A Deal with the Devil by Eden Phillpotts
"A Deal with the Devil" is a narrative that explores the themes of temptation, moral decay, and the consequences of one's choices through the life of Daniel Dolphin, a man who, after a life of indulgence and forgery, finds himself in a supernatural bargain with the devil. At the age of ninety-five, Daniel dreams of a deal where he can exchange his soul for an additional ten years of life, during which he will physically grow younger. Initially dismissing the encounter as a dream, he later discovers he has signed a contract with Satan, setting off a chain of events that lead him to embrace a hedonistic lifestyle, filled with excess, romantic escapades, and legal troubles.
As Daniel experiences a reverse aging process, the narrative highlights the strain this places on his granddaughter Martha, who grapples with her own descent into alcoholism while supporting him. Their attempts to evade recognition as Daniel’s transformation accelerates force them into a transient lifestyle, further complicating their relationship. Ultimately, the story culminates in Daniel's rebirth as a newborn, leading to his mysterious disappearance on the eve of his 110th birthday. Martha's concluding words serve as a cautionary reflection on the allure of materialism and the potential peril of engaging with forces beyond one's understanding, urging readers to consider the moral implications of their own decisions.
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A Deal with the Devil
First published: 1895
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Science fiction—cautionary
Time of work: The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Locale: Great Britain
The Plot
Among the many dissipations of Daniel Dolphin’s unprincipled and profligate life was forgery, for which he spent five years in prison. At the age of ninety-five, he reformed, and during the five years prior to his hundredth birthday he “kept as sober, as honest, and as innocent as one could wish to see any nonagenarian” and looked forward confidently to death and the afterlife. He lives with Martha Dolphin, his granddaughter and sole surviving relative, a middle-aged spinster who narrates the novel.
At his centennial breakfast, Daniel tells Martha of a dream in which the devil visited him and revealed that Daniel was scheduled to die that night. Daniel was told that he could forestall the end by putting himself in the fiend’s hands. In return for his soul, Satan guaranteed Daniel ten more years of life, during which the centenarian would grow younger, cramming another lifetime into the decade. After reading the contract Satan had prepared, Daniel says, he signed it with blood from his shoulder. The old man and Martha make light of the incident, which after all he only dreamed, and they attribute a red mark on his shoulder to a fleabite.
Six months later, during which time his health has improved, Daniel discovers a copy of the contract through which he bartered away his soul. Realizing the terrible dimensions of what he has done and determined to hide his secret, Daniel and Martha leave their village for London. Two birthdays later, Daniel is twenty years younger, has resumed his excessive drinking, and decides that for at least the next six years—until he is twenty again—he will enjoy himself, ignoring all qualms of conscience. He takes up with women, proposes to several along the way, jilts them and others as his reverse aging accelerates, runs for a local council, loses money in a fraudulent scheme with a swindler, competes in a regatta, and runs afoul of the law. Periodically, Daniel and Martha (who eventually becomes known as his grandmother) change their names and move from one city or town to another, fleeing acquaintances as he rapidly grows younger. However difficult the vagabond life is for Daniel, it is particularly stressful for Martha, who becomes a closet alcoholic.
Finally, on the eve of his 110th birthday, Daniel is a newborn baby again, and Martha spends the night with him on the wilds of London’s Hampstead Heath. At the moment of death, he apparently is transformed into an old man again and then completely vanishes, amid shining moonbeams. The grieving granddaughter concludes her narrative with a warning to materialistic nonbelievers: Avoid being fooled, and reflect before becoming “meshed in some muddling devil’s web, from which there is no escape.”