Thereupon I declined further conversation, and gave her notice that I should leave that day week. She replied that it would be impossible for me to leave too soon for her, though her heart bled for the ill-used child, meaning my grandparent. Stung to anger, I was almost tempted to hint at the New Scheme, but bitter experience and my better judgment told me such an action, taking into consideration the mental calibre of the woman, must be worse than futile. So I bid her go to her room; she departed with the word "murderess" on her lips, and the incident terminated.
Of course, grandfather was pretty right the next day, but disorders now gained upon him rapidly, and I know I was to blame for adding a good deal of unnecessary suffering to those last fleeting years of his life. His stomach-aches, his rashes, his mumps, might all have been avoided had I understood better the care of the extremely youthful. Everywhere I went I heard expressions of open surprise that I, a woman of seventy-five apparently, and a grandmother, should know so precious little about babies. And, of course, the old man was shrivelling with such cruel rapidity now that my knowledge could not keep pace with him. When I understood the nature and requirements of a child of five he was already four; by the time I grasped his needs at this age he had sunk to three.
We were at Bideford when I put him into short frocks and kept flannel next his skin and looked round for a second-hand perambulator. He was always ailing at this stage, and frightfully fretful, owing to a complication of disorders. He had whooping-cough and a slight touch of congestion of the lungs, and measles and a sore throat. His teeth worried him terribly, too. God alone knows what was happening to them. The process put the poor old man to evident torment, and to hear him say again and again: "Oh, ganny, my toofs is hurtin' me so," would have made angels weep. For all I know it did. The celestial being who could gaze unmoved at Daniel Dolphin's sufferings during those last, awful, loathsome years of his earthly life would have been hard-hearted indeed. And heaven must have pitied me a trifle too--especially at Bideford, after I had put him into short frocks.
When he was one hundred and nine and three-quarters--when but three months remained before the climax--he lost the art of walking and talking about the same time. He seemed easy to manage without these accomplishments. I certainly missed his childish prattle as it gradually dwindled and ceased, but when command of locomotion slipped from him my work was much lightened. As a young child he had been very trying; now, on the dawn of babyhood, he enjoyed better health and got prettier to look at, at least, so it struck me. Indeed, he gradually grew to be the dearest, best-tempered little mite any woman ever loved and cuddled. I thought how proud his dear mother must have been of him more than a century ago. I also marvelled that so bonny a babe should have blossomed into such a funny child, and such an unsatisfactory man. Of course, I was led by appearances myself now. I could not revere the aged man I danced on my knee and fondled and hugged. I could not realise that this blue-eyed, thumb-sucking, crowing, kicking atom was my grandfather. My imagination was not equal to the task of grasping these facts. I only know that we lurked at Basingstoke three weeks, and then at Brixton; and that I lived night and day for grandfather, as his sun sank to the setting. I took him for long rides in his perambulator, and looked to his every want and joyed in his innocent, little, waning life. His curls went at Clapham Junction; the short, lanky locks of a year-old infant soon covered his bulbous skull; his proportions were those of tenderest youth. An awful expanse of brow and a triangular mouth had appeared; his nose had dwindled to a mere upturned lump, his eyes assumed the fatuous blear and blink of babyhood; he gasped and he gurgled, and jerked and panted, and stretched out fat fingers to me. He was always good-tempered to the last, though his intervals of weeping grew longer and longer. One thing he never could stand: my singing. When his first teeth were undergoing some unhallowed metamorphosis he had a succession of very bad nights, and at such times, until I realised the facts, I endeavoured to soothe him with musical lullabies. But I soon found my voice exercised a peculiarly irritating effect on grandfather. He had not enjoyed it even in the past, so I ceased from vocal efforts and never sang again.
Anon we went to Kilburn, when grandfather had but one year left to live by the New Scheme and rather more than five weeks by the old. Then he began to play with his toes, and that was the beginning of the end.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE PASSING OF GRANDPAPA.
I shall not set down here the hard words hurled at me by different lodging-house keepers, who took it upon themselves to criticise my management of grandfather. Because, for instance, I persisted in feeding him latterly on condensed milk, instead of wasting money upon a wet nurse, I was unmercifully abused. But I went my way, and soon had him in long frocks, and took him from Kilburn to Ravenscourt Park. Here I was accused of being a baby-thief, because I explained as usual that the infant's parents were in India.
"Its ma must be a pretty quick traveller then," said the sceptical landlady. "That hinfant ain't a day more than three weeks old, or I'm no judge."
She was nearly right. It wanted now but one month to make grandfather a hundred and ten or nothing at all. It was, in fact, twenty-nine days before he was born, or after, according as you look at it. I got very muddled over his age about this time myself. I only remembered the date of his birthday, and realised that on the night before that anniversary the New Scheme would come to an end. The old man was now a mere hairless, blotchy, howling fragment, needing ceaseless attention at all hours of night and day. A bitter thought often came to me while I was getting his bottle--that my tiny grandfather should be going to such an unsatisfactory place so soon. For I never could believe, despite what the lawyers said, that his fiendish opponent had made any radical blunder in the agreement.