course, found grandpapa under the New Scheme, as usual. He had arranged
to hide somewhere in a backwater, and only paddle out when the race for
the Diamond Sculls was beginning. I tried hard to dissuade him from
making the attempt. I pointed out that arrest was sure to follow the
struggle, and that, once taken, there would be sufficient legal
complications all over the country to last him much more than the
remainder of his life. I said:
"In a year’s time you will be ten; in two years you will be nothing.
Let us hide this tragedy if we can. Publicity now means that the
concluding catastrophes of your life will be watched by the whole of
England--perhaps by the entire civilised world. Surely that would add
another sting to extinction? Let me implore of you, dear one, to give
up this aquatic enterprise. We will fly together. I have done up the
accounts this morning, and find we have exactly nine hundred and
ninety-eight pounds left. This is ample provision for your approaching
childhood. Come and dwindle by the sea--at Margate or somewhere. Or let
us go abroad, if that idea gives you pleasure."
"Not me," he said. "I shall flicker out in the old country. And as to
not rowing, that’s absurd. This race is my last flutter. In six months
I shall be a boy of fifteen. I must make my final adult appearance
to-day. It’s jolly lucky there’s only one other entry besides myself,
as I certainly shall have no chance of appearing more than once.
However, this morning I mean to row the course, and then keep on the
river and pull quietly into the backwater, and lie low till dark.
Meantime you can go to Margate if you like and find new diggings, and
I’ll join you to-morrow."
With this arrangement I had to be content. I took a train to London, and
managed to escape comfortably in it with my box. I journeyed to
Margate, took three fair rooms overlooking the sea, and waited with
deepest anxiety for grandfather’s arrival. On the following morning I
purchased the _Sportsman_, to find that the dear old man had managed to
elude the detectives and win the Diamond Sculls! I felt that this was
probably the last piece of real joy he would ever have. But the report
in the _Sportsman_ quickly quenched my passing happiness. Satisfaction,
indeed, was turned into black despair, when I read what my grandfather
had done on the completion of the boat-race.
"Elisha Spratt," said the _Sportsman_, "the mysterious young oarsman who
has suddenly burst into fame, won the ’Diamonds’ with ridiculous ease,
and simply played with his better-known opponent. The sensation of the
race, however, was reserved for the finish. Hardly had Spratt passed the
winning-post when a boat, full of police-constables, pulled quickly out
from the crowd of craft that thronged the course and made towards him.
Spratt, it seems, has been ’wanted’ for some time, being mysteriously
connected with what is known as the ’Dolphin Mystery’; and the
preservers of law and order believed that by taking him in mid-stream,
immediately after the race, they would ensure an easy capture. Their
judgment, however, proved faulty. Spratt, who was nearly as fresh as
when he began to row, made a vigorous defence, and when he ultimately
succeeded in capsizing the boatload of Crown officials and escaping, the
enthusiasm of the sightseers knew no bounds. Finally he disappeared up
stream, and has not since been heard of. He is certainly a magnificent
sculler, but we fear his next appearance in public will not be in a
wager boat. The constables were all rescued, though one of them, a
well-known detective, is said to lie still insensible, and little hopes
are entertained of his recovery."
This was the end of it then--murder! My grandfather had taken a life.
Now, if they caught him they would doubtless endeavour to hang him.
Even the New Scheme could hardly continue if they succeeded in hanging
grandfather. At least, so it struck me. But first they had to catch
him. Luckily, he was just at a difficult age to catch. We had arranged
I should wait for him at the station, and presently he came down from
town, travelling third-class, in the same compartment with part of a
Sunday school treat. He had disguised himself, and was wearing a false
nose and little imitation whiskers hooked over his ears. He saw me, and
followed at a distance as I walked from the station, but he did not join
me until I had reached the doorstep of our lodgings. Then he approached
and entered. He was very excited, and full of a new idea. He had already
quite forgotten the race on the preceding day, and talked of nothing
save the nearly-drowned detective.
"You see, if he pops off, they’d hang me," he explained eagerly.
"Grandfather, I implore you not to talk so," I sobbed, quite giving way.
"But I want ’em to. Nothing better could happen. The next two years
won’t be much of a catch from my point of view; and if I’m executed, of
course, the New Scheme must be upset. I shall have to go somewhere
then; I shan’t become extinct anyway."
His hopes in this direction were doomed to disappointment, however. The
detective recovered, and we were unmolested. We had, in fact, thrown
the Scotland Yard people completely off the trail. But grandpapa still
longed to be hanged. He even discussed the feasibility of a capital
crime at Margate, and, as it was all one to him in the matter of a
victim, he generously offered to put anybody I liked out of the way. He
even bought a revolver.
"To be executed it is necessary to take a life," he explained. "The
question is, whose life? If you’ve got an enemy, Martha, now’s your
time to name him or her. If you’ve no fancy, then I shall pip a
prominent member of the Government."
But two months passed by, and my grandfather’s horrid ambition gradually
faded. When he was eighteen, and after we left Margate for Ramsgate,
which step was taken about this period, he acquired a passing passion
for sea-fishing, bought a rod and line, and angled uneventfully for days
together off the pier-head or out of an open boat. From Ramsgate we
proceeded to Deal, then lurked a week or two at Dover, and continued our
tour of the south-coast watering-places, secreting our sorrows in turn
at Folkestone, Hastings, St. Leonard’s-on-Sea, Eastbourne, Brighton, and
Bognor. I thought we might winter in the Isle of Wight, but grandfather
was for Cornwall and conger-fishing, so we pushed onwards to Fowey, and
arrived there shortly after Christmas, when my grandparent was about
fifteen.
His wardrobe became a greater difficulty daily. The poor old sufferer
shrank in a heartbreaking way. I had always to be taking in and turning
up and reducing his different articles of apparel. He was now
mercifully allowed to lose intelligence very rapidly. He lived more and
more in the passing hour, and began to develop simple boyish ambitions
and hopes and complaints. As he gradually fell completely under my
control, a certain peace of mind, to which I had long been a stranger,
returned. The position was harrowing enough, heaven knows, but whereas
throughout grandfather’s career under the New Scheme, he had played his
own game, so to speak, and never paid much attention to the faithful
woman always at his elbow, now the position was rapidly changing. He
had to look to me and rely upon me more and more. Indeed, he did so as
a matter of course. I held the purse, and took good care to keep it.
The dear old man never wanted for anything, but I had to think of my own
future. When he was gone, there would only be a few hundred pounds
between me and starvation. However, I denied him nothing in reason,
allowed him gradually decreasing pocket-money, and, as he grew younger,
exercised entire authority. To this he submitted humbly enough now. He
was a bad boy, as boys go--a sly, calculating, cruel boy; but a
circumstance happened soon after we left Fowey which practically made
grandfather helpless, and placed him under my complete control. It was
this. With dwindling intellect his memory also waned, and ultimately
broke down altogether. He forgot the past, he forgot his own
extraordinary situation and destination, he quite forgot our
relationship, and soon simply believed that things were as they seemed.
One day he electrified me by talking with bright, boyish confidence of
"growing up" and marrying a bonny bride, and becoming a smuggler.
"Growing up"! Poor little darling, he was growing down at the rate of a
year every six weeks. But now the old man’s mental troubles were
practically at an end, and I thanked heaven for it. Literally he was
twice a child. He gave up cigarettes and took to chocolate, and stupid
little toys. At rare intervals, inspired by the friends he picked up in
our wanderings, he showed flashes of ambition, and pestered me to know
when I was going to send him to school like other boys. He grumbled and
said he believed he was backward. I denied it and temporised. I told
him he was more than clever. Of course, to send him to school would
have been frank and senseless waste of money. Besides, the New Scheme
must have been discovered in a fortnight. He travelled half price now,
for he was not more than ten years old when I took him to Dawlish.
Before we had been at that small but delightful sea-side resort six
weeks, grandfather openly bought a little iron spade and bucket, thereby
proving that childhood had set in. I had him well in hand in
Devonshire, and I may state that my own peace of mind was comparatively
such that I had almost cured myself of a weakness I have not hidden
here--a weakness brought on by the terrors of the past. And dear
grandfather’s own favourite beverage, subject to my sanction, was
sherbet now. Indeed, taking one thing with another, that last summer in
the West of England with my grandparent, proved the happiest time I
spent from the beginning of the New Scheme to its close. He was quite
happy too. He made sand castles, and tormented the shrimps which he
caught from time to time, and otherwise conducted himself like a simple,
healthy little lad of eight years old.
*CHAPTER XXIII.*
_*"FINE BY DEGREES, AND BEAUTIFULLY LESS."*_
I would willingly draw a veil over the last year of my grandfather’s
life, but I have set my hand to the pen and will not turn back, though
nothing but grief and horror and the ghosts of dead miseries haunt me as
I write.
When the old man was about eight years old, I put him into a blue sailor
suit, bought him a wooden hoop, and took him to a new locality. We left
Dawlish and went up to Tavybridge--a pretty spot on Dartmoor. Here I
proposed staying for at least a month. It now became necessary to
regulate his hours, see that he had fairly wholesome food, and keep him
clean. His memory had long grown an absolute blank. He put his little
hand in mine, trotted about over the moors and through the country, and
clamoured first for a pony, secondly to be allowed to sing in the choir
at a quaint old country place of worship. I did not see my way to
gratifying either ambition. At Tavybridge grandpapa speedily waned. He
called me "Granny" now, and quite believed it was so; I addressed him
both in public and private as "Daniel," and let people believe that his
parents were in India. Though I lacked the comfort and support of having
a man in the house, to whom I could go with all my sorrows and
anxieties, yet the loss was more than compensated by the relief of
knowing that my ancient grandparent was now powerless to do further ill,
either to himself or other people. But, strange to say, though absolute
infancy now threatened him, his love for the sex was not even yet wholly
dead. I well remember grandfather coming to me, hand in hand with a
little village maid of some six summers, and acquainting me with the
fact that they were engaged.
"This is Bessie Wiggles, grandma," said the venerable sufferer; "I met
her down by the bridge over the river, and I gave her sweeties and a
kite, and she gived me a kiss for them, and we’s going to be married,
Bessie Wiggles and me, when we’s grown up."
I promised them they should be. This was an attachment which really
mattered nothing. It kept grandfather out of mischief, and made him part
with at least a proportion of the deleterious rubbish he bought with his
weekly sixpence of pocket-money. I felt that two small stomachs might
carry a load of toffee and other horrid stuffs, which must certainly
upset one. It was an idyllic engagement. Bessie Wiggles came to tea
constantly, and grandpapa would talk with confidence of his future and
the great things he should do when he was a man. The children walked
about the village hand in hand. The villagers smiled and said it was
pretty to see them. Then one day a herd of cows, going to be milked,
knocked grandfather down accidentally and bruised him, and terrified him
to such an extent that he prayed I would take him away from Tavybridge
instantly, to some remote spot where there were no more cows. He
abandoned Bessie Wiggles without a murmur, and I took him away to
Exeter. He was rapidly approaching the age of five years or one hundred
and nine and a half, according from which Scheme you looked at him.
My stay at the old cathedral city was even shorter than I had intended,
for grandfather got damp on a bleak December day, and abstracted some
almonds and raisins out of a cupboard when I was not by. This
combination of circumstances resulted for him in a bad attack of croup.
Very foolishly, and forgetting that in such a case appearances must be
much against me, I did not send for a doctor, but contented myself with
patting the old man on the back and giving him repeated drinks of Eno’s
Fruit Salt. This I knew was not the right treatment for croup, but what
did it matter? Grandfather would certainly be perfectly well again in
the morning. After all his adventures, this paltry childish ailment was
not going to destroy him now. I felt very certain of that. But,
unfortunately, the landlady heard grandfather making a great deal of
noise about two in the morning, and, being a mother, she recognised the
sound, and was instantly up in arms to help me. When she found I did
not intend sending for a medical man, she became both vulgar and
offensive. She accused me of fooling a helpless child’s life away. She
said:
"I know what it is to be a mother, though you’ve forgotten, it seems.
Eno’s salts for croup! Lord! You be daft, I should think. What would
that poor lamb’s ma say if she knowed?"
I said:
"Its ma’s in heaven long ago; probably she does know. I venture to
think she would be quite satisfied with my treatment."
"Shame on ’e!" she answered. "A horphan--that makes it wus and wus. I
guess you be no better ’n a baby-farmer--now then!"
Thereupon I declined further conversation, and gave her notice that I
should leave that day week. She replied that it would be impossible for
me to leave too soon for her, though her heart bled for the ill-used
child, meaning my grandparent. Stung to anger, I was almost tempted to
hint at the New Scheme, but bitter experience and my better judgment
told me such an action, taking into consideration the mental calibre of
the woman, must be worse than futile. So I bid her go to her room; she
departed with the word "murderess" on her lips, and the incident
terminated.
Of course, grandfather was pretty right the next day, but disorders now
gained upon him rapidly, and I know I was to blame for adding a good
deal of unnecessary suffering to those last fleeting years of his life.
His stomach-aches, his rashes, his mumps, might all have been avoided
had I understood better the care of the extremely youthful. Everywhere
I went I heard expressions of open surprise that I, a woman of
seventy-five apparently, and a grandmother, should know so precious
little about babies. And, of course, the old man was shrivelling with
such cruel rapidity now that my knowledge could not keep pace with him.
When I understood the nature and requirements of a child of five he was
already four; by the time I grasped his needs at this age he had sunk to
three.
We were at Bideford when I put him into short frocks and kept flannel
next his skin and looked round for a second-hand perambulator. He was
always ailing at this stage, and frightfully fretful, owing to a
complication of disorders. He had whooping-cough and a slight touch of
congestion of the lungs, and measles and a sore throat. His teeth
worried him terribly, too. God alone knows what was happening to them.
The process put the poor old man to evident torment, and to hear him say
again and again: "Oh, ganny, my toofs _is_ hurtin’ me so," would have
made angels weep. For all I know it did. The celestial being who could
gaze unmoved at Daniel Dolphin’s sufferings during those last, awful,
loathsome years of his earthly life would have been hard-hearted indeed.
And heaven must have pitied me a trifle too--especially at Bideford,
after I had put him into short frocks.
When he was one hundred and nine and three-quarters--when but three
months remained before the climax--he lost the art of walking and
talking about the same time. He seemed easy to manage without these
accomplishments. I certainly missed his childish prattle as it
gradually dwindled and ceased, but when command of locomotion slipped
from him my work was much lightened. As a young child he had been very
trying; now, on the dawn of babyhood, he enjoyed better health and got
prettier to look at, at least, so it struck me. Indeed, he gradually
grew to be the dearest, best-tempered little mite any woman ever loved
and cuddled. I thought how proud his dear mother must have been of him
more than a century ago. I also marvelled that so bonny a babe should
have blossomed into such a funny child, and such an unsatisfactory man.
Of course, I was led by appearances myself now. I could not revere the
aged man I danced on my knee and fondled and hugged. I could not
realise that this blue-eyed, thumb-sucking, crowing, kicking atom was my
grandfather. My imagination was not equal to the task of grasping these
facts. I only know that we lurked at Basingstoke three weeks, and then
at Brixton; and that I lived night and day for grandfather, as his sun
sank to the setting. I took him for long rides in his perambulator, and
looked to his every want and joyed in his innocent, little, waning life.
His curls went at Clapham Junction; the short, lanky locks of a year-old
infant soon covered his bulbous skull; his proportions were those of
tenderest youth. An awful expanse of brow and a triangular mouth had
appeared; his nose had dwindled to a mere upturned lump, his eyes
assumed the fatuous blear and blink of babyhood; he gasped and he
gurgled, and jerked and panted, and stretched out fat fingers to me. He
was always good-tempered to the last, though his intervals of weeping
grew longer and longer. One thing he never could stand: my singing.
When his first teeth were undergoing some unhallowed metamorphosis he
had a succession of very bad nights, and at such times, until I realised
the facts, I endeavoured to soothe him with musical lullabies. But I
soon found my voice exercised a peculiarly irritating effect on
grandfather. He had not enjoyed it even in the past, so I ceased from
vocal efforts and never sang again.
Anon we went to Kilburn, when grandfather had but one year left to live
by the New Scheme and rather more than five weeks by the old. Then he
began to play with his toes, and that was the beginning of the end.
*CHAPTER XXIV.*
_*THE PASSING OF GRANDPAPA.*_
I shall not set down here the hard words hurled at me by different
lodging-house keepers, who took it upon themselves to criticise my
management of grandfather. Because, for instance, I persisted in feeding
him latterly on condensed milk, instead of wasting money upon a wet
nurse, I was unmercifully abused. But I went my way, and soon had him
in long frocks, and took him from Kilburn to Ravenscourt Park. Here I
was accused of being a baby-thief, because I explained as usual that the
infant’s parents were in India.
"Its ma must be a pretty quick traveller then," said the sceptical
landlady. "That hinfant ain’t a day more than three weeks old, or I’m
no judge."
She was nearly right. It wanted now but one month to make grandfather a
hundred and ten or nothing at all. It was, in fact, twenty-nine days
before he was born, or after, according as you look at it. I got very
muddled over his age about this time myself. I only remembered the date
of his birthday, and realised that on the night before that anniversary
the New Scheme would come to an end. The old man was now a mere
hairless, blotchy, howling fragment, needing ceaseless attention at all
hours of night and day. A bitter thought often came to me while I was
getting his bottle--that my tiny grandfather should be going to such an
unsatisfactory place so soon. For I never could believe, despite what
the lawyers said, that his fiendish opponent had made any radical
blunder in the agreement.
As the long days followed each other I became overstrung and hysterical,
and felt that a very little more of it would send me mad. I let
grandpapa drop out of his perambulator one day in Ravenscourt Park,
where I had taken him for an airing. Of course, he screamed as only a
frightened baby can, and attracted the attention of a policeman. The
constable merely addressed me good-humouredly, but a ribald crowd
collected in no time. Boys chaffed, women cried shame on me; an
officious old fool, who said he belonged to some institution for the
Prevention of Brutality to Infants in Arms, insisted on taking my
address. I gave it to him, trundled grandfather home, and moved to
Turnham Green the same evening. At our new lodgings I told the truth for
once, and said grandfather’s poor mother was dead. The landlady here was
young, and had a baby of her own, and showed me great kindness and
sympathy. She prophesied all manner of hopeful things for grandfather,
but feared that I should never live to see him grow up. There were
reasonable grounds for such a doubt, for I was now much more than my
age, and growing somewhat infirm. The last ten years had added not less
than thirty to my own life. I looked pretty nearly eighty now, and felt
considerably older.