Dorothy's Double. Volume 1 of 3

'Certainly. However difficult I may find it to persuade myself that Miss Hawtrey is in any way the woman you picture her, I am as convinced as you are that it is absolutely necessary that the money should be paid.'

On Mr. Hawtrey reaching his home he found Mrs. Daintree upon the sofa in tears, while Dorothy, with a book in her hand, was sitting with an unconcerned expression a short distance from her.

'What is the matter now?' he asked testily. 'Upon my word I believe my annoyances would have upset Job.'

'Would you believe it? Cousin Dorothy has just declared to me her intention of writing to Lord Halliburn to break off the match.'

Mr. Hawtrey did not explode as his cousin had expected that he would do.

'It is not a step to be taken hastily,' he said, gravely, 'but it is one upon which Dorothy herself is the best judge. You have not written yet, child?'

'No, father. I should not think of doing so without telling you first. I have, of course, been thinking a good deal about it, and it certainly seems to me that it would be best.'

'Well, a few hours will make no difference. The idea is at present new to me: I will think it over quietly this afternoon, and this evening we will talk it over together.'

'It would be nothing short of madness for her to do so,' Mrs. Daintree said, roused to a state of real anger by Mr. Hawtrey's defection, when she had implicitly relied upon his authority being exerted to prevent Dorothy from carrying out her intention. 'It would be madness to break off so excellent a match. It would make her the talk of the whole town, and would seem to confirm all the wicked rumours that have been going about.'

'As to the match, cousin, there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it. As to the public talk, it is better to be talked about for a week or two than to have a life's unhappiness. That is the sole point with which I concern myself.'

Dorothy, with a softened face now, got up and kissed her father.

'That is right dear,' he said. 'Now let us put the matter aside for the present. I have been busy all the morning and want my lunch badly; so even if you are not hungry yourself, come down and keep me company. Come, cousin, dry your eyes, and put your cap straight, and come down to lunch.'

'Food would choke me,' Mrs. Daintree said; 'I have a dreadful headache, and shall go and lie down.'

CHAPTER VIII

'Mr. Danvers is in the library, sir,' a servant announced at nine o'clock that evening.

'Will you come down, Dorothy?'

'No, father, I do not want to hear what is said. No doubt he will suppose I took the diamonds.'

'No, no, my dear, you should not say that.'

'But I do say that, father. When even Captain Hampton was willing enough to believe me guilty, what can I expect from others?'

'You are too hard on Ned altogether, Dorothy, a great deal too hard. He spent a month of his leave entirely in your service, and now because he could not disbelieve the evidence of his own eyes you turn against him.'

'I am obliged to him for the trouble he has taken, father, but that is not what I want at present. I want trust; and I thought that if any one would have given it to me fully it would have been Ned Hampton, and nothing would have made me doubt him.'

'Well, my dear,' her father said, dryly, 'you may think so now, but if you were to see him filling his pockets out of a bank till, I fancy for a moment your trust in him would waver. However, I will go down to Danvers.'

He returned at the end of twenty minutes.

'His advice is the same as that which, as I mentioned this afternoon, Levine gave when I told him of the circumstances, and which I have no doubt he will repeat when he has further thought the matter over, namely, that unless we can obtain some evidence to support your denial, we have no chance of obtaining a verdict if we go into court. Danvers says that, of course, to those who know you, the idea of your taking these diamonds is absolutely preposterous; still, as the jury will not know you, and the public who read the report will not know you, they can only go by the evidence. He says that trying to look at it as a stranger, his opinion would be that it was an extraordinary case, but that unless we believed thoroughly that you had not taken the things, we should never have taken so hopeless a case into court. Still, he thinks that the verdict of those who only look at the outside of things would be that the denial was almost worse than the act. Had it not been for the unfortunate rumours previously circulated, many people might be of opinion that it was a case of kleptomania, and that no woman in her senses would have thus openly carried the things away from a place where she was well known.'

'I see all that, father; the more I have thought it over, the more I feel that it is certain that every one will be against me.'

'Then in that case, Dorothy, why fight a battle we are certain to lose? From the money point of view alone, it would be better to pay this twenty-five hundred pounds than the twenty-five hundred pounds plus the costs on both sides, which we might put down roughly at another thousand. If we pay it now, the matter may never become public, for even if the scoundrel was malicious enough to try and get a rumour about it into one of these so-called society papers I should doubt whether he could do so. In the last case they got the report, no doubt, from some one in Scotland Yard, but no editor would be mad enough to risk an action for libel with tremendous damages merely on an anonymous report, or at best, a report given only on the authority of an impecunious hanger-on of the turf. It seems to me, therefore, that we should have everything to lose, and nothing to gain, by bringing the matter into court.'

'But the same thing may be done again, father; if they have succeeded so well now they are sure to try and repeat it.'

'We might take measures to prevent their doing that. The moment the thing is settled we will go down into the country, and when we return to town next season I will get a companion for you – some bright, sensible woman, who will not be half her time laid up with headaches, and who will always go with you whenever you go out; so that were such an attempt made again, you would be in a position to prove conclusively where you were at the time. Danvers suggested that if I pay the money to Gilliat I should do so with a written protest, to the effect that I was convinced that you had not been in his shop on the day in question, but that as I was not in a position to prove this I paid the money, reserving to myself the right to reclaim it, should I be at any time in a position to prove that you had not been at his shop on that day, or be able to produce the woman who represented you. Should the matter by any chance ever crop up again, a copy of this protest would be an advantage.'

'At any rate, father, I could never marry Lord Halliburn unless this matter were entirely cleared up; it would be unfair to him in the extreme. He might receive an anonymous letter from these people, and if he asked me if it was true, what could I say? He has been greatly upset by the other business, what would he say did he know that I have been accused of theft? That brings us back to the subject of my engagement. You have been thinking it over since lunch, father?'

'Yes, dear, I have been thinking it over as well as I could, and I again repeat that the only light in which I can regard it is that of your happiness. I quite see that your being engaged to a man in his position does add to the embarrassment and difficulty of the position. We have to consider not only ourselves but him. Still, that matters after all comparatively little. Supposing this matter were all cleared up satisfactorily, how would you stand then? You might then bitterly regret the step you now want to take.'

'No, father; up to the time when this trouble first began I don't think that I thought very seriously about it. Lord Halliburn was very nice, I liked him as much as any man I have met. I suppose I was gratified by his attentions; every one spoke well of him; I own that I was rather proud of carrying him off, and it really seemed to me that I was likely to be very happy with him. Since then I have looked at it in a different way. I knew, of course, that husbands and wives are supposed to share each other's troubles, but it had never really seemed to me that there was a likelihood of troubles coming into my life. Well, troubles have come, and with them I have come to look at things differently. To begin with, I have learnt more of Lord Halliburn's character than I probably should have done in all my life if such troubles had not come.

'I have been disappointed in him. I do not say that in the first matter he doubted me for an instant – it was not that; but I found out that he is altogether selfish. He has thought all through, not how this affected me, but how it would affect himself; he has been querulous, exacting, and impatient. Had he been the man I thought him he would have been kinder and more attentive than before; he would have tried to let every one see by his manner to me how wholly he trusted me; he would have striven to make things easier for me; but he has made them much harder. If I held in my hands now the proofs [missing text] against me, I would send them to him and at the same time a letter breaking off my engagement. When I think it over, I am sometimes inclined to be almost grateful to this trouble, because it has opened my eyes to the fact that I have been very nearly making a great mistake, and that, had I married Lord Halliburn, my life might have gone on smoothly enough, but that there would never have been any real community of feeling between us. He would have regarded me as a useful and, perhaps, an ornamental head to his house, but I should never have had a home in the true sense of the word, father; that is, a home like this.'

'Then that is settled, my dear. Now that you have said as much as you have, we need not say another word on the matter. I must say, frankly, that I have of late come almost to dislike him, and it has several times cost me no inconsiderable effort to keep my temper when I saw how entirely he regarded the matter in a personal light, and how little thought he gave to the pain and trouble you were going through. I am in no hurry to lose you, my dear, and the thought that it might be a few months has given me many a heartache. And now, how will you do it? – Will you write to him or see him?'

'I would rather tell him, father.'

'You see, dear, both for his sake and your own it must be publicly known that the engagement is broken by you, and not by him. It would be very unfair on him for it to be supposed that he has taken advantage of these rumours to break off his engagement, and it would greatly injure you, as people would say that he must have become convinced of their truth.'

Dorothy nodded. 'I will see him, father. I shall speak to him quite frankly; I shall tell him that this attack having been made on me it is possible that there may be at some future time other troubles from the same source, and that it would be unfair to him, in his position as a member of the Ministry, for his wife to be made the target of such attacks. I shall also tell him that quite apart from this, I feel that I acted too hastily and upon insufficient knowledge of him in accepting him; that I am convinced that our marriage would not bring to either of us that happiness that we have a right to expect. That is all I shall say, unless he presses me to go into details, and then I shall speak just as frankly as I have done to you.'

'Well, dear, I can only say I am heartily glad,' Mr. Hawtrey said, kissing her, 'and am inclined to feel almost grateful to that fellow Truscott for giving me back my little girl again. Of course, I know it must come some day, but after having been so much to each other for so many years, it is a little trying at first to feel that one is no longer first in your affections.'

'The idea of such a thing, father,' Dorothy said, indignantly, 'as if I ever for a moment put him before you.'

'Well, if you have not, child, it shows very conclusively that you did not care for him as a girl should care for a man she is going to marry. I do not say that it is so in many marriages that are, as they term it, arranged in society, but where there is the real, honest love that there ought to be, and such as I hope you will some day feel for some one, he becomes, as he should become, first in everything.'

'It seems to me quite impossible, father, that I could love any other man as I do you.'

Mr. Hawtrey smiled.

'I hope you will learn it is very possible, some day, Dorothy. Well, at any rate, this has done away with your chief reason for objecting to my paying for these diamonds. No doubt I shall hear from Levine some time to-morrow; at any rate, there is no reason to decide finally for another day or two. Gilliat can be in no hurry, and a month's delay may make some difference in the situation.'

'Well, dear, is it over?' Mr. Hawtrey asked next day, when Dorothy came into his study. 'It was a relief to me when I saw his brougham drive off, for I knew that you must be having an unpleasant time of it.'

'Yes; it has not been pleasant, father. He came in looking anxious, as he generally has done of late, thinking that my request for him to call this morning meant that there was news of some sort, pleasant or otherwise. I told him at once that I had been seriously thinking over the matter for some time, and that I had for several reasons come to the conclusion that it would be better that our engagement should terminate, and then gave him my first reason. He was very earnest, and protested that as he had never for a moment believed in these rumours he could not see that there was any reason whatever for breaking off the engagement. I said that I did him full justice in that respect, but that the matter had certainly been a great source of annoyance to him, and that I was convinced of the probability of further trouble of the same kind, and that as we had been powerless to detect the author of this we might be as powerless in the future. Then I frankly told him that I knew that his hopes were greatly centred in his political career, and that for him to have a wife who was the subject of a scandal would be a very serious drawback to him. He did not attempt to deny this, but then urged that a breach of the engagement at present would be taken to mean that he had been affected by the rumours. I said that full justice should be done to him in that respect; then, as he still protested – though I am convinced that at heart he felt relieved – I added that there were certain other reasons into which I need not go fully; that I thought that I had accepted him without sufficient consideration, and that I had gradually come to feel that we were not altogether suited to each other, and that a wife would always occupy but a secondary position in his thoughts, politics and public business occupying the first. I said that I had been brought up perhaps in an old-fashioned way and entertained the old-fashioned idea that a wife should hold the first place.

'He was disposed to be angry, because, no doubt, he felt that it was perfectly true. However I said, "Do not be angry, Lord Halliburn. I shall be very, very sorry if we part other than good friends. I like and esteem you very much, and had it not been for these troubles I should never have thought of breaking my engagement to you. As it is, I am thinking as much of you as of myself. I am convinced I shall have further troubles, and perhaps more serious ones. I have already, in fact, had some sort of warning of them, and if they come it would make it much harder for me to bear them were our names associated together, for I feel that your prospects would be seriously injured as well as my own."

'"You talk it over very calmly and coolly," he said, irritably.

'I said that I had been thinking it over calmly for a month and more, and that I was sure that it was best for both of us. So at last we parted good friends. I have no doubt it is a relief to him as it is to me, but just at first, I suppose, it was natural that he should be upset. I don't think he had ever thought for a moment of breaking it off himself, but I am quite sure that if this other thing comes out he will congratulate himself most heartily. Well, there is an end of that, father.'

'Yes, my dear; I am sorry, and at the same time I am glad. I don't think, dear, that you are the sort of girl who would ever have been very happy if you had married without any very real love in the matter. For my part I can see nothing enviable in the life of a woman who spends her whole life in what is called Society. Two or three months of gaiety in the year may be well enough, but to live always in it seems to me one of the most wretched ways of spending one's existence. And now, dear, let us change the subject altogether. I think for the next few days you had better go out again. I propose that we leave town at the end of the week and either go down home or, what would be better, go for a couple of months on the continent. That will give time for the gossip over the engagement being broken off to die out. You did not put off our engagement to dine at the Deans' to-day?'

'No, father, I could not write and say two days beforehand that I was unwell and unable to come.'

'Very well then, we will go. I always like their dinners, because she comes from our neighbourhood and one always meets three or four of our Lincolnshire friends.'

'It is the Botanical this afternoon, father. Shall I go there with Cousin Mary?'

'Do so by all means, dear.'

As they drove that evening to the Deans', Mr. Hawtrey said, 'I had that letter from Levine as I was dressing, Dorothy. He goes over nearly the same ground as Danvers did, and is also of opinion that I should pay under protest, in order that if at any time we can lay our hands on the real offender, we can claim the return of the money. I shall go round in the morning and have a talk with Gilliat.'

Dorothy was more herself than she had been for weeks. Her engagement had, since her trouble first began, been a greater burden to her than she had been willing to admit even to herself. Lord Halliburn had jarred upon her constantly, and she had come almost to dread their daily meetings.

At an early stage of her troubles she had thought the matter out, and had come to the conclusion that she had made a mistake, and was not long in arriving at the determination that she would at the end of the season ask him to release her from her engagement. Before that she hoped that the rumours that had affected him would have died out completely, and would not necessarily be associated with the termination of the engagement. Had not this fresh trouble arisen, matters would have gone on on their old footing until late in the autumn, but this new trouble had forced her to act at once, and her first thought had been that it was only fair to him to release him at once. She was surprised now at the weight that had been lifted from her mind, at the buoyancy of spirits which she felt. She was almost indifferent as to the other matter.

'You are more like yourself than you have been for weeks, Dorothy,' her father said, during the drive.

'I feel like a bird that has got out of a cage, father. It was not a bad cage, it was very nicely gilt and in all ways a desirable one, still it was a cage, and I feel very happy indeed in feeling that I am out of it.'

Dorothy enjoyed her dinner and laughed and talked merrily with the gentleman who had taken her down. Mrs. Dean remarked to her husband afterwards that the absence of Lord Halliburn, who sent a letter of regret that important business would prevent his fulfilling his engagement, did not seem to be any great disappointment to Dorothy Hawtrey.

'I never saw her in better spirits, my dear; lately I have been feeling quite anxious about her; she was beginning to look quite worn from the trouble of those abominable stories.'

'I expect she feels Halliburn's absence a positive relief,' he said. 'You know you remarked, yourself, the last time we saw them out, how glum and sulky he looked, and you said that if you were in her place you would throw him over without hesitation.'

'I know I said so, and do you know I wondered at dinner whether she had not come to the same conclusion.'

'Dorothy has lots of spirit,' Mr. Dean said, 'and is quite capable of kicking over the traces. I should say there is no pluckier rider than that girl in all Lincolnshire, and I fancy that a woman who doesn't flinch from the stiffest jump would not hesitate for a moment in throwing over even the best match of the season if he offended her. She is a dear good girl, is Dorothy Hawtrey, and I don't think that she is a bit spoilt by her success this season. I always thought she made a mistake in accepting Halliburn; he is not half good enough for her. He may be an earl, and an Under-Secretary of State, but he is no more fit to run in harness with Dorothy Hawtrey than he is to fly.'

When the gentlemen came up after dinner Dorothy made room on the sofa on which she was sitting for an old friend who walked across to her. Mr. Singleton was a near neighbour down in Lincolnshire; he was a bachelor, and Dorothy had always been a great pet of his.

'Well, my dear,' he said, as he took a seat beside her, 'I am heartily glad to see you looking quite yourself again to-night, and to know that I have been able to help my little favourite out of a scrape.'

Dorothy's eyes opened wide. 'To help me out of a scrape, Mr. Singleton! Why, what scrape have you helped me out of?'

'I beg your pardon, my dear,' he said hastily. 'I told you we would never speak of the matter again, and here I am, like an old fool, bringing it up the very first time I meet you.'

Dorothy's face paled.

'Mr. Singleton,' she said, 'I seem to be surrounded by mysteries. Do I understand you to say that you have done me some kindness lately – helped me out of some scrape?'

'Well, my dear, those were your own words,' he replied, looking surprised in turn; 'but please do not let us say anything more about it.'

Dorothy sat quiet for a minute, then she made a sign to her father, who was standing at the other side of the room, to come across to her. 'Father,' she said, 'will you ask Mr. Singleton to drive home with us; I am afraid there is some fresh trouble, and, at any rate, I must speak to him, and this is not the place for questions. Please let us go as soon as the carriage comes. Now, will you please go away, Mr. Singleton, and leave me to myself for a minute or two, for my head is in a whirl?'

'But, my dear,' he began, but was stopped by an impatient wave of Dorothy's hand.

'What is it, Singleton?' Mr. Hawtrey asked, as they went across the room.

'I am completely puzzled,' he replied; 'what Dorothy means by asking me to come with you, and to answer questions, is a complete mystery to me. Please don't ask me any questions now. I have evidently put my foot into it somehow, though I have not the least idea how.'

Ten minutes later the carriage was announced. As she took her place in it, Dorothy said, 'Don't ask any questions until we are at home.'

The two men were far too puzzled to talk on any indifferent subject. Not a word was spoken until they arrived at Chester Square.

'Has Mrs. Daintree gone to bed?' Dorothy asked the footman.

'Yes, Miss Hawtrey; she went a quarter of an hour ago.'

'Are the lights still burning in the drawing-room?'

'Yes, miss.'

They went upstairs.

'Now, Dorothy, what does all this mean?' her father asked, impatiently.

'That is what we have got to learn, father. Mr. Singleton congratulated me on having recovered my spirits, and took some credit to himself for having helped me out of a scrape. As I do not in the least know what he means, I want him to give you and me the particulars.'

'But, my dear Dorothy,' Mr. Singleton said, 'why on earth do you ask me that question? Surely you cannot wish me to mention anything about that trifling affair.'

'But I do, Mr. Singleton. You do not know the position in which I am placed at present. I am surrounded by mysteries, I am accused of things I never did. Now it seems as if there were a fresh one; possibly if you tell us the exact particulars of what you were speaking of it may help us to get to the bottom of it.'