Chapter XI A New Leaf turned
I am a simple old woman, ready to see fine qualities in anybody, unwilling to doubt the honesty of fellow-creatures or the good faith of their assertions. Therefore I am not ashamed to confess that Mr. Montague entirely deceived me, and turned out, not merely no better than he should have been, but much worse. He deceived dear grandpapa, too, though in a different way.
“I thought he was a sly beggar who ’d found a plum in the pie,” said grandfather to me afterwards; “but it wasn’t so—a mere blackleg, a scamp, a devourer of orphans. Break the bank? No, we didn’t break the bank, but I broke his nose, and scattered his false teeth from one end of the Casino to the other, and dusted the steps with him afterwards!”
These and other things grandpapa said when he returned from Monte Carlo. I watched the daily journals as he directed, and so was not wholly unprepared for the fiasco which resulted from his trip to the Continent.
Indeed two startling items, both involving dear grandpapa, met my eye on the same morning, in the same copy of the Daily Telegraph. Under the “agony column” of that periodical I read as follows:—
“Wanted, address of one Daniel Dolphin. The same to Rogers, ‘Eight Bells,’ Chislehurst, will meet with a reward.”
And elsewhere, under the heading of “Scene at Monte Carlo,” occurred this paragraph:
“The English here are making things lively. Two adventurers with a new ‘system’ began to play last night and lost a thousand pounds at a sitting. One appears to have been a knave, the other a fool. When their resources were exhausted they came to blows, and the bigger man, presumed to be the capitalist, fell upon his companion and thrashed him unmercifully. It appears they had come in great state with a flourish of trumpets; but their ‘system,’ like most others, though doubtless pretty on paper, broke down at the tables. Both men have disappeared.”
Here was cause for alarm if you will. I could not be sure that the persons mentioned were my dear grandfather and his companion, but somehow I always fancied that the matter related to them. I also dimly guessed why Mr. Rogers wanted grandpapa’s address. No doubt Marie’s affections had been trifled with, and the law possesses power to estimate the value of such broken promises in pounds, shillings, and pence.
I waited a fortnight without hearing a word from grandpapa. Then he suddenly came home, penniless and destitute of everything but the clothes on his back. He had grown thinner, and nearly a year younger, but his health appeared excellent, though his memory seemed to be impaired. Of course time was winging backwards at such a hideous rate with grandpapa that events, which only seemed of yesterday to me, already grew dim in his memory.
I sent for the tailor to come and measure him for some new clothes, and then begged he would tell me all that had happened. He began immediately about Paris, but I reminded him of Monte Carlo and Mr. Phil Montague. Then he grew enraged, and explained to me how he had treated that gentleman.
“I left the place next day, and slipped back to Paris. There I’ve had a pretty good time, but it’s an expensive place. I kept a few hundreds up my sleeve, you know, and after I’d lost the ‘thou.,’ which simply filtered away in a few hours, I reckoned I’d get better money’s worth with what was left. So I went to Paris and had a gaudy fortnight.”
“And now you will settle down, dearest, won’t you, and drop all this speculation and money-making?”
“Yes, no more ‘systems’ for me. First settle up, then settle down. We must bolt out of London, anyhow.”
“Why, grandpapa? We are safe for six months yet, if you keep quiet.”
“I haven’t kept quiet,” he acknowledged frankly. “You’d better hear the truth. I’m in a very awkward position.”
“Tell me everything, grandpapa. I can bear it.”
“Well, I met her in Paris.”
“Grandpapa! Another?”
“Listen. I met the woman in Paris. She was a Russian princess, stopping at the Hotel Bristol. She could speak English—worse luck. So we got on. No side at all about her. Let me take her everywhere and pay. One of those golden-haired, expensive women, but beautiful as a dream. Her husband still lives somewhere in Russia. He had a row with the Czar about her. She was nobody herself. They were separated through no fault of hers. She couldn’t stand him because he funked the Czar. Plucky little woman; coming over to this country to play the harp at the music-halls. We’re engaged.”
“Grandpapa!”
“Don’t criticise, I can’t stand it to-day. She’s called the Princess Hopskipchoff. She said it was the dream of her life to marry me; that she’s seen me in her sleep and that a fortune-teller, now in Siberia, had accurately described me to her years ago. She’s twenty-five and true as steel. Socially it would have been a step in the right direction, though Russian Princesses are rather a drug in the market. But I can’t marry her, of course. I’ve thought better of it since we parted, and I’ve had time to do up my accounts.”
“You break hearts as a pastime, grandfather. Poor woman. I’m sorry for her.”
“As to that, it wasn’t a love match entirely either. She was fairly cute. I rather hoodwinked the girl, perhaps; but all’s fair in love. I—well—I pulled, the long bow, certainly.”
“You disguised your true condition?”
“More than that. I hinted at twenty thousand a year and a park.”
“You will kill me, grandpapa!”
“And I also told her I was a Viscount, Viscount Dolphin, heir to the titles and estates of the Duke of Cornwall.”
“Good heavens! The Prince of Wales is the Duke of Cornwall!”
“Is he, begad? I’d forgotten that,” said grandpapa, with a painful, cunning look on his face, “then she can go and worry ’em at Marlborough House. She won’t get any information about me there. Don’t you bother. We’ll smash her if she makes a row. I’ll say she’s a Russian spy or something. Anyhow the simplest way will be for us to clear out of town altogether. I’m sick of the wickedness of London. Every second man you meet’s a swindler or a rogue. Give me the peaceful country—a bottle of port at the squire’s mahogany, the Field newspaper, a decent mount, and pleasant feminine society. That’s good enough for me. I’m a hundred and six in three days’ time; forty by the New Scheme. Yes, let me go and dwindle from forty to thirty amidst quiet, rural, agricultural surroundings.”
I was delighted at this resolution. Grandpapa henceforth appeared as my son, made me wear a wedding-ring, and carried me away to a little honeysuckle-covered cottage near Salisbury.