"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."