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 the Sportsman, to find that the dear old man had managed to elude the detectives and win the Diamond Sculls! I felt that this was probably the last piece of real joy he would ever have. But the report in the Sportsman quickly quenched my passing happiness. Satisfaction, indeed, was turned into black despair, when I read what my grandfather had done on the completion of the boat-race.
“Elisha Spratt,” said the Sportsman, “the mysterious young oarsman who has suddenly burst into fame, won the ‘Diamonds’ with ridiculous ease, and simply played with his better-known opponent. The sensation of the race, however, was reserved for the finish. Hardly had Spratt passed the winning-post when a boat, full of police-constables, pulled quickly out from the crowd of craft that thronged the course and made towards him. Spratt, it seems, has been ‘wanted’ for some time, being mysteriously connected with what is known as the ‘Dolphin Mystery’; and the preservers of law and order believed that by taking him in mid-stream, immediately after the race, they would ensure an easy capture. Their judgment, however, proved faulty. Spratt, who was nearly as fresh as when he began to row, made a vigorous defence, and when he ultimately succeeded in capsizing the boatload of Crown officials and escaping, the enthusiasm of the sightseers knew no bounds. Finally he disappeared up stream, and has not since been heard of. He is certainly a magnificent sculler, but we fear his next appearance in public will not be in a wager boat. The constables were all rescued, though one of them, a well-known detective, is said to lie still insensible, and little hopes are entertained of his recovery.”
This was the end of it then—murder! My grandfather had taken a life. Now, if they caught him they would doubtless endeavour to hang him. Even the New Scheme could hardly continue if they succeeded in hanging grandfather. At least, so it struck me. But first they had to catch him. Luckily, he was just at a difficult age to catch. We had arranged I should wait for him at the station, and presently he came down from town, travelling third-class, in the same compartment with part of a Sunday school treat. He had disguised himself, and was wearing a false nose and little imitation whiskers hooked over his ears. He saw me, and followed at a distance as I walked from the station, but he did not join me until I had reached the doorstep of our lodgings. Then he approached and entered. He was very excited, and full of a new idea. He had already quite forgotten the race on the preceding day, and talked of nothing save the nearly-drowned detective.
“You see, if he pops off, they’d hang me,” he explained eagerly.
“Grandfather, I implore you not to talk so,” I sobbed, quite giving way.
“But I want ’em to. Nothing better could happen. The next two years won’t be much of a catch from my point of view; and if I’m executed, of course, the New Scheme must be upset. I shall have to go somewhere then; I shan’t become extinct anyway.”
His hopes in this direction were doomed to disappointment, however. The detective recovered, and we were unmolested. We had, in fact, thrown the Scotland Yard people completely off the trail. But grandpapa still longed to be hanged. He even discussed the feasibility of a capital crime at Margate, and, as it was all one to him in the matter of a victim, he generously offered to put anybody I liked out of the way. He even bought a revolver.
“To be executed it is necessary to take a life,” he explained. “The question is, whose life? If you’ve got an enemy, Martha, now’s your time to name him or her. If you’ve no fancy, then I shall pip a prominent member of the Government.”
But two months passed by, and my grandfather’s horrid ambition gradually faded. When he was eighteen, and after we left Margate for Ramsgate, which step was taken about this period, he acquired a passing passion for sea-fishing, bought a rod and line, and angled uneventfully for days together off the pier-head or out of an open boat. From Ramsgate we proceeded to Deal, then lurked a week or two at Dover, and continued our tour of the south-coast watering-places, secreting our sorrows in turn at Folkestone, Hastings, St. Leonard’s-on-Sea, Eastbourne, Brighton, and Bognor. I thought we might winter in the Isle of Wight, but grandfather was for Cornwall and conger-fishing, so we pushed onwards to Fowey, and arrived there shortly after Christmas, when my grandparent was about fifteen.
His wardrobe became a greater difficulty daily. The poor old sufferer shrank in a heartbreaking way. I had always to be taking in and turning up and reducing his different articles of apparel. He was now mercifully allowed to lose intelligence very rapidly. He lived more and more in the passing hour, and began to develop simple boyish ambitions and hopes and complaints. As he gradually fell completely under my control, a certain peace of mind, to which I had long been a stranger, returned. The position was harrowing enough, heaven knows, but whereas throughout grandfather’s career under the New Scheme, he had played his own game, so to speak, and never paid much attention to the faithful woman always at his elbow, now the position was rapidly changing. He had to look to me and rely upon me more and more. Indeed, he did so as a matter of course. I held the purse, and took good care to keep it. The dear old man never wanted for anything, but I had to think of my own future. When he was gone, there would only be a few hundred pounds between me and starvation. However, I denied him nothing in reason, allowed him gradually decreasing pocket-money, and, as he grew younger, exercised entire authority. To this he submitted humbly enough now. He was a bad boy, as boys go—a sly, calculating, cruel boy; but a circumstance happened soon after we left Fowey which practically made grandfather helpless, and placed him under my complete control. It was this. With dwindling intellect his memory also waned, and ultimately broke down altogether. He forgot the past, he forgot his own extraordinary situation and destination, he quite forgot our relationship, and soon simply believed that things were as they seemed. One day he electrified me by talking with bright, boyish confidence of “growing up” and marrying a bonny bride, and becoming a smuggler. “Growing up”! Poor little darling, he was growing down at the rate of a year every six weeks. But now the old man’s mental troubles were practically at an end, and I thanked heaven for it. Literally he was twice a child. He gave up cigarettes and took to chocolate, and stupid little toys. At rare intervals, inspired by the friends he picked up in our wanderings, he showed flashes of ambition, and pestered me to know when I was going to send him to school like other boys. He grumbled and said he believed he was backward. I denied it and temporised. I told him he was more than clever. Of course, to send him to school would have been frank and senseless waste of money. Besides, the New Scheme must have been discovered in a fortnight. He travelled half price now, for he was not more than ten years old when I took him to Dawlish. Before we had been at that small but delightful sea-side resort six weeks, grandfather openly bought a little iron spade and bucket, thereby proving that childhood had set in. I had him well in hand in Devonshire, and I may state that my own peace of mind was comparatively such that I had almost cured myself of a weakness I have not hidden here—a weakness brought on by the terrors of the past. And dear grandfather’s own favourite beverage, subject to my sanction, was sherbet now. Indeed, taking one thing with another, that last summer in the West of England with my grandparent, proved the happiest time I spent from the beginning of the New Scheme to its close. He was quite happy too. He made sand castles, and tormented the shrimps which he caught from time to time, and otherwise conducted himself like a simple, healthy little lad of eight years old.