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