Читать книгу A Deal With the Devil - Eden Phillpotts - Страница 4

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We laughed the matter off, and should probably have forgotten all about it but that grandpapa suffered a great deal of inconvenience with his shoulder. The round, red mark gathered and grew very painful. Indeed it only yielded to a long course of bread poultices. Thanks to tonics, however, he soon recovered his health; and then it seemed that his splendid constitution had almost enabled him to take a new lease of life. He actually gained strength instead of losing it, and his faculties became clearer if anything. We lived in Ealing, Middlesex, at the time, and when my grandpapa's health was thoroughly re-established, his medical man wrote to the Lancet, and a deputation waited on my grandfather from the local Liberal Club to congratulate him. The dear old fellow became quite a celebrity in his way, and, what is more, there was no backsliding; he went to church with me every Sunday in a bath chair, and at home he kept his temper better, and nearly always did what he was told.

But six months after his birthday the thunder-cloud burst upon our little home. I was sitting in the parlour, doing household accounts, and grandpapa was in his own room, playing the flute. He had not touched this instrument for at least five years, but to my amazement, that afternoon he dragged it out of some old cupboard and began to play it, with runs and shakes and false notes, just in the old pleasant way. He stopped suddenly, however, after giving a very creditable rendering of the "Old Hundredth." I feared this effort had been too much for him, and was just hastening upstairs when he came hurrying down and tottered into the room. Fright and dismay sat on his wrinkled face; his knees shook and knocked together, his eyes protruded like a crab's, and his poor old jaws were going like a pair of nut-crackers, but he could not speak.

"My dearest, what is it?" I cried, running to him as he subsided on the sofa. "Oh, why will you be so active at your time of life? You'll kill yourself if you go on so. What have you done now? You've strained something internal with that flute--I know you have."

"I've found it! I've found it!" he cried, trembling all over.

"Of course, or else you couldn't play it," I replied.

"I've found IT," he repeated, raising his hand wildly and waving a manuscript over his head. "Read that--Oh, why was I ever born? Read it, I tell you. It's a real agreement, on parchment, not a nightmare at all. He's got the other, no doubt; the one I signed. I've bartered away my immortal soul for ten more years of horrible life, and I'm growing younger every moment!"

"Where did this come from?" was all I could say, taking a parchment scroll from my grandpapa's shaking hand.

"It fell out of the cupboard where I keep my flute music," he groaned. "Read it, read it slowly, aloud. Is there any escape? It seems very loosely worded. Oh why, why didn't Jack live? He would have got me out of this appalling fix if anybody could."

Jack, or John, was my father--a very able solicitor; but what law is capable of coping with utterly unprincipled people who live in another world? I read the thing. It was written in English, and signed with a strange scrawl, like a flash of black lightning. Attached to it hung a seal of flame-coloured wax. To show my unhappy grandparent's exact position I had better transcribe this document. Thus it ran:

"Know all men, and others, by these presents that in consideration of a compact, signed, sealed, and delivered by Daniel Dolphin, of No. 114, Windsor Road, Ealing, County of Middlesex, England, I hereby undertake to provide him with certain years of life, to the number of ten, over, above, and beyond the number (of one hundred) which it was originally predestined that he should exist. And, further, it is to be noted, observed, and understood that each of the said ten years hereinbefore abovementioned shall embrace a period of life formerly extending over a decade of ordinary mundane years; and it is also understood, granted, and agreed that the aforementioned Daniel Dolphin do henceforth and hereafter grow younger instead of older, which provision I hereby undertake for the reason that human life protracted beyond a century, ceases to give the possessor thereof pleasure or gratification in any sort."

Then followed the date, the signature, and an address, which need not be insisted upon, but which was sufficiently clear.

"What does it mean, grandpapa?" I asked faintly.

"Mean?" he screamed, "it means that in less than ten years' time I shall be a bald-headed baby again. It means that I shall live a hundred years in ten and go backwards all the while. It means I'm faced with about the most hideous prospect ever heard of. And I've got nothing to make me suffer with Christian 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!"