Dorothy's Double. Volume 1 of 3

'It ain't that, Sally, though I dare say you think it is, but I shall feel lonesome, awful lonesome, without you to sit of an evening to talk to. You have been like a child to me, though I ain't been much of a mother to you, and you mayn't believe it, Sally, but it is gospel truth, as I have been fond of you.'

'Have you now?' the girl said, leaning forward eagerly in her chair. 'I allus thought you hated me. Why didn't you say so? I wouldn't have 'greed to go with that man if I had thought as you wanted me. I don't care for the dresses and that sort of thing, though I should like to get taught something, but I would give that up, and if you like I will go by myself and meet him where he said, and give him back that ten pound, and say I have changed my mind and I am going to stop with you.'

'No, it is better that you should go, Sally; this ain't no place for a girl, and I ain't no woman to look after one. I have been a-thinking some months it was time you went; it didn't matter so much as long as you was a kid, but you are growing up now, and it ain't to be expected as you would keep straight in such a place as this; besides, any day you might get nabbed, and three months in quod would finish you altogether. So you see, Sally, I am glad and I am sorry. Warbles ain't the man I would put you in charge of if I had my way. He has told you hisself what he means to do with you, and I would a lot rather you had been going out into service; only of course no one would take you as you are, it ain't likely. Still if you keep your eyes open, and you are a sharp girl, you may make money by it; but mind me, Sally, money is no good by itself, nor fine clothes, nor nothing.

'It was fine clothes and drink as brought me to what I am. I was a nice tidy-looking girl when Warbles first knew me, and if it hadn't been for clothes and drink I might have been a respectable woman, and perhaps missus of a snug public now. Well, perhaps your chances will be as good as mine was. I have two bits of advice to give yer. When you have finished that pint of beer you make up your mind never to touch another drop of it. The second is, don't you listen to what young swells say to yer. You look out for an honest man who wants to make you his wife, and you marry him and make him a good wife, Sally.'

The girl nodded. 'That is what I mean to do, and when I get a comfortable home you shall come and live with us.'

'It wouldn't do, Sally; by that time I reckon I shall be lying in a graveyard, but if I wasn't it would not do nohow. No man will put up with a drunken woman in his house, and a drunken woman I shall be to the end of my life – but there, them chops are ready, Sally, and it would be a sin to let them spoil now you have got them.'

When the meal was over, and Sally had finished her glass of beer, she turned it over.

'That is the last of them,' she said; 'I don't care for it one way or the other. Now tell me about that cove, who is he?'

'He is what he says – a betting man, and was when I first knew him; I don't know what his real name is, but I don't expect it's Warbles. He was a swell among them when I first knew him, and spent his money free, and used to look like a gentleman. I was in a house at Newmarket at the time, and whenever the races was on I often used to see him. Well, I left there, and did not come across him for two years; when I did, I had just come out of gaol; I had had two months for taking money from the till. I met him in the street, and he says to me, "Hello, Kitty! I was sorry to hear that you had been in trouble; what are you doing?"'

'What should I be doing?' says I; 'there ain't much chance of my getting another situation after what has happened. I ain't a-doing nothing yet, for I met a friend on the day I came out who gave me a couple of quid, but it is pretty nigh gone.' 'Well, look here,' says he, 'I have got a kid upon my hands: it don't matter whose kid it is, it ain't mine; but I have got to keep it. It has been with a woman for the last three years, and she has died. I don't care how it is brought up so as it is brought up; it is nothing to me how she turns out so that she lives. I tell you what I will do. I will give you ten pounds to furnish a room and get into it, and I will pay you five shillings a week as long as it lives; and if you ever get hard up and want a couple of pounds you can have 'em, so as you don't come too often.'

'Well, I jumped at the offer, and took you, and I will say Warbles has been as good as his word. It wasn't long before I was turned out of my lodging for being too drunk and noisy for the house, and it wasn't more than a couple of years before I got pretty nigh as low as this. I had got to know a good many queer ones when I was in the public line, and I chanced to drop across one of them, and when I met him one day he told me he could put me into an easy way of earning money if I liked, but it was risky. I said I did not care for that, and since then I have always been on that lay. For a bit I did very well; I used to dress up as a tidy servant, and go shopping, and many a week I would get rid of three or four pounds' worth of the stuff; but in course, as I grew older and lost my figure and the drink told on me, it got more difficult. People looked at the money more sharply, and I got three months for it twice. I was allus careful, and never took more than one piece out with me at a time, so that I got off several times till they began to know me. You remember the last time I was in – I told you about it, and since then you have been doing it.'

'But what will you do when I am gone?'

'Well, you know, Sally, I gets a bit from men who comes round of an evening and gives me things to hide away under that board. They knows as they can trust me, and I have had five thousand pounds worth of diamonds and things hidden away there for weeks. No one would ever think of searching there for it. I ain't known to be mixed up with thieves, and this court ain't the sort of place that coppers would ever dream of searching for jewels. Sometimes nothing comes for weeks, sometimes there is a big haul; but they pay me something a week regular, and I gets a present after a good thing has been brought off, so you needn't worrit about me. I shan't be as well off as I have been, but there will be plenty to keep me going, and if I have to drink a bit less it won't do me any harm.'

'I wonder you ain't afraid to drink,' Sally said, 'lest you should let out something.'

'I am lucky that way, Sally. Drink acts some ways with some people, and some ways with others. It makes some people blab out just the things they don't want known; it makes some people quarrelsome; it shuts up some people's mouths altogether. That is the way with me. I take what I take quiet, and though the coppers round here see me drunk pretty often they can't never say as I am drunk and disorderly, so they just lets me find my way home as I can.'

'And this man has never said no more about me than he did that first time?' Sally asked. 'Why should he go on paying for me all this time?'

'He ain't never said a word. I've wondered over it scores of times. These betting chaps are free with their money when they win, but that ain't like going on paying year after year. I thought sometimes you might be the daughter of some old pal of his, and that he had promised him to take care of you. I thought that afterwards he had been sorry he had done so, but would not go back from his word and so went on paying, though he did not care a morsel whether you turned out well or bad. Now I am going out, Sally.'

'You don't want to go out no more to-day,' Sally said decidedly. 'You just stop in quietly these last three days with me.'

'I would like to,' the woman said, 'but I don't think it is in me. You do not know what it is, Sally. When drink is once your master there ain't no shaking it off. There is something in you as says you must go, and you can't help it; nothing but tying you down would do it.'

'Well, look here, give me ninepence. I will go out and get you another quart of beer and a quartern of gin to finish up with. I have never been out for spirits for you before, though you have beat me many a time 'cause I wouldn't, but for these three days I will go. That won't be enough to make you bad, and we can sit here and talk together, and when we have finished it we can turn in comfortable.'

The woman took the money from a corner of a stocking, and gave it to Sally, and that night went to bed sober for the first time for months. The next morning shopping began, and Sally, although not easily moved, was awe-struck at the number and variety of the garments purchased for her. The dresses were to be made up by the next evening, when she was to fetch them from the shop herself, as Mrs. Phillips shrunk from giving her address at Piper Court.

During the interval Sally suffered much from a regular course of washing and combing her hair. When on the third morning she was arrayed in her new clothes, with hair neatly done up, she felt so utterly unlike herself that a sort of shyness seized her. She could only judge as to her general appearance, but not as to that of her face and head, for the lodging was unprovided with even a scrap of looking-glass. She had no doubt that the change was satisfactory, as Mrs. Phillips exclaimed, 'Fine feathers make fine birds, Sally, but I should not have believed that they could have made such a difference; you look quite a nice-looking gal, and I should not be surprised if you turn out downright pretty, though I have always thought you as plain a gal as ever I seed!'

CHAPTER II

Epsom racecourse on the Oaks Day. The great event of the day has not yet been run, but the course has been cleared and two or three of the fillies have just come out from the paddock and are making their way at a walk along the broad green track, while their jockeys are chatting together. Luncheons have been hastily finished, and the occupants of the carriages and drags are standing up and beginning for the first time to manifest an interest in the proceedings they have nominally come down to witness. The general mass of spectators cluster thickly by the ropes, while a few take advantage of the clearance of the ground beyond to stroll leisurely along the line of carriages. The shouts of the men with cocoanuts, pincushions, and dolls on sticks, and of those with Aunt Sallys, rifle galleries, and other attractions, are hushed now; their time will not come again until the race is over.

Two men, one perhaps thirty, the other some three or four years younger, are among those who pay more attention to the carriages and their occupants than to the approaching race. The younger has a face deeply bronzed by a sun far hotter than that of England.

'How fast they change, Danvers. Six years ago I knew almost every face in the carriages, now I scarcely know one. Who is that very pretty girl standing up on the seat of that barouche?'

'Don't you know? Look at the man she is talking to on the box. That is her father.'

'By Jove! it is Mr. Hawtrey. You don't mean to say that is little Dorothy?'

'Not particularly little, but it is certainly Dorothy Hawtrey.'

'I must go and speak to them, Danvers. You know them too, don't you?'

'Well, considering I meet them out pretty well every night somewhere I ought to do,' the other said, as with slower steps he followed his companion to the carriage.

'How are you, Mr. Hawtrey?' the latter exclaimed, looking up at the man on the box.

The gentleman looked down a little puzzled at the warmth with which the words were spoken by one whose face he did not recall.

'Don't you remember me, sir? I am Edward Hampton.'

'Why, Ned, is it you? You are changed out of all knowledge. You have come back almost as dark as a Malay. When did you arrive?'

'I only reached town yesterday evening; looked up Danvers, and was lucky enough to find him at home. He said he was coming down here to-day, and as it was of no use calling on people in town on the Oaks day I came with him.'

'Are you not going to speak to me, Captain Hampton?'

'I am, indeed, Miss Hawtrey, though I confess I did not know you until Danvers told me who you were; and I do not feel quite sure now, for the Miss Hawtrey I used to know never called me anything but Ned.'

'The Miss Hawtrey of those days was a little tomboy in short frocks,' the girl laughed, 'but I do not say that if I find that you are not so changed in reality as you are in appearance, I may not, perhaps, some day forget that you are Captain Hampton, V.C.' She had stepped down from her lofty seat, and was now shaking hands with him heartily. 'It does not seem six years since we said good-bye,' she went on. 'Of course you are all that older, but you don't seem so old to me. I used to think you so big and so tall when I was nine, and you were double that age, and during the next three years, when you had joined your regiment and only came down occasionally to us, you had become quite an imposing personage. That was my last impression of you. Now, you see, you don't look so old, or so big, or so imposing, as I have been picturing you to myself.'

'I dare say not,' he laughed. 'You see you have grown so much bigger and more imposing yourself.'

Suddenly Dorothy Hawtrey leapt to her seat again and touched her father on the arm.

'Father,' she said in a whisper, 'that man who has just turned from the crowd and is coming towards us is the one I was speaking to you about a few minutes ago, who had been staring at you with such an evil look.'

The man, who had the appearance of a shabby bookmaker, and who carried a satchel slung round his neck, and had the name of 'Marvel' on a broad ribbon round his hat, was now close to the carriage.

'Will you take the odds, Mr. Hawtrey,' he said in a loud voice, 'against any of the horses? I can give you six to one, bar one, against the field.'

'I do not bet,' Mr. Hawtrey said coldly, 'and by your looks it would have been better for you if you had never done so either.'

'I have had a bad run lately,' the man said, 'but I fancy it is going to turn. Will you lay a few pounds for the sake of old times?'

Mr. Hawtrey shook his head decidedly.

'I have come down rather in the world,' the man went on insolently, 'but I could pay the bet if I lost it as well as other debts. I have never forgotten how much I owe you.'

Hampton took a step forward towards the man, when a policeman stepped out from between their carriage and the next.

'Now, move on,' he said, 'or I will make you, sharp; you are not going to annoy people here, and if you don't go at once I will walk you off to the police tent.'