Kitabı oku: «Dorothy's Double. Volume 3 of 3», sayfa 7

'That is well spoken, sir, and if I can help you I will. If Warbles dies I shall do my best to be a father to the girl until the time comes when she will choose a husband for herself. I have been a pretty bad man in my time, and in most things she could hardly have a worse guardian, but at any rate I will watch over and keep her from harm, and would shoot down any man who insulted her as I would a dog. That is all I have got to say now. I hope you don't bear any ill will for that job at New Orleans, but I will tell you fairly, I would have done it again here had I thought you were coming to try to win her heart just for your purposes, or you had been scheming to get her arrested and sent to England to be punished.'

'I have got over the affair at New Orleans,' Ned said, 'and feel no malice about it now; and had I done so, the feeling would have been wiped out by the sentiments you express towards Linda. I don't know her real name.'

'Nor do I,' Murdoch said, 'beyond the fact that at first Warbles often called her Sally, I don't know who she is or where he got her from. I know he had her educated, because one day when she was angry she said that she felt no gratitude to him for that, for he had only had her taught for his own purposes. At present he is too bad to talk, but if he gets a bit better I shall try and get the whole story out of him, and if I do you shall have it. As to Linda, she feels pretty bad at present. She has taken a liking to you, you see, and she feels sore about it, but I expect in time she will come round. It depends a great deal on whether Warbles gets well again. She doesn't like him, and she fights with him often enough, but when it is something he's downright set on she always gives way at last. I think she has got an idea that she is bound to do it. I guess it was a sort of agreement when he had her educated that she would work with him and do whatever he bid her. If it had not been for that I believe she would have thrown it up at New Orleans, and for aught I know long before that. If he gets well again she will do as he tells her in this affair of yours. If he dies, you may take it from me that she will own up as you want her to do. You don't mean to hurt her, and I don't think there is any one in England she could go back to, so there can't be any reason why she should not make things straight. Well, I will let you know if there is any change. I shall see you over there, no doubt. She won't be going into the bar, so you can drop in when you like. You are sure to find me there. There is no one else to see about things.'

For the next few days it was understood in the camp that the boss of the Eldorado was likely to get round. It was reported that he was conscious, and was able to talk freely. Indeed, the doctor said it would be much better that he should not talk as much as he did. The doctor had been one of the ten men who had helped to clear out the camp. When not professionally employed he worked at a claim some distance from that of Ned Hampton's party, and as he and his partners messed together instead of taking their meals at either of the saloons Ned seldom saw him. A week after his interview with Murdoch he happened to meet him.

'How is your patient really going on, Ryan?'

The latter shook his head. 'I think he is going downhill fast. He will talk. We have tried opiates as strong as we dare give him, but they don't seem to have any effect, which is often the case with steady drinkers. He has not been a drunkard, I believe, but he has been in the habit of taking a lot of liquor regularly. He scarcely sleeps at all. That girl nurses him with wonderful patience, but she is breaking down under the strain. She wasn't in his tent this morning, and it is the first time that she has been away. When I called the other man, Murdoch, seemed a good deal put out. I don't know what about, and when I told him outside the tent that the other was worrying himself and was a good deal weaker than he was two days ago, he muttered, "The infernal skunk, it is a pity he didn't go down twenty years ago." So I suppose there has been some row between them.'

'He was a bad lot, Ryan; I know something of his past history, and believe that he was a thorough scoundrel.'

'Is that so? I never saw much of him. I don't throw away my money at the bars; my object is to make as much money as will buy me a snug practice in the old country.'

'Quite right, Ryan; it's a pity that more do not have some such object in view, and so lay by their earnings instead of throwing them away in those saloons or in the gambling hells of Sacramento.'

CHAPTER XXIII

The next day it was known in camp that the wounded man was sinking. There was a general feeling of pity for the girl who was believed to be his daughter, but none for the man himself, owing to his having been detected cheating – one of the deepest of crimes in a community where all men gambled more or less.

The next morning it was known that he was dead. He was buried a few hours later. Had he died in good odour, the whole camp would have followed him to his grave; but not one would attend the funeral of a detected cheat, and Murdoch had to hire six men to carry the roughly-made coffin to a cleared spot among the pines that had been set apart as the graveyard of the camp. He himself followed, the only mourner, and those who saw the little procession pass through the camp remarked on Murdoch's stern and frowning face. When the body was consigned to the earth – without prayer or ceremony – Murdoch went down to where Ned was at work.

'Come round this evening,' he said; 'there is a lot to tell you.'

When he went into the saloon in the evening, Murdoch beckoned him into the inner room. Having closed the door, he placed a bottle, a jug of water, and two tumblers upon the table.

'Now,' he said, 'sit down. I have a long story and a bad one to tell you. As I said the other night, I am not a good man, Captain Hampton. I have been mixed up in all sorts of shady transactions on the turf at home, and if I had not made a bolt for it should have got seven years for nobbling a horse. I was among a pretty bad lot at New Orleans, and many a sailor was hocussed and robbed at my place, and I pretty near caused your murder; and yet, I tell you, if I had known what a black-hearted villain that man Warbles – or, as he says his name really is, Truscott – was, I would have shot him rather than have taken his hand. First, will you tell me how much you know of him?'

Ned Hampton told what he knew of the man; of his disappointment at his not obtaining his father's position of steward at Mr. Hawtrey's, of the threats he had made, and how, as it seemed, he carried out those threats by first giving rise to the rumours that Miss Hawtrey was at the mercy of some one who held damaging letters of hers, and then by causing Linda to personate her in the commission of audacious thefts.

'You don't know half of it,' Murdoch said; 'he told it all to her and me, boasting of the vengeance he had taken. You were a boy of eight when Mr. Hawtrey's wife died – do you remember anything about it?'

'Very little,' Ned replied, after sitting for a minute or two – trying to recall the past. 'I remember there was a great talk about it. She died a week or two after Miss Hawtrey was born. I remember there was a shock, or a loss, or something of that sort, but I do not remember more than that. Oh, yes, I do; I remember there was another baby, and that somehow she and her nurse were drowned.'

'Yes, that was it. Truscott was at the bottom of it; he told us he had been watching for his chance. It seems that when the twins came the mother could not nurse them. Two women were obtained as foster mothers; Truscott got hold of one of them. I believe from what he said she had belonged to the place, but had been away in London and had only returned a month or two, and had had a baby which had died a day or two before Mrs. Hawtrey's were born, and although she had no character they were glad enough to secure her services in the emergency. Truscott, as I said, got hold of her and bribed her heavily to consent to carry out his orders. One evening she pretended to get drunk. She was of course discharged, but being apparently too drunk to be turned out on a wet and wild night, as it happened to be, she was put in a room upstairs and was to be sent away first thing in the morning.

'The two babies slept in cradles in their mother's room. In the morning the one she had nursed was gone and so was the woman. The latter's bonnet was found at the end of the garden which ran down to the Thames. The supposition naturally was that she had awoke half-sobered in the morning, with sense enough to remember how she had disgraced herself, and had determined to drown herself and the child. The river was dragged; the woman's shawl was found caught in a bush dipping into the water, and a torn garment which was recognised as that in which the baby had been put to bed was fished out of the river miles down. The woman's body was never found, but the river was in flood and it might have been swept out to sea in a few hours. A little baby's body was cast ashore below Kew. It could not be identified, but no doubts were entertained that it was the one they were in search of, and it was buried with Mrs. Hawtrey, for whom the excitement and shock had been too much.'

Captain Hampton had listened with growing excitement to the story.

'Then the child was not drowned, and Linda is Dorothy's twin sister! I wonder that a suspicion of the truth never occurred to their father. Had I known all these circumstances you are telling me I am sure I should have suspected it. I was convinced by this scoundrel's manner, when he had an altercation with Mr. Hawtrey at Epsom and threatened him, that he had already done him some serious injury, though Mr. Hawtrey, when I spoke to him, declared he was not conscious that he had suffered in any way at his hands, unless two or three rick-burnings had been his work.

'Certainly, no thought that he could have had any hand in the catastrophe that caused the death of his wife had ever occurred to him. Had I known that the body of the infant had never been really identified, or that of its nurse found, I should have suspected the truth as soon as I found that Truscott and Dorothy's double were acting together. What an infamous scoundrel, and what a life for the girl. But he never could have foreseen that the two sisters would grow up so alike.

'No. He told the poor girl what his intentions had been. The woman who stole her died when the child was four years old, and he then placed her with a woman whom he had known as a barmaid. She was not only given to drink, but was mixed up with thieves and coiners. His expectation was that the girl so placed would necessarily grow up a young thief, and go to the bad in every way; and the vengeance to which he had looked forward was that Mr. Hawtrey should at last be informed that this degraded creature was his daughter. He had the declaration of the woman who stole her signed by herself in presence of three witnesses. Of course it made no allusion to his agency in the affair, but described it as simply an act of revenge on her part. He intended to testify only to the fact that he had known this woman, and at her death had taken the child she had left behind her and placed it with another woman as an act of pure charity. Of course, the part he had played in the matter would have been suspected – indeed, he would have lost half his pleasure had it not been so – but there would have been no proof against him.'

'It is a horrible business,' Ned Hampton said; 'a fiendish business, and he had no real ground for any hostility against Mr. Hawtrey. He would have had the appointment his father had held had it not been for his own misconduct. His own father, on his deathbed, implored Mr. Hawtrey not to appoint his son, as he would certainly bring disgrace upon his name.'

'Truscott represented that he had been scandalously treated and his life ruined by Hawtrey. I have no doubt the matter really was as you say, but he had certainly persuaded himself that he was a terribly ill-used man, and spoke with exultation over the revenge he had taken. It was about four years ago that on his going to see the girl in the court in which he had placed her – '

'It was Piper's Court, at Chelsea.'

'Why, how on earth did you know that?'

'I have a lad with me who was brought up in that very court, and who recognised her as soon as he saw her here; in fact he had remarked on the likeness directly he saw a photograph of her sister.'

'Well, when Truscott noticed the likeness he saw that properly worked there was money to be made out of it, so he took her from the woman she had been with and put her with one who had been a governess, but who had come to grief somehow and was nearly starving. This woman was to educate her, but was to teach her nothing that could interfere with his plans for her. I mean nothing of religion or what was right or wrong, or anything of that sort. When he sent her to the woman, the girl had promised she would do whatever he wanted her to do if he would have her educated. So, when the time came, she was perfectly ready to carry out his scheme. She watched Miss Hawtrey come out from her house several times, noted the dress she wore, and had one made precisely similar in every respect, and, as you know, carried out her part perfectly.'

'Her hair is, as you see, rather darker than her sister's, but she faked it up to the right shade, and the make-up was so good that not only the shopmen but this Mr. Singleton, whom Truscott knew was her sister's godfather and a most intimate friend, was also taken in. I tell you, sir, if you had heard the devilish satisfaction with which that scoundrel went over this story again and again, you would have felt, as I did, a longing to throw yourself upon him and strangle him. I must tell you that Sally had no idea whatever that the girl she represented would be seriously suspected of having carried out these thefts. She knew nothing of Truscott's enmity to Hawtrey. He had told her only that he knew a young lady to whom she bore such a remarkable likeness that it would be easy to personate her. Sally herself had suggested that the girl might be suspected, but he had laughed at the idea and said she could have no difficulty whatever in showing where she was at the time that Sally called at the jeweller's and Singleton's. Sally herself is fond, as is natural enough in a girl as good-looking as she is, of handsome clothes, and that visit to the shop where she laid in a stock of fine clothes was, she admits, her own suggestion. She has kept her room since Truscott's death. She did not say a word as he was telling her his story, but she went as white as death, and got up with a sort of sob when he finished and went out of the tent without saying a word, and has not come out of her room since.

'I saw her after his death this morning, and it cut me to the heart. She was sitting on her bed, and I think she had been sitting there ever since she went into her room, twenty-four hours before. She talked it over with me in a strange hopeless sort of voice, as if the girl who had been brought up in that court in Chelsea had been somebody else. I brought her in some tea with some brandy in it, and made her drink it; and she took it just like a little child might. This afternoon I saw the doctor and told him what sort of a state she was in, and he gave me a sleeping mixture which I got her to take, and I peeped in just now and saw that she was lying asleep on her bed, and I hope she will be better to-morrow. It has been an awful shock for her.'

'Terrible,' Ned Hampton agreed. 'I could hardly imagine a more dreadful story for a woman to hear. She is indeed deeply to be pitied. What are you thinking of doing?'

'I am not thinking anything about it yet. I suppose she will go back to England. As for me, I expect I shall carry on this place. We have been doing first-rate since we came here three months ago. Of course it won't be the same when she has gone. We three were equal partners in it, but I am sure we shall have no trouble in arranging about that. I don't know what I shall do without her; you will hardly believe me, but the eight or nine months we have been together I have got to love that girl just as if she had been my daughter. You see I always doubted that Truscott meant fair by her. Of course, he would have used her as long as she was useful to him, but he would have thrown her off in a minute if it had suited him. She knew I meant fair by her, and when we happened to be alone together she talked to me quite different to what she did to him. It seemed to me that with him she always had in her mind that it was a bargain which she was carrying out. She regarded him as her master in a sort of way, but I do really think she looked on me as a friend. She would not have stayed with us long. At New Orleans she got a partnership deed drawn out. She would not move without it, and one of the conditions she insisted on was that she could leave us when she liked, and if Truscott had pressed her to do anything, such as marry a man she did not fancy, or anything of that sort, she would have chucked it up at once. But she has got lots of spirit and pluck, and though, of course, she is awfully cut up at present, she will get over it before long, and she particularly begged you would not write to England about all this till she has seen you.'

'That I certainly will not do. I don't know that I shall write at all. My idea at present is that it will be better for me to take her home, and then to tell them the story gradually before introducing her to them. I intended going down to San Francisco and taking passage direct to India, but I must give up that idea now. It is clear that she cannot go by herself, and that I must hand her over to her father.'

It was not until four days later that Ned heard from Murdoch that Linda, as they still called her, would see him next morning. On going in he was struck with the change that a week had made. She was paler and thinner, there were dark circles round her eyes and a certain air of timidity had taken the place of the somewhat hard expression of self-reliance that had before characterised her.

'You have heard all the story, Captain Hampton,' she said, 'and I don't know that there would be any use going over it again. I have written out a confession of the part I played under the direction of that man, and I will sign it in the presence of a magistrate and anyone else you like. I thank you for the kindness and consideration that you have shown for me, and hope – I do hope with all my heart – that when you go back you will get the reward for the sacrifices you have made for Miss Hawtrey. I don't think that there is anything else to say.'

'I think there is a good deal to say,' he replied quietly. 'We have to arrange when it will suit you to leave this. I should propose that we go down to San Francisco and take the steamer to Panama and go straight home from there.'

'I have no home,' she said, 'except this. I have no idea of returning to England. I have thought it all over,' she went on, seeing that he was about to speak, 'and am sure that it is much the best for everyone. You know what I have been – a child brought up in the slums, a little thief, a passer of base coins; since then an adventuress and a thief on a larger scale; last a barmaid. Do you think I would go back and take up a position as a gentleman's daughter and mix with decent people? I should be miserable. I should know myself to be an impostor. I should feel that if those I met knew what I really am they would shrink from me with horror. I cannot imagine a more wretched existence. My father might tolerate me, but he could not love me. I should cast a shadow on his life; it would never do. This morning I had a long talk with Murdoch. He has behaved as a true friend to me ever since we met; he has always been good to me, and stood between me and the other. He is ready now to make a sacrifice for me. He will dispose of this business – he has already received more than one good offer for it – and will buy a farm down in the fruit district. I did not ask him to do this; I was quite willing to have gone down to Sacramento or San Francisco, and to have taken a situation in a shop or an hotel, but he proposed the other plan and I have gratefully accepted his offer. There is another thing; I have some money. The other got fifteen hundred pounds for the jewels I stole, and there was a thousand pounds that I got from Mr. Singleton. Mr. Singleton's money we put into the business and Murdoch another five hundred, the rest of that went on our journey and in getting and fitting up the saloon. In the three months we have been here we have earned just that money from the takings in the saloon and the money he won in gambling. Of this our share is a thousand, so that I have now the two thousand five hundred which we got from my thefts. This I will hand over to you to pay the people I robbed. We shall still have enough to carry out our plans; Murdoch has his share of the three months' profits, and we have been offered two thousand pounds for the saloon and business, so you need feel no uneasiness about that.'

'But your father will never permit it, Miss Hawtrey. I am sure that if you will not go home with me he will himself come out to fetch you.'

'It would be useless if he did so,' she said quietly; 'my mind is quite made up on that point; but I have a prayer to make to you. I implore you never to tell him the truth; let him to the end of his life believe that his little baby died as he believed, and lies by its mother. That old grief is past and over long ago. It was but a babe a few days old, and another was left him who has been all his heart could wish. What comfort or happiness could he derive by knowing this story – by learning that his child grew up a gutter girl, a little thief, an adventuress, a swindler? What could I ever do to repay him for this grief and disgrace? In my confession I have said no word of this, nor is it necessary for your explanations; you can tell how you met me here, how we got to be friends, how that man was killed, and how, deeply regretting the past, I wrote the confession of my crime, and you can add that I am resolved that henceforth my life shall be a different one, and that I am looking forward to a quiet and happy life under the protection of a true friend. Surely this will be best for us all – best for my father, best for Dorothy, best for me. You may tell her all some day, if you ever win her, as I am sure you will if she is free on your return. Little did I think when I saw and studied her walk and manner that she was my sister. Perhaps some day in the far distant she will come to think kindly of the girl who was what circumstances made her, and who had so little chance of growing up like herself, and she may even come to write a line to me to tell me so.'

'Here is her portrait,' Ned said, taking it from his pocket. 'As to what you ask me, I must think it over before I can promise you.'

'It is very like me,' she said, examining the portrait, 'and yet it's quite unlike. I wonder anyone could have taken me for her. The expression is so different. I felt that when I saw her, and I put on a veil, for I knew that I could not look bright, and frank, and happy as she did. Think it over, Captain Hampton. I am sure you will see that it is best. What possible good could it be for my father to know all this? If I had been stolen from him when I had been older, and he had come to love me, it would be different. As it is, the truth could only cause him unhappiness.'

Ned Hampton went back to his claim. It had turned out well, and it was growing richer every foot they went down, and had all along been averaging two and a half to three ounces for each of the partners. When therefore Ned said that he had received news that made him anxious to leave, his mates were perfectly willing to buy his share. They had great expectations of the results that it would yield when they neared the bed rock, and they at once offered him a hundred ounces for his share, an offer which he accepted. He had already laid by an equal sum, and after paying his passage and that of Jacob to England or India, would have recouped himself for all the expenses of his expedition, and he would have some three or four hundred pounds in hand after the sale of the horses and waggon.

At dinner time he received a cheque on the bank of Sacramento, in which his partners had deposited their earnings. Jacob was away and he took a long walk down the valley thinking over the girl's proposal. He acknowledged to himself there was much truth in what she said. It would be a heavy blow to Mr. Hawtrey to find that his daughter was alive and had been so brought up. He would blame himself for having accepted the fact of her death, when by setting on foot inquiries he might possibly have discovered the fraud and have rescued her from the fate that had befallen her. The discovery would certainly not add to his happiness; on the contrary, he would deem himself bound to endeavour to induce her to return to England, and Hampton was sure he would fail in doing so. He acknowledged to himself that his sole objection to the plan was that he himself would to some extent be acting a deceitful part in keeping Mr. Hawtrey in the dark. Certainly he would not be required to tell an absolute untruth, for as Mr. Hawtrey would not entertain the slightest suspicion of the real facts, he would ask no questions that would be difficult to answer. The next day he told Linda that he would act as she wished.

'I felt sure you would do so,' she said; 'it is so much the best way, and you cannot tell what a load it is off my mind. Murdoch and I have been talking over the future. He understands that I want to be quite different to what I have been, and he says I may get a clergyman to teach me the things I never learnt, and we will go to church together; I have never been inside a church. I am sure we shall be very happy. He seems as pleased about it as I am. You must always remember, Captain Hampton, that though I have been very bad, I did not know it was wrong, except that I might be put in prison for it. I think I have always tried to do what seemed to be right in a sort of way, only I did not know what really was right.'

'I feel sure you have, Linda; I do not blame you for the past, nor do I think that anyone who knew all the circumstances would do so.'

'Have you heard from England lately?'

'No, I have not heard since I left. Letters have no doubt been sent to places in the East, where I said I might call for them. When I arrived here I wrote to a friend, and according to my calculations I may get his answer any day. I have been hoping for a letter for some little time. Jacob has called at the post office at Sacramento the last three times he has been down there. I am very anxious to hear, and yet you will understand I am half afraid of the news the letter will bring me.'

'I don't think you can have bad news in that way, Ned,' she said. 'I may call you Ned again now, mayn't I? If Dorothy's face does not belie her she can't be likely to get engaged to another man so soon after breaking off her engagement with that lord. Does she know you care for her?'

'No,' he said. 'I don't suppose she ever will. As I told you, we did not part very good friends. She did not forgive me for having doubted her. I think she was perfectly right. I ought never to have doubted her, however much appearances might have been against her.'

'I think it was perfectly natural,' she said indignantly; 'if I could deceive Mr. Singleton, and be talking to him for a quarter of an hour without his suspecting me, it was quite natural that you, who only had a glimpse of me, should have been mistaken.'

'That is true enough,' he said gravely. 'It was natural that I should be mistaken as to her identity, but I ought to have known that, even though it was her, she could not have been, as I supposed, trying to prevent the exposure of some act of folly, when she had over and over again declared she knew nothing whatever of the matter. I was in fact crediting her with being a determined liar, as well as having been mixed up in some foolish business, and it is only right I should be punished for it.'

'If I loved a man,' Linda said stoutly, 'I should forgive him easily enough, even if he had thought I told a lie.'

'Possibly, Linda; but then, you see, though Dorothy and I were great friends, I have no reason in the world to suppose that she did love me, and indeed, at the time she was engaged to be married to some one else.'

Linda shook her head, quite uninfluenced by this argument. She herself had been very near loving Ned Hampton, and she felt convinced that this sister, whom she knew so little about, must be sure to do so likewise, especially when she came to know how much he had done for her.

Captain Hampton smiled.

'You forget, Linda, that your sister is a belle in society; that she had several offers before she accepted Lord Halliburn, and is likely to have had some since. I am a very unimportant personage in her world. In fact, my chances would have been less than nothing if it had not been for my having been so much with her while she was a child, and being a sort of chum of hers, though I was so much older.' There was a movement as of weights being carried into the place, and he broke off. 'I fancy that is Jacob back with the cart. Perhaps he has got a letter for me. Any letters, Jacob?'

'Three of them.'

One was in the handwriting of Danvers, another was in a male handwriting unknown, the other in a female hand which he recognised at once, having received several short notes of invitation and appointment from the writer. With an exclamation of surprise he hurried off to his tent and there opened it. It contained but a few words —