Dorothy's Double. Volume 1 of 3. Henty George Alfred
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were two or three of them.'
'I mean the man who said it was too bad, Dorothy not coming down on his drag.'
'That is Lord Halliburn; he is very attentive there, and the general opinion is that it will be a match.'
'He didn't look as if he had much in him,' Hampton said, after a pause.
'He has a title and a very big rent roll, and has, therefore, no great occasion for brains; but in point of fact he is really clever. He is Under-Secretary for the Colonies, and is regarded as a rising young peer. He is not a bad fellow at all, I believe; keeps a few racers but does not bet, and has no vices as far as I have ever heard. That is his drag; he drives a first-rate team.'
'Well, I hope he is a good fellow,' Captain Hampton said shortly. 'You see I never had a sister of my own. That little one and I were quite chums, and I used to look upon her almost in the light of a small sister, and I should not like to think of her marrying anyone who would not make her happy.'
'I should think she has as fair a chance with Halliburn as with most men,' Danvers said. 'I know a man who was at Christ Church with him. He said that he was rather a prig – but that a fellow could hardly help being, brought up as he had been – but that, as a whole, he was one of the most popular men of his set. Now we may as well be walking for the station – that is, if you have had enough of it.'
'I am quite ready to go. After all, an English racecourse makes but a dull show by the side of an Indian one. The horses are better, and, of course, there is no comparison between the turnouts and the dresses of the women, though they manage to make a brave show at the principal stations; but as far as the general appearance of the crowd goes, you are not in it here. The natives in their gay dresses and turbans give a wonderfully light and gay appearance to the course, and though, possibly, among quite the lower class they may not all be estimable characters, at least they do not look such a pack of unmitigated ruffians as the hangers-on of an English racecourse. That was a nice specimen who attacked Hawtrey.'
'Yes, the fellow had a thoroughly bad face, and would be capable, I should say, of any roguery. It is not the sort of face I should expect to see in the dock on a charge of murder or robbery with violence, but I should put him down as an astute rogue, a crafty scoundrel, who would swindle an old woman out of her savings, rob servant girls or lads from the country by means of specious advertisements, or who in his own line would nobble a horse or act as the agent for wealthier rogues in getting at jockeys and concocting any villainous plan to prevent a favourite from winning. Of course, I know nothing of the circumstances under which he lost his place with Hawtrey, but there is no doubt that he has cherished a bitter hatred against him, and would spare no pains to take his revenge. If Hawtrey owned racehorses I should be very shy of laying a penny upon them after seeing that fellow's face.'
'Well, as he does not own racehorses the fellow has no chance of doing him a bad turn; he might forge a cheque and put Hawtrey's name to it, but I should say he would have some difficulty in getting any one to cash it.'
There were at dinner that evening only the party who had been in the barouche, Danvers, Hampton, and Sir Edward Linkstone.
'I wish there had been no one else here this evening,' Dorothy Hawtrey said to Captain Hampton before dinner, 'there is so much to talk about. First, I want to hear all you have been doing in India, and next, we must have a long chat over old times; in fact, we want a cozy talk together. Of course you will be tremendously engaged just at present, but you must spare me a long morning as soon as you possibly can.'
'I suppose I am not going to take you into dinner?'
'No, Sir Edward Linkstone does that. We cannot ask him to take in his daughter or Nora Cranfield, who is staying at his house, and besides, it would not be nice. I should not like to be sitting by you, talking the usual dinner talk, when I am so wanting to have a real chat with you. You will take in Mary Linkstone, she is a very nice girl.'
The dinner was a pleasant one, and the party being so small the conversation was general. It turned, however, a good deal on India, for Sir Edward Linkstone had been Judge of the Supreme Court at Calcutta, and had retired just about the time that Hampton had gone out there. After the ladies had left the room, Danvers remarked to their host:
'That was an unpleasant-looking character who accosted you just before the race started for the Oaks, Mr. Hawtrey.'
'Yes; I don't know that I have many enemies, beyond perhaps some fellows, poachers and others, whom I have had to commit for trial, but I do consider that fellow to be a man who would injure me if he could. His father, John Truscott was my father's steward, or agent as it is the fashion to call them now, on his estate in Lincolnshire. He had been there for over thirty years, and was a thoroughly trustworthy and honourable man, a good agent, and greatly liked by the tenants as well as by my father. As you may know, I came into the estates when I came of age. My father had died two years before. Well, I knew that Truscott had had a good deal of trouble with his son, who was three or four years older than myself.
'Truscott kept a small farm in his own hands, and he made a hobby of breeding blood stock. Not to any great extent; I think he had only some five or six brood mares, but they were all good ones. I think he did very well by them; certainly some of the foals turned out uncommonly well. Of course he did not race them himself, but sold them as yearlings. As it turned out it was unfortunate, for it gave his son a fancy for the turf. I suppose it began by his laying bets on the horses they had bred, then it went on and he used to attend racecourses and get into bad company, and I know that his father had more than once to pay what were to him heavy sums to enable him to clear up on settlement day. I don't know, though, that it would have made much difference, the fellow might have gone to the bad anyhow. He had always a shifty, sly sort of look. About four years after I came into the estates I was down in Lincolnshire at our place, when Truscott was taken ill, and I naturally went to see him.
'"I don't think I shall be long here, Mr. Hawtrey," he said, "and you will have to look out for another steward. I used to hope that when my time came for giving up work my son would step into my shoes. He has plenty of brains, and as far as shrewdness goes he would make a better steward than I have ever done. For the last year, since I began to fail, he has been more at home and has done a good deal of my work, and I expect he reckons on getting my place, but, Mr. Hawtrey, you must not give it to him. It is a hard thing for a father to say, but you could not trust him."
'I felt that myself, but I did not like to admit it to the old man, and I said:
'"I know he has been a bit wild, Truscott, but he may have seen that he was behaving like a fool, and as you say he has been helping you more for the last year, he may have made up his mind to break altogether from the life he has been leading."
'"It is not in him, sir," he said. "I could forgive his being a bit wild, but he is not honest. Don't ask me what he has done, but take my word for it. A man who will rob his own father will rob his employer. I have done my best for your father and you; no man can say that John Truscott has robbed him, and I should turn in my grave if our name were dishonoured down here. You must not think of it, sir; you would never keep him if you tried him; it would be a pain to me to think that one of my blood should wrong you, as I know, surely, Robert would do, and I implore you to make a complete change, and get some man who will do the estate justice."
'Of course I assented; indeed, I had heard so much of the fellow's doings that I had quite made up my mind that when his father retired I would look for a steward elsewhere. At the same time I know that if the old man had asked me to try him for a time, I should have done so. A week later John Truscott died, and the day after his funeral, which I, of course, attended, his son came up to the house. Well, it was a very unpleasant business; he seemed to assume that, as a matter of course, he would succeed his father, and pointed out that for the last year he had, in fact, carried on the estate for him. I said that I did not doubt his ability, but that I had no idea of making a man who was a frequenter of racecourses, and who, I knew, bet so heavily that his father had had to aid him several times, manager of the estate.
'He answered that he had had his fling, and would now settle down steadily. Of course, after what his father had said I was obliged to be firm. When he saw that there was no chance of altering my decision he came out in his true colours; broke out in the most violent