase rapidly, and I believe, towards the end of it, that grandpapa had no secrets from Mrs. Bangley-Brown--none, that is, excepting the one awful mystery of the New Scheme. But he told her about his money and position, and she, taking him to be a well-preserved man of seventy-five or so, met him half-way. Already the old love for the sex was beginning to reappear in my grandfather. It soon became a very trying sight for me. Grandfather constantly dropped in at No. 16 after dinner, and sat under the reflection of the pink lamp-shades, and behaved in a manner which might have been gallant, but was also most painful under the circumstances. The two poor girls soon confided in me. They saw whither things were drifting. "It would never do," said they, "for your father[#] to marry our mother. Such marriages are not happy, and do not end well." I assured them that I was of the same opinion. |
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