CHAPTER XIX.COUNSEL'S OPINION.Grandpapa decided that Sunbury would be a likely sort of place to "lie low" in, so we went up after dark that same Sunday evening, reached our new halting-place soon after midnight, and took some lodgings by the water-side. The affair was in the papers next day, and the name of Daniel Dolphin echoed in people's mouths once more.Grandfather now called himself Elisha Spratt, and he entered under that name at Henley. By a curious coincidence, the first heat for the Diamond Sculls fell on grandpapa's birthday. Nearly a month, however, had yet to pass by before that elate. Mr. Rose's added another to the long list of indictments against grandfather, but the old man cared nothing. He went on steadily and quietly with his practice and training, and the harder he trained, the younger he began to look.A painful incident, out of which arose another still more trying, has here to be recorded. Grandpapa, while discussing the different processes at law which he had incurred, told me, in some glee, of matters I did not know."I did a smart thing recently," he began. "Of course, a man must help his chums where he can, and I've been able to do so without any hurt to myself. People on the river think I've got pots of money, because I spend very freely. On the strength of this I've been asked to lend my security on about twenty different occasions. I never refused. Men thought I was a fool, but I knew what I was about very well."The old, cunning look came back into his eyes once more. It had a very painful appearance on the face of so young a man."What have you done now, dear grandfather? Hide nothing from me," I said."I've backed a lot of bills, and gone security for thousands and thousands. A good few of the Johnnies can't pay, and they'll come down on me like a ton of bricks. Ha, ha!""I don't see what there is to laugh at, grandpapa. So little amuses you now.""Why,I'm under age. That's where the laugh comes in. I'm a legal infant, or something of that sort. They can't touch me.""A legal infant! Why, grandfather, you're a hundred and eight years old in a few weeks' time.""Not by the New Scheme.""What's the New Scheme got to do with the money-lenders? They'll fight it out on the Old Scheme, and trace you back and back, and confront you with your past career. It was madness to do such a thing."The old man grew rather wretched and uneasy, but he soon cheered up again."I thought it was such a smart move; and, after all, no harm's done, for I haven't got the money. In fact, fifteen hundred or less is about my limit now. I'm safe enough if you don't go and give me away. People recognise you, but, of course, I shall begin changing and dwindling at a deuce of a rate, after Henley. To think that my mental powers will begin to fade, too--that's what cuts me up."What he called his mental powers had already begun to fade. He was stupid for his age now, and would be a mere clown of a boy in six months' time. But I did not tell him so. I said nothing; and soon afterwards he went to bed.In the morning he came down to breakfast, fired with an extraordinary new project. And yet, in justice to myself, I cannot say strictly that it was a fresh idea. I had advised him to take the step he now contemplated any time this five years."I have been reading the agreement," said grandpapa, "and, upon my soul, it looks to me, duffer though I am, as if the thing didn't hold water. I don't know anything about law, but the question is simply a legal one, after all; and if there's a flaw anywhere, I don't see why I shouldn't benefit by it. Any way, it's good enough to get an opinion on. I shall go up to Lincoln's Inn Fields, and see Messrs. Tarrant and Hawker. They helped me in the matter of the Automatic Postcard swindle, if you remember. I shall pretend the agreement is a joke, and, of course, they won't know me from Adam. Just think if they discovered a flaw, now, at the eleventh hour, so to speak!""Go, by all means, grandpapa, but don't buoy yourself, my dearest. Recollect Who wrote that agreement. He may not be skilled in legal matters himself, but he must have had ample opportunities for submitting the draft to experts.""That's the point," answered grandpapa. "He expressly said he'd drawn it up himself. It was a new thing in agreements, even for him. He fancied it too. But there may be a slip somewhere. I want a day off the river, and I'll go up with this document after lunch. You sit tight at home and don't show yourself. If people see you--Rose or any of the rest--they'll know I'm not far off.""And take care yourself, grandpapa. They are on the look out, no doubt. If you are arrested, I shall go mad."He started, and I spent the afternoon reading disquieting paragraphs about Daniel Dolphin. Many papers made mention of him, and certain of the comic organs printed what they doubtless regarded as jokes. My name appeared. There was much diversity of opinion about me. Some said that I was his daughter; others that we were brother and sister; others, again, that Daniel Dolphin's mother or grandmother or great-aunt assisted him in his pernicious career. TheStarfancied that Daniel Dolphin often masqueraded as an old woman. Everybody agreed that the truth would soon be known, because the police had an undoubted clue, and the matter was in most experienced hands.My grandpapa returned to dinner. He wept into his plate all through that meal, and showed me in a thousand ways that his enterprise had produced no good results."Speak, my treasure!" I cried at length, unable to bear the suspense; "is it as bad as you thought?""A million times worse!""Worse! What could be worse, grandpapa?""I'll explain. This fool--Nick, I mean--has drawn out the thing single-handed, and defeated his own object, and wrecked me utterly. I saw Mr. Hawker himself. He studied the agreement for an hour, then gave judgment on it. He said, tapping it with his eyeglass, 'Now this document is curious--very much so. The--the person who wrote it appears to have had a certain smattering of law terms, which he sprinkles over his remarks without any legal knowledge, without any familiarity with their forensic significance. The most remarkable thing about this agreement, however, is that by the processes to be applied to Daniel Dolphin, the said gentleman will absolutely cease to exist at the end of the specified time. The deed is amateurish in many respects, but in none more than this. It defeats its own object, for on the completion of the period herein set out,there will be nothing of Mr. Daniel Dolphin left to go anywhere! He said that, and I thanked him and paid six-and-eightpence, and came away, feeling about as cheap as a bad egg."My grandfather flung himself on a sofa, and cried again."Then you can't go to--to--!" I said, with a thrill of exultation."I can't go anywhere at all," he moaned; "I go out like gas when it's turned off at the tap. You don't understand--it's terrible, it's unheard of. I'd rather have gone down below than nowhere at all--anybody would. But now--now I shall become as extinct as the dodo. He's spoofed himself, and squelched me. Talk about justice!"I cannot dwell upon his sufferings. He had always believed firmly in a life beyond the grave. Now it was snatched from him by a juggling, muddle-headed, self-sufficient fiend, who ought never to have been allowed the use of writing materials. The matter was a logical one; the end of the New Scheme simply meant eternal annihilation for my unhappy old grandfather.CHAPTER XX.A CLIMAX.Grandfather had little time to concern himself with his new and terrible sorrows. All his hopes and ambitions now centred in the race at Henley; but adequate training became very difficult, because we were marked people now, despite the fact that we had changed our names. Detectives were constantly watching us and taking photographs of us in a hand-camera, and doing all they could to identify grandpapa with Daniel Dolphin. We moved higher up the river, then proceeded above Henley, then retreated back again to Kew. This threw the police out for awhile, but as time went on they found us again, and finally the first writ arrived. But this and others concerned money affairs, and grandpapa brushed them away with contempt. Anon, however, a more serious injunction fell upon us. Mr. Rose, satisfied that grandfather was no other than Daniel Dolphin, and doubtless advised by those familiar with the law, brought an action in the name of his daughter for breach of promise of marriage."It's pretty rough on me," said grandpapa, "that the one girl of the lot that I really was faithful to, and wanted to marry, and meant to marry, should jump on me like this. I couldn't help the banns being forbidden. And now I have got to appear in the Queen's Bench Division, and very likely get run in for all I'm worth, and a bit over.""D'you observe the date?" I asked, after looking at the document."By Jove! my twentieth birthday by the New Scheme--same date as first heat of the 'Diamonds.' Well, I can't attend, that's all. They'll have to put it off."A sort of fatality attached to subsequent summonses for grandpapa. The Salisbury people got wind of his address too, and he was ordered to repair to that city on divers charges. I think about six detectives, all working in different interests, were now employed upon grandfather. He was commanded to appear in the Queen's Bench Division on no less than three different counts, for Marie Rogers brought a case against Daniel Dolphin, and Mrs. Bangley-Brown did the same."They'll look pretty complete fools, those women," said grandpapa grimly, "when I do turn up in the box--a callow, lanky lout of twenty. The detectives have marked you down, Martha, and associate you with the missing Daniel Dolphin. So they think they are on the right track. You'll have to come and swear anything I tell you to."But I had my own troubles. There were several summonses out against me for "aiding and abetting" grandpapa in his different enterprises."Shall you employ a solicitor?" I asked."Not I," he answered. "No good chucking money away. I shall plead infancy, and if that won't wash, I shall throw myself on the mercy of the Court. I shall get up some legal expressions, likeultra vires, andsub judice, andsuggestio falsi, andprima facie, and so on. With these I shall endeavour to conduct my own case. As a last resort I shall try an alibi. But my own impression is that these fools of women will cry off the moment they see me. I don't want to drag in the New Scheme if I can possibly help it. What a cur Nick is not to lend a hand at a time like this!""And what am I to do, grandfather?""Well, you'll have to stand your trial. As far as I can see, you'll get about five years if they're lenient. You might bounce it with an alibi. After all, what does it matter? Quiet rest in a prison cell would be luxury after this life. I've foreseen it for some time. In your case it might be the best thing that could happen. You'll have to be steady there. It's about the only thought that really worries me, to remember that when I'm a defenceless babe I shall be in the hands of a woman who drinks.""Grandpapa! you know how I try.""I know how you succeed. Any excuse is good enough for a whack with you now. Every time a new injunction or process or writ drops in, off you go to the brandy bottle and carouse, as though they were matters to rejoice about. What was the good of signing the pledge if you never meant to keep it?""I find my system must have stimulant now, and I take it medicinally.""Oh, of course--the same old lie that's been on people's tongues ever since Noah invented it. It's your business after all, only you might look on ahead a little. Not long ago you were always telling me to do so. One of these days, after I'm a poor bawling infant in arms, you'll see purple centipedes or something just when I want your attention, and I shall get left."The subject dropped, and I turned the conversation to a pleasanter theme. We were within a week of the race, and grandpapa, in the pink of condition, only hoped and prayed that the law would not put violent hands upon him before Henley Regatta. The complications of the position had now become impossible to describe in words. We were lodging at Henley, and already letters, signed "Verax" and "Scrutator," were appearing in the sporting papers hinting at matters mysteriously connecting the young sculler, Elisha Spratt, with the scoundrel, Daniel Dolphin. Mr. Rose was responsible for these; at least, grandpapa thought so.But nobody interfered with him. He wound up his training, and backed himself with a thousand pounds, which was all we had left in the world. On the night before the race some policemen made an endeavour to arrest grandpapa, but he escaped, and joined me at a mean hotel near the river, where with great difficulty we succeeded in getting two adjoining bedrooms. A good night's rest was absolutely necessary for him."You see, I've got to win the Sculls at Henley, and answer for myself at Salisbury and in the Queen's Bench Division, and before a magistrate at Twickenham, and in three police-courts elsewhere, so I shall be fairly busy to-morrow," he said, with a rather pathetic smile. Then he kissed me, and went to bed in perfect good-temper. He was happily too young now to thoroughly realise his awful position.CHAPTER XXI.MY NIGHTMARE.I did not sleep that night for many hours, and when I finally slumbered there came to me a nightmare, involving grandpapa, which took ten years off my life.I dreamed that the morning had come, and that I went into grandfather's room to wish him many happy returns of the day--a thing I should certainly not have done in reality. But I was in the spirit, and never shall I forget the spectacle which greeted me as I stood by the old man's pillow. Instead of the ruddy, healthy boy I had left over-night--instead of the muscular, deep-chested, deep-voiced young athlete who was that day to row at Henley, there sat up in the bed an uncanny, wrinkled, decrepit mummy of a creature. It was bald, save for a thin tangle of white eyebrow over each bleared eye. Its mouth was a mere slit, its nose and chin nearly met, its cheeks had fallen in. One thin skeleton of a claw held the bedclothes up to its scraggy neck. Its head shook, its under jaw dropped, its back was round as a wheel; the thing manifested indications of profoundest age."What--what is this? Who are you?" I gasped, turning faint and clutching at a chair-back for support.It laughed a little squeaky, wheezy laugh, and a cunning expression came into its dim eyes."Keep your nerve," it said. "The show's bust up; the New Scheme's broken down!""Grandpapa!""He--he--he! Yes. A hundred and eight, not twenty. I've downed him.""Downed him, grandpapa?""That means bested him, beaten him, scored off him. Lord! Lord! You'd have laughed to see what went on here last night. Nick swore and cussed and stormed and stamped round and perspired brimstone; but it wasn't any manner of use. He'd given himself away by his own foolishness.""Tell me, grandfather, tell me all about it. This is a happy day indeed!"In my dream I gave the old hero an egg-and-milk with a little brandy. Then he sat up, and in a weak, trembling voice, broken with fits of senile chuckling, he told me about his interview."Nick came in just for a chat. He always goes to Henley. He mentioned the 'Diamonds,' and guaranteed I should win 'em. He was friendly as you please, and hoped I'd had a good time, and didn't regret my bargain."Then I told him of my visit to the lawyers, rapped out at him for a blundering, unbusiness-like ass, got the agreement out, went through it with him, and showed him what he'd really done. He was fairly mad, but he couldn't get away from facts. I said:"'The point lies in a nutshell. There'll be nothing of me left to go anywhere; and even you cannot arrange for the eternity of a non-existent being, can you?'"He had to admit he couldn't. He was properly cross. He tore the agreement to little pieces, and stamped on it. He argued some time with me, and pointed out a fact that I had fully grasped already. He said:"'Yes, it's pretty clear I've over-reached myself. My fiendish conceit's always tripping me up. I ought to have got my lawyers to help me; but I thought I could thrash a simple thing like that out alone.'"He said that much, and then I made some satirical remark which stung him, for he turned on me, about as short and nasty as they make 'em, and said:"'Blest if I know whatyouwant to snigger for! You don't seem to realise what a unique fix you're in. Youwon't go anywherenow! That's what's the matter with you. Nothing to chortle about, I should think?'"'I'm not chortling at that,' I answered, 'I'm merely smiling a bit to see you getting so warm. You'd better listen to reason and leave the past alone. Is there any way out of this? Of course, I want to go somewhere. I've got a strong objection to becoming extinct. How would you like it? I suppose even you would rather hang on where you are than be blotted out altogether.'"'We can't get away from a signed agreement,' he said sulkily."Yes we can, if we draw out another, cancelling the first,' I answered."'No more writing for me,' he said."'Well, then, let us have an oral understanding,' I suggested."'I'll entertain any proposal in reason,' he replied."But, of course, I was unprepared with suggestions. The interview had been sprung upon me, and I had not bestowed a moment's thought upon preparations."'You're in a fix, I know,' he remarked, 'a mere temporal quandary, only involving certain ladies and so forth, but still troublesome so far as it goes. I might do this; I might quash all these earthly suits by the simple expedient of restoring you to your real age. As it is, you will upset a good many of them, because old Bangley-Brown, for instance, is on the look-out for a man of seventy-five; and the publican's daughter, Marie Rogers, expects a man of five-and-forty or fifty. But, by returning to the ripe old age of one hundred-and-eight, you reduce the whole series of proceedings to a farce, and leave the different police courts and places without a stain on your character. In any case, you can only live one year more, but the difference is this: that if you go on as you're going, you go out altogether; whereas, if you consent to my alternative, you'll die in your bed, and have a future.'"As you may imagine, Martha, I grew very excited."'A future--where?' I enquired, in my dream."Exactly. Where? There's the rub," grandfather answered. "I asked Nick the same question, and he said:"'I wonder you can inquire. If you've got any sense of justice or gratitude, you ought to feel the extent of your debt and not hesitate to pay it. In any case, whatever your private ambitions may be, your past record is such that, if you go anywhere at all, your destination is practically determined.'"I did not argue upon this point," continued grandfather, "feeling it would be better tact to slur it over, and leave a loop-hole, but he held me to it, and finally got me to promise that I would never attempt to reform or amend my ways during the last year of my life. He insisted all the time that it would not alter the result, but I could see, from his great anxiety upon the point, that he knew there might be plenty of opportunity for me to turn over a new leaf, and make a good end, if I chose to do so. However, I promised him to lead as abandoned and dissolute a life as could be expected from a man of one hundred and eight, so we effected the compromise. He was nervous about it to the last, but felt it to be the only way out of thecul-de-sachis own stupidity had placed him in. Then the change was made. I went to sleep a boy and woke as you find me. I'm all here, but stiff about the legs, and deucedly rheumatic. Go out and get me a tall hat and some black, ready-made clothes, and some easy felt boots and a few walking sticks, and the strongest spectacles you can buy. Then I'll get up."So ended my clear grandpapa's astounding statement, but my dream went on. I made him some bread-and-milk, fed him with it, and then hurried out to purchase necessaries.The world, had turned upside down for me. I expected the newspaper boys to be yelling out "Failure of the New Scheme!"CHAPTER XXII.THE DWINDLING OF GRANDPAPA.But there was no truth in the vision. I awoke unrested--rose, and, of 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 theSportsman, 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 theSportsmanquickly 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 theSportsman, "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 toofsishurtin' 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.A feeling of awe and horror daily gained ground upon me at this season. I was haunted by the thought of that awful night so close at hand, and I pictured a thousand terrors. I strung myself up to the task of facing the future alone, but I would have given all I possessed to feel that during those supreme last moments some fellow-creature--a medical man or one of the clergy for choice--would be with me. But I had kept my poor grandfather's secret for ten years, and meant keeping it to the end. The final problem, however, was quite full of horrid possibility. One night I thought of an idea that made me turn goose-flesh all over. What if on the expiring of the New Scheme grandfather should revert to the old? What if on the morning of his hundred and tenth birthday, instead of finding nothing in his cradle, I should rise and be confronted with the withered remains of a centenarian? Of course, it would not matter much to grandfather, but an event of that kind must leave me in a dilemma, beside which the New Scheme itself was a mere child's problem. What would the landlady say? What would anybody say? I determined that no one should have half a chance to say anything. It was merely justice to myself. I arranged a programme for that last night. The time of the year was late June, the weather beautiful, so a week before the end I took train to North London. I made up my mind to spend the last night of grandfather's life quite alone with him on the wilds of Hampstead Heath. Then, if he suffered any further outrageous transformation at the last, I could just leave him there, and he would be found and duly buried after a coroner's inquest, and I could put flowers on the grave anonymously afterwards. If, on the other hand, he simply went out, I should be able to rejoin my boxes, which would be waiting at the nearest railway station, and go upon my way unsuspected. If he suddenly disappeared in a lodging-house, it seemed clear to me that I should probably be arrested on suspicion of murder. I took two rooms not far from the Heath, and watched grandfather's last week pass away in ceaseless wailing. Then came the night before his birthday. That evening I gave up the lodgings, sent my boxes to the station, and after a meat tea and the first dose of stimulant I had taken for a year, went forth to the final scene. Every seat upon Hampstead Heath that night seemed to be engaged by parties of two. The daylight waned slowly. Not until nine o'clock did the moonlight begin to grow strong enough to throw shadows. By ten it flooded the Heath with soft grey light. The scene was extremely peaceful; it even soothed to some slight extent the chaos in my heart. Grandfather slept. He had been unusually silent all day. He had shrunk, of course, to a mere red, new-born atom now. I had him snugly in a bundle all done up with safety pins. I remember wondering, even at that solemn time, how the Devil would be able to get grandfather out of that bundle without undoing the pins.About eleven o'clock I threw his bottle away, for I knew he would never want it again. It was a beautiful night for the passing of grandpapa. I only hoped and prayed that hewouldpass, and have done with it. I rambled about in the shadows cast by the moon, and peeped from time to time into the blanket I carried to see if anything was happening to grandfather; but he nestled there, silent and wide awake. I shivered as I looked into his round, open eyes, bright with moonlight. There was an unutterably weird expression in them, for they had intelligence once more; they were the eyes of a thinking being. It would hardly have surprised me at that moment if he had spoken and exchanged ideas with me. But he kept deadly silence, looking out of his blanket with those round moon-lit eyes that haunt me still. And then a strange thing happened. Despite my agitation, and the fact that I was now shaking with excitement, and suffering from palpitation of the heart, a great longing for sleep crept over me. I yearned to close my eyes; an astounding feeling, almost approaching indifference, rose within me. I actually heard myself saying, "I must sleep, I must sleep; it won't make any difference to him." I fought against the overpowering drowsiness, being sure that it was simply sent by some malevolent, supernatural power, in order to prevent me from being in at the finish, so to speak. But my efforts were unavailing. As a distant church clock chimed half-past eleven, I sank down at the top of a bank under some gorse bushes, and the last action of which I am conscious was that I drew grandfather close to me and put my arms tight round him--those poor old arms that had been of some use to him in the past, but were powerless now.Doubtless I slept for half-an-hour. Then I was awakened suddenly by the wail of a new-born babe. I sat up wildly. The bundle with grandfather in it was not in my arms. It had apparently rolled to the bottom of the bank. But even as I rose to struggle after it, the shrill cry of the infant changed to the mumbling groan of one infinitely old, and across the gorse bushes, in the haze of the moonlight, I saw the passing of grandfather. Whether the vision came out of my own brain, or was actually visible to my eyes, I cannot say. All I remember is that I distinctly heard my name, "Martha, Martha!" called twice in weak but frenzied accents, and saw an old, bent figure, with the moonbeams shining on its bald head, move across the light. It was stretching thin, bony fingers out towards me, and wringing its hands at the same time. I struggled to reach it, but suddenly grew conscious of something that came between--something formless and unutterable. There was a laugh in the air, harsh, unearthly, like a parrot's. It died away, and the echo of a moan seemed to crawl as though alive through the high gorse. Then there was silence, and I, with my hands groping in front of me, fell forward unconscious.I cannot have been insensible for very long, as facts proved. When I recovered again the moon still shone brightly, but the east already trembled with dawn, and it was cold. I staggered down the bank to where the baby's cry had come from, and there lay the bundle, just as I had clasped it to my heart. I opened it; it was still warm as a nest from which the sitting bird has just flown; but it was empty. At the moment I awoke I must have missed grandfather's birth or death, or departure or arrival, by the fraction of a second. I searched frantically round for him; I tore my face and my gloves in the furze and briars; I raised my voice and shrieked to him, and fell on my knees and prayed for him; but under my mad frenzy there throbbed a thought that spoke to me coldly and told me he was gone--clean gone, and vanished away for ever.Presently I found a vacant seat, where I sat and collected myself. I dried the blood from a thorn scratch across my face, brushed the mud from my dress, and then, as a golden dawn flashed over the dew and woke the birds, I crawled away towards the railway station. A train for working men went at five, but I had to wait an hour and a half for it, and the time dragged. Every moment I expected to hear grandfather's cry, and once I found my foot mechanically rocking his cradle. Then they opened the station, and I took a ticket to Baker Street, and saw my two boxes labelled, and went back into the world--alone.
CHAPTER XIX.
COUNSEL'S OPINION.
Grandpapa decided that Sunbury would be a likely sort of place to "lie low" in, so we went up after dark that same Sunday evening, reached our new halting-place soon after midnight, and took some lodgings by the water-side. The affair was in the papers next day, and the name of Daniel Dolphin echoed in people's mouths once more.
Grandfather now called himself Elisha Spratt, and he entered under that name at Henley. By a curious coincidence, the first heat for the Diamond Sculls fell on grandpapa's birthday. Nearly a month, however, had yet to pass by before that elate. Mr. Rose's added another to the long list of indictments against grandfather, but the old man cared nothing. He went on steadily and quietly with his practice and training, and the harder he trained, the younger he began to look.
A painful incident, out of which arose another still more trying, has here to be recorded. Grandpapa, while discussing the different processes at law which he had incurred, told me, in some glee, of matters I did not know.
"I did a smart thing recently," he began. "Of course, a man must help his chums where he can, and I've been able to do so without any hurt to myself. People on the river think I've got pots of money, because I spend very freely. On the strength of this I've been asked to lend my security on about twenty different occasions. I never refused. Men thought I was a fool, but I knew what I was about very well."
The old, cunning look came back into his eyes once more. It had a very painful appearance on the face of so young a man.
"What have you done now, dear grandfather? Hide nothing from me," I said.
"I've backed a lot of bills, and gone security for thousands and thousands. A good few of the Johnnies can't pay, and they'll come down on me like a ton of bricks. Ha, ha!"
"I don't see what there is to laugh at, grandpapa. So little amuses you now."
"Why,I'm under age. That's where the laugh comes in. I'm a legal infant, or something of that sort. They can't touch me."
"A legal infant! Why, grandfather, you're a hundred and eight years old in a few weeks' time."
"Not by the New Scheme."
"What's the New Scheme got to do with the money-lenders? They'll fight it out on the Old Scheme, and trace you back and back, and confront you with your past career. It was madness to do such a thing."
The old man grew rather wretched and uneasy, but he soon cheered up again.
"I thought it was such a smart move; and, after all, no harm's done, for I haven't got the money. In fact, fifteen hundred or less is about my limit now. I'm safe enough if you don't go and give me away. People recognise you, but, of course, I shall begin changing and dwindling at a deuce of a rate, after Henley. To think that my mental powers will begin to fade, too--that's what cuts me up."
What he called his mental powers had already begun to fade. He was stupid for his age now, and would be a mere clown of a boy in six months' time. But I did not tell him so. I said nothing; and soon afterwards he went to bed.
In the morning he came down to breakfast, fired with an extraordinary new project. And yet, in justice to myself, I cannot say strictly that it was a fresh idea. I had advised him to take the step he now contemplated any time this five years.
"I have been reading the agreement," said grandpapa, "and, upon my soul, it looks to me, duffer though I am, as if the thing didn't hold water. I don't know anything about law, but the question is simply a legal one, after all; and if there's a flaw anywhere, I don't see why I shouldn't benefit by it. Any way, it's good enough to get an opinion on. I shall go up to Lincoln's Inn Fields, and see Messrs. Tarrant and Hawker. They helped me in the matter of the Automatic Postcard swindle, if you remember. I shall pretend the agreement is a joke, and, of course, they won't know me from Adam. Just think if they discovered a flaw, now, at the eleventh hour, so to speak!"
"Go, by all means, grandpapa, but don't buoy yourself, my dearest. Recollect Who wrote that agreement. He may not be skilled in legal matters himself, but he must have had ample opportunities for submitting the draft to experts."
"That's the point," answered grandpapa. "He expressly said he'd drawn it up himself. It was a new thing in agreements, even for him. He fancied it too. But there may be a slip somewhere. I want a day off the river, and I'll go up with this document after lunch. You sit tight at home and don't show yourself. If people see you--Rose or any of the rest--they'll know I'm not far off."
"And take care yourself, grandpapa. They are on the look out, no doubt. If you are arrested, I shall go mad."
He started, and I spent the afternoon reading disquieting paragraphs about Daniel Dolphin. Many papers made mention of him, and certain of the comic organs printed what they doubtless regarded as jokes. My name appeared. There was much diversity of opinion about me. Some said that I was his daughter; others that we were brother and sister; others, again, that Daniel Dolphin's mother or grandmother or great-aunt assisted him in his pernicious career. TheStarfancied that Daniel Dolphin often masqueraded as an old woman. Everybody agreed that the truth would soon be known, because the police had an undoubted clue, and the matter was in most experienced hands.
My grandpapa returned to dinner. He wept into his plate all through that meal, and showed me in a thousand ways that his enterprise had produced no good results.
"Speak, my treasure!" I cried at length, unable to bear the suspense; "is it as bad as you thought?"
"A million times worse!"
"Worse! What could be worse, grandpapa?"
"I'll explain. This fool--Nick, I mean--has drawn out the thing single-handed, and defeated his own object, and wrecked me utterly. I saw Mr. Hawker himself. He studied the agreement for an hour, then gave judgment on it. He said, tapping it with his eyeglass, 'Now this document is curious--very much so. The--the person who wrote it appears to have had a certain smattering of law terms, which he sprinkles over his remarks without any legal knowledge, without any familiarity with their forensic significance. The most remarkable thing about this agreement, however, is that by the processes to be applied to Daniel Dolphin, the said gentleman will absolutely cease to exist at the end of the specified time. The deed is amateurish in many respects, but in none more than this. It defeats its own object, for on the completion of the period herein set out,there will be nothing of Mr. Daniel Dolphin left to go anywhere! He said that, and I thanked him and paid six-and-eightpence, and came away, feeling about as cheap as a bad egg."
My grandfather flung himself on a sofa, and cried again.
"Then you can't go to--to--!" I said, with a thrill of exultation.
"I can't go anywhere at all," he moaned; "I go out like gas when it's turned off at the tap. You don't understand--it's terrible, it's unheard of. I'd rather have gone down below than nowhere at all--anybody would. But now--now I shall become as extinct as the dodo. He's spoofed himself, and squelched me. Talk about justice!"
I cannot dwell upon his sufferings. He had always believed firmly in a life beyond the grave. Now it was snatched from him by a juggling, muddle-headed, self-sufficient fiend, who ought never to have been allowed the use of writing materials. The matter was a logical one; the end of the New Scheme simply meant eternal annihilation for my unhappy old grandfather.
CHAPTER XX.
A CLIMAX.
Grandfather had little time to concern himself with his new and terrible sorrows. All his hopes and ambitions now centred in the race at Henley; but adequate training became very difficult, because we were marked people now, despite the fact that we had changed our names. Detectives were constantly watching us and taking photographs of us in a hand-camera, and doing all they could to identify grandpapa with Daniel Dolphin. We moved higher up the river, then proceeded above Henley, then retreated back again to Kew. This threw the police out for awhile, but as time went on they found us again, and finally the first writ arrived. But this and others concerned money affairs, and grandpapa brushed them away with contempt. Anon, however, a more serious injunction fell upon us. Mr. Rose, satisfied that grandfather was no other than Daniel Dolphin, and doubtless advised by those familiar with the law, brought an action in the name of his daughter for breach of promise of marriage.
"It's pretty rough on me," said grandpapa, "that the one girl of the lot that I really was faithful to, and wanted to marry, and meant to marry, should jump on me like this. I couldn't help the banns being forbidden. And now I have got to appear in the Queen's Bench Division, and very likely get run in for all I'm worth, and a bit over."
"D'you observe the date?" I asked, after looking at the document.
"By Jove! my twentieth birthday by the New Scheme--same date as first heat of the 'Diamonds.' Well, I can't attend, that's all. They'll have to put it off."
A sort of fatality attached to subsequent summonses for grandpapa. The Salisbury people got wind of his address too, and he was ordered to repair to that city on divers charges. I think about six detectives, all working in different interests, were now employed upon grandfather. He was commanded to appear in the Queen's Bench Division on no less than three different counts, for Marie Rogers brought a case against Daniel Dolphin, and Mrs. Bangley-Brown did the same.
"They'll look pretty complete fools, those women," said grandpapa grimly, "when I do turn up in the box--a callow, lanky lout of twenty. The detectives have marked you down, Martha, and associate you with the missing Daniel Dolphin. So they think they are on the right track. You'll have to come and swear anything I tell you to."
But I had my own troubles. There were several summonses out against me for "aiding and abetting" grandpapa in his different enterprises.
"Shall you employ a solicitor?" I asked.
"Not I," he answered. "No good chucking money away. I shall plead infancy, and if that won't wash, I shall throw myself on the mercy of the Court. I shall get up some legal expressions, likeultra vires, andsub judice, andsuggestio falsi, andprima facie, and so on. With these I shall endeavour to conduct my own case. As a last resort I shall try an alibi. But my own impression is that these fools of women will cry off the moment they see me. I don't want to drag in the New Scheme if I can possibly help it. What a cur Nick is not to lend a hand at a time like this!"
"And what am I to do, grandfather?"
"Well, you'll have to stand your trial. As far as I can see, you'll get about five years if they're lenient. You might bounce it with an alibi. After all, what does it matter? Quiet rest in a prison cell would be luxury after this life. I've foreseen it for some time. In your case it might be the best thing that could happen. You'll have to be steady there. It's about the only thought that really worries me, to remember that when I'm a defenceless babe I shall be in the hands of a woman who drinks."
"Grandpapa! you know how I try."
"I know how you succeed. Any excuse is good enough for a whack with you now. Every time a new injunction or process or writ drops in, off you go to the brandy bottle and carouse, as though they were matters to rejoice about. What was the good of signing the pledge if you never meant to keep it?"
"I find my system must have stimulant now, and I take it medicinally."
"Oh, of course--the same old lie that's been on people's tongues ever since Noah invented it. It's your business after all, only you might look on ahead a little. Not long ago you were always telling me to do so. One of these days, after I'm a poor bawling infant in arms, you'll see purple centipedes or something just when I want your attention, and I shall get left."
The subject dropped, and I turned the conversation to a pleasanter theme. We were within a week of the race, and grandpapa, in the pink of condition, only hoped and prayed that the law would not put violent hands upon him before Henley Regatta. The complications of the position had now become impossible to describe in words. We were lodging at Henley, and already letters, signed "Verax" and "Scrutator," were appearing in the sporting papers hinting at matters mysteriously connecting the young sculler, Elisha Spratt, with the scoundrel, Daniel Dolphin. Mr. Rose was responsible for these; at least, grandpapa thought so.
But nobody interfered with him. He wound up his training, and backed himself with a thousand pounds, which was all we had left in the world. On the night before the race some policemen made an endeavour to arrest grandpapa, but he escaped, and joined me at a mean hotel near the river, where with great difficulty we succeeded in getting two adjoining bedrooms. A good night's rest was absolutely necessary for him.
"You see, I've got to win the Sculls at Henley, and answer for myself at Salisbury and in the Queen's Bench Division, and before a magistrate at Twickenham, and in three police-courts elsewhere, so I shall be fairly busy to-morrow," he said, with a rather pathetic smile. Then he kissed me, and went to bed in perfect good-temper. He was happily too young now to thoroughly realise his awful position.
CHAPTER XXI.
MY NIGHTMARE.
I did not sleep that night for many hours, and when I finally slumbered there came to me a nightmare, involving grandpapa, which took ten years off my life.
I dreamed that the morning had come, and that I went into grandfather's room to wish him many happy returns of the day--a thing I should certainly not have done in reality. But I was in the spirit, and never shall I forget the spectacle which greeted me as I stood by the old man's pillow. Instead of the ruddy, healthy boy I had left over-night--instead of the muscular, deep-chested, deep-voiced young athlete who was that day to row at Henley, there sat up in the bed an uncanny, wrinkled, decrepit mummy of a creature. It was bald, save for a thin tangle of white eyebrow over each bleared eye. Its mouth was a mere slit, its nose and chin nearly met, its cheeks had fallen in. One thin skeleton of a claw held the bedclothes up to its scraggy neck. Its head shook, its under jaw dropped, its back was round as a wheel; the thing manifested indications of profoundest age.
"What--what is this? Who are you?" I gasped, turning faint and clutching at a chair-back for support.
It laughed a little squeaky, wheezy laugh, and a cunning expression came into its dim eyes.
"Keep your nerve," it said. "The show's bust up; the New Scheme's broken down!"
"Grandpapa!"
"He--he--he! Yes. A hundred and eight, not twenty. I've downed him."
"Downed him, grandpapa?"
"That means bested him, beaten him, scored off him. Lord! Lord! You'd have laughed to see what went on here last night. Nick swore and cussed and stormed and stamped round and perspired brimstone; but it wasn't any manner of use. He'd given himself away by his own foolishness."
"Tell me, grandfather, tell me all about it. This is a happy day indeed!"
In my dream I gave the old hero an egg-and-milk with a little brandy. Then he sat up, and in a weak, trembling voice, broken with fits of senile chuckling, he told me about his interview.
"Nick came in just for a chat. He always goes to Henley. He mentioned the 'Diamonds,' and guaranteed I should win 'em. He was friendly as you please, and hoped I'd had a good time, and didn't regret my bargain.
"Then I told him of my visit to the lawyers, rapped out at him for a blundering, unbusiness-like ass, got the agreement out, went through it with him, and showed him what he'd really done. He was fairly mad, but he couldn't get away from facts. I said:
"'The point lies in a nutshell. There'll be nothing of me left to go anywhere; and even you cannot arrange for the eternity of a non-existent being, can you?'
"He had to admit he couldn't. He was properly cross. He tore the agreement to little pieces, and stamped on it. He argued some time with me, and pointed out a fact that I had fully grasped already. He said:
"'Yes, it's pretty clear I've over-reached myself. My fiendish conceit's always tripping me up. I ought to have got my lawyers to help me; but I thought I could thrash a simple thing like that out alone.'
"He said that much, and then I made some satirical remark which stung him, for he turned on me, about as short and nasty as they make 'em, and said:
"'Blest if I know whatyouwant to snigger for! You don't seem to realise what a unique fix you're in. Youwon't go anywherenow! That's what's the matter with you. Nothing to chortle about, I should think?'
"'I'm not chortling at that,' I answered, 'I'm merely smiling a bit to see you getting so warm. You'd better listen to reason and leave the past alone. Is there any way out of this? Of course, I want to go somewhere. I've got a strong objection to becoming extinct. How would you like it? I suppose even you would rather hang on where you are than be blotted out altogether.'
"'We can't get away from a signed agreement,' he said sulkily.
"Yes we can, if we draw out another, cancelling the first,' I answered.
"'No more writing for me,' he said.
"'Well, then, let us have an oral understanding,' I suggested.
"'I'll entertain any proposal in reason,' he replied.
"But, of course, I was unprepared with suggestions. The interview had been sprung upon me, and I had not bestowed a moment's thought upon preparations.
"'You're in a fix, I know,' he remarked, 'a mere temporal quandary, only involving certain ladies and so forth, but still troublesome so far as it goes. I might do this; I might quash all these earthly suits by the simple expedient of restoring you to your real age. As it is, you will upset a good many of them, because old Bangley-Brown, for instance, is on the look-out for a man of seventy-five; and the publican's daughter, Marie Rogers, expects a man of five-and-forty or fifty. But, by returning to the ripe old age of one hundred-and-eight, you reduce the whole series of proceedings to a farce, and leave the different police courts and places without a stain on your character. In any case, you can only live one year more, but the difference is this: that if you go on as you're going, you go out altogether; whereas, if you consent to my alternative, you'll die in your bed, and have a future.'
"As you may imagine, Martha, I grew very excited.
"'A future--where?' I enquired, in my dream.
"Exactly. Where? There's the rub," grandfather answered. "I asked Nick the same question, and he said:
"'I wonder you can inquire. If you've got any sense of justice or gratitude, you ought to feel the extent of your debt and not hesitate to pay it. In any case, whatever your private ambitions may be, your past record is such that, if you go anywhere at all, your destination is practically determined.'
"I did not argue upon this point," continued grandfather, "feeling it would be better tact to slur it over, and leave a loop-hole, but he held me to it, and finally got me to promise that I would never attempt to reform or amend my ways during the last year of my life. He insisted all the time that it would not alter the result, but I could see, from his great anxiety upon the point, that he knew there might be plenty of opportunity for me to turn over a new leaf, and make a good end, if I chose to do so. However, I promised him to lead as abandoned and dissolute a life as could be expected from a man of one hundred and eight, so we effected the compromise. He was nervous about it to the last, but felt it to be the only way out of thecul-de-sachis own stupidity had placed him in. Then the change was made. I went to sleep a boy and woke as you find me. I'm all here, but stiff about the legs, and deucedly rheumatic. Go out and get me a tall hat and some black, ready-made clothes, and some easy felt boots and a few walking sticks, and the strongest spectacles you can buy. Then I'll get up."
So ended my clear grandpapa's astounding statement, but my dream went on. I made him some bread-and-milk, fed him with it, and then hurried out to purchase necessaries.
The world, had turned upside down for me. I expected the newspaper boys to be yelling out "Failure of the New Scheme!"
CHAPTER XXII.
THE DWINDLING OF GRANDPAPA.
But there was no truth in the vision. I awoke unrested--rose, and, of 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 theSportsman, 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 theSportsmanquickly 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 theSportsman, "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 toofsishurtin' 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.
A feeling of awe and horror daily gained ground upon me at this season. I was haunted by the thought of that awful night so close at hand, and I pictured a thousand terrors. I strung myself up to the task of facing the future alone, but I would have given all I possessed to feel that during those supreme last moments some fellow-creature--a medical man or one of the clergy for choice--would be with me. But I had kept my poor grandfather's secret for ten years, and meant keeping it to the end. The final problem, however, was quite full of horrid possibility. One night I thought of an idea that made me turn goose-flesh all over. What if on the expiring of the New Scheme grandfather should revert to the old? What if on the morning of his hundred and tenth birthday, instead of finding nothing in his cradle, I should rise and be confronted with the withered remains of a centenarian? Of course, it would not matter much to grandfather, but an event of that kind must leave me in a dilemma, beside which the New Scheme itself was a mere child's problem. What would the landlady say? What would anybody say? I determined that no one should have half a chance to say anything. It was merely justice to myself. I arranged a programme for that last night. The time of the year was late June, the weather beautiful, so a week before the end I took train to North London. I made up my mind to spend the last night of grandfather's life quite alone with him on the wilds of Hampstead Heath. Then, if he suffered any further outrageous transformation at the last, I could just leave him there, and he would be found and duly buried after a coroner's inquest, and I could put flowers on the grave anonymously afterwards. If, on the other hand, he simply went out, I should be able to rejoin my boxes, which would be waiting at the nearest railway station, and go upon my way unsuspected. If he suddenly disappeared in a lodging-house, it seemed clear to me that I should probably be arrested on suspicion of murder. I took two rooms not far from the Heath, and watched grandfather's last week pass away in ceaseless wailing. Then came the night before his birthday. That evening I gave up the lodgings, sent my boxes to the station, and after a meat tea and the first dose of stimulant I had taken for a year, went forth to the final scene. Every seat upon Hampstead Heath that night seemed to be engaged by parties of two. The daylight waned slowly. Not until nine o'clock did the moonlight begin to grow strong enough to throw shadows. By ten it flooded the Heath with soft grey light. The scene was extremely peaceful; it even soothed to some slight extent the chaos in my heart. Grandfather slept. He had been unusually silent all day. He had shrunk, of course, to a mere red, new-born atom now. I had him snugly in a bundle all done up with safety pins. I remember wondering, even at that solemn time, how the Devil would be able to get grandfather out of that bundle without undoing the pins.
About eleven o'clock I threw his bottle away, for I knew he would never want it again. It was a beautiful night for the passing of grandpapa. I only hoped and prayed that hewouldpass, and have done with it. I rambled about in the shadows cast by the moon, and peeped from time to time into the blanket I carried to see if anything was happening to grandfather; but he nestled there, silent and wide awake. I shivered as I looked into his round, open eyes, bright with moonlight. There was an unutterably weird expression in them, for they had intelligence once more; they were the eyes of a thinking being. It would hardly have surprised me at that moment if he had spoken and exchanged ideas with me. But he kept deadly silence, looking out of his blanket with those round moon-lit eyes that haunt me still. And then a strange thing happened. Despite my agitation, and the fact that I was now shaking with excitement, and suffering from palpitation of the heart, a great longing for sleep crept over me. I yearned to close my eyes; an astounding feeling, almost approaching indifference, rose within me. I actually heard myself saying, "I must sleep, I must sleep; it won't make any difference to him." I fought against the overpowering drowsiness, being sure that it was simply sent by some malevolent, supernatural power, in order to prevent me from being in at the finish, so to speak. But my efforts were unavailing. As a distant church clock chimed half-past eleven, I sank down at the top of a bank under some gorse bushes, and the last action of which I am conscious was that I drew grandfather close to me and put my arms tight round him--those poor old arms that had been of some use to him in the past, but were powerless now.
Doubtless I slept for half-an-hour. Then I was awakened suddenly by the wail of a new-born babe. I sat up wildly. The bundle with grandfather in it was not in my arms. It had apparently rolled to the bottom of the bank. But even as I rose to struggle after it, the shrill cry of the infant changed to the mumbling groan of one infinitely old, and across the gorse bushes, in the haze of the moonlight, I saw the passing of grandfather. Whether the vision came out of my own brain, or was actually visible to my eyes, I cannot say. All I remember is that I distinctly heard my name, "Martha, Martha!" called twice in weak but frenzied accents, and saw an old, bent figure, with the moonbeams shining on its bald head, move across the light. It was stretching thin, bony fingers out towards me, and wringing its hands at the same time. I struggled to reach it, but suddenly grew conscious of something that came between--something formless and unutterable. There was a laugh in the air, harsh, unearthly, like a parrot's. It died away, and the echo of a moan seemed to crawl as though alive through the high gorse. Then there was silence, and I, with my hands groping in front of me, fell forward unconscious.
I cannot have been insensible for very long, as facts proved. When I recovered again the moon still shone brightly, but the east already trembled with dawn, and it was cold. I staggered down the bank to where the baby's cry had come from, and there lay the bundle, just as I had clasped it to my heart. I opened it; it was still warm as a nest from which the sitting bird has just flown; but it was empty. At the moment I awoke I must have missed grandfather's birth or death, or departure or arrival, by the fraction of a second. I searched frantically round for him; I tore my face and my gloves in the furze and briars; I raised my voice and shrieked to him, and fell on my knees and prayed for him; but under my mad frenzy there throbbed a thought that spoke to me coldly and told me he was gone--clean gone, and vanished away for ever.
Presently I found a vacant seat, where I sat and collected myself. I dried the blood from a thorn scratch across my face, brushed the mud from my dress, and then, as a golden dawn flashed over the dew and woke the birds, I crawled away towards the railway station. A train for working men went at five, but I had to wait an hour and a half for it, and the time dragged. Every moment I expected to hear grandfather's cry, and once I found my foot mechanically rocking his cradle. Then they opened the station, and I took a ticket to Baker Street, and saw my two boxes labelled, and went back into the world--alone.