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 father1 to marry our mother. Such marriages are not happy, and do not end well." I assured them that I was of the same opinion.
"There are sufficient reasons why such a match should not take place. Indeed, I cannot think my father contemplates any such action," I said.
"What does he contemplate then?" asked Florence Bangley-Brown. "He constantly gets us theatre tickets and so on, and I believe pays Fred to take us off out of the way. He haunts the house. He buys us all sorts of presents. It must mean something."
I knew well enough what it meant. It meant a move. It was high time we left West Kensington: the pilgrimage must be begun. Like Noah's dove, there would probably be no more rest for the soles of our feet until the end of dear grandpapa--according to the New Scheme.
1. Father. I may say here that, in public, I now posed as grandpapa's daughter. I was averse to the deception, but he insisted. "I'm not going to have you giving me away at the very start," he said. Our relationship changed every two years at first; afterwards, more rapidly.
CHAPTER VI.
RETREAT.
I had it out with him after breakfast, on the morning which followed my conversation with the Bangley-Brown girls. He took it better than I expected, and seemed more amused than angry.
"She is a fine woman, and would be a satisfaction to me for quite six months. Then she'd pall. I only realised last night that she was not growing younger. Whereas I am. I realised it about two minutes after I'd proposed."
"'Proposed'! Oh, grandpapa!"
"Yes, while the gals were in here. Bless you, Martha, the gals begin to interest me more than the mother now."
"But she--Mrs. Bangley-Brown--what did she say?"
"What do you think? Jumped at it. Was half in my lap before I'd finished. You're quite right: she's not the woman for me. We'll up anchor before there's trouble, and away. I don't care how soon we go."
It was fully time. Apart from the monstrous step my grandfather had taken, his own condition threw us more and more open to comment. The servants noticed it, and imagined the old man got the effect with hair-dyes and cosmetics. But as a matter of fact, every change was in the ordinary, or rather extraordinary course which Nature now pursued with grandpapa.
He was on thorns to be off after his engagement became known. "There's no fool like an old fool," he said. "I hope I shall soon outgrow this sort of weakness. Marriage indeed! I rather think my time will be too fully occupied during the next few years to waste much of it on a wife."
So he resigned his membership of the "Fossils," avoided Mrs. Bangley-Brown as much as was possible under the circumstances, and sent me out into the suburbs to find a new house. I pointed out the needless expense of such a course; I explained that furnished lodgings would much better meet the case. What was the good of taking another house, which we should certainly have to vacate in a year? I explained that three moves were generally held to be as bad as a fire, and so forth. In fact, I used every argument I could think of, but he was firm.
"Find a house, and be smart," he said. "This old hen-dragon's beginning to worry me to name the day. We'll flit by night. And when you do get diggings, better keep the address extremely dark. I don't want my approaching manhood to be spoilt by the shadow of Mother Bangley-Brown."
Thus did he speak of a loving, if ample woman, to whom but a short fortnight before he had offered his heart and fortunes. The Misses Bangley-Brown cut me after the engagement was announced, and, for my part, I was glad of it. It prevented the necessity for prevarication, or perhaps untruth, because I could not have told them that I was going to take grandpapa away, though doubtless they would have helped me to do so very gladly.
But for the time I escaped much deliberate falsehood, although I already saw, with a horrified prophetic eye, the awful pitfalls which lay before me. Grandpapa was dragging me down with him. My religion, my morals, my probity--nothing would avail. If I spent the next eight years with him, it appeared certain that I should spend eternity with him also.
I felt myself gradually drifting away on to the broad, downward road with grandpapa. And yet I would not leave him--I could not do so. His horribly defenceless condition made me feel it must be simple cruelty to let him fight this awful battle alone. And I will say for grandpapa that, now and then, he quieted down and picked his language, and had beautiful thoughts about the solemnity of his position. At such times he was goodness itself to me. He thanked me for my attention, for the courageous way in which I clung to him, for my cool judgment, and invaluable advice.
"Be sure, Martha, that you will reap your reward some day," he said. "Such attachment and devotion to a suffering grandparent will not be forgotten."
I thought so too. If ever a woman deserved some consideration hereafter, I was she; but, as I have said,