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.’”