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.”