To what would she finally have stooped when matters turned sour—as they surely would have done? Would she have turned into her aunt Emily, always known as The Bolter, who had abandoned not one husband, but two, and who now lived in permanent exile and semi-poverty in a tiny German duchy?
She sent word to her great-aunt that she was taken ill and begged to be let off the morning’s excursion. She was shivering so violently that the maid put a warming pan into her bed before she crept into it. All that she had recently learned about herself and Ned—knowledge recently gained—told her why Nat had been forbidden to her, and what Sir Hart had really been speaking of when he had reproached her.
Her answer to Ned must be no, whatever the cost to him. She could neither give way to him nor be his keeper, as Alan had said, but surely there must be some way out. She wrote a short note to the Lorings, regretting that she could not visit them that afternoon as she had promised, but she did not suggest an alternative date. After this morning’s work she felt that she never wanted to see any of them again.
Briefly, she wondered what Alan’s advice to her would be if he knew of this latest development.
Alan had an ability which had served him well in the past and would do so in the future. Worried though he might be about Ned and Eleanor, once away from them he filed them away in the back of his mind and concentrated on trying to put Dilhorne’s on an even keel again: helping the Hattons was something he would think about later.
Dilhorne’s London branch had been on the verge of bankruptcy when he had arrived in England, and although he had staved off immediate ruin he needed to exercise all his powers to restore them to a satisfactory state. Their rivals had found them an easy mark to exploit, and it would take time and trouble to teach them that those happy days had gone.
The day on which Eleanor was due to tell Ned of her decision over Victor saw him dealing with a firm of shippers who had come to regard Dilhorne’s with contempt since George Johnstone had become its manager.
They allowed this contempt to show when Alan, a very young man in their eyes, arrived with George to negotiate a new contract with them. He allowed George to do the talking while he sprawled at ease, his eyes half closed, looking bored, and occasionally yawning openly.
Well, it was obvious to him that they thought that they had George sewn up—as they had in the past. They looked pious when they told him regretfully that their rates for carriage in the Far Eastern trade must rise yet again.
In the middle of their self-serving explanation he interrupted them—they knew who he was for George had introduced him to them when they had arrived—and remarked in a passable imitation of Ned Hatton at his silliest, ‘Pray, Mr. Simpson, would you say all that again? Didn’t quite get it.’
Simpson stared at him offensively, and repeated his outrageous offer.
Alan yawned. ‘You’ve lost me, old man. Could you take me through it again—more slowly this time.’
George would have laughed at Simpson’s expression if Alan had not warned him beforehand of what he proposed to do. Simpson repeated what he had said as though Alan were ten years old, and backward at that.
Alan picked up a piece of paper and began to write on it, slowly, his tongue protruding between his lips as though he were having acute difficulty in forming the words and figures on paper. Simpson and his aides watched him, fascinated. They had heard that he was shrewd: they saw nothing shrewd here. Alan continued to struggle with the figures before him, breathing heavily. He then gazed earnestly at them, his face contorted.
‘Profitable contract for you, would you say?’ he managed at last.
Simpson was careless. ‘Profitable for both of us, Mr Dilhorne.’
Alan addressed his paper once again.
The mute hostility and impatience radiating from Simpson and his cohorts could almost be felt. Nothing daunted, he struggled on, swore gently when his pencil point broke, looked up and managed to avoid George’s eye. George, indeed, was purple in the face from suppressed laughter.
‘I am a busy man,’ announced Simpson repressively, when Alan began working on his figures again from the beginning, his face screwed up in almost palpable concentration on the task before him.
‘I have already spent the best part of the morning on this. I believe that Mr Johnstone understands the terms I am offering, and why I have offered them. He knows the market and the current rates. Pray save us all our time by consulting with him and closing with us.’
Alan ignored him. Suddenly shouting a triumphant ‘Yes’ he finished adding up a line of figures. He walked to the window, holding the paper up to the light the better to examine it.
‘You are sure your figures are correct, Mr Simpson?’ he asked dubiously. ‘I would not like to get my sums wrong. Bad example for George here to discover that a member of the firm is not up to it and all that. Pray repeat them for me.’
He sounded more like fatuous Ned Hatton than ever.
George gave a curious muffled groan when Simpson, plainly nearing breaking point, repeated his figures for the fourth time.
‘We have dealt with Dilhorne’s for some years now, young sir. No one has ever expressed any reservations about our prices before.’
‘I know,’ said Alan, waving his paper about in a vague, happy manner. ‘Begging George’s pardon, and yours, too, I am sure, what puzzles me is not you, sir—I quite see your corner in this—but why Dilhorne’s should ever have agreed to such prices in the first place.
‘Now, this piece of paper would seem to show me that you have made something like five hundred per cent profit out of us in the last three years. A pretty little swindle, wouldn’t you say? Taking advantage of poor George, here. Not really trained in all this, was he? He don’t mind me saying that, I’m sure, he’s learning fast is George.
‘Why, just yesterday George helped me to negotiate a possible deal with your rival Jenkinson down the road, at half your price. You see, in the past George took your word of honour—a big mistake that—he knows better now, don’t you, George?’
George, his face red with the effort of trying not to laugh at the expression on Simpson’s face, nodded, and muttered, ‘Yes, Mr Dilhorne, sir, I’ve learned a lot since you arrived in London.’
‘Thank you, George.’ Alan smiled. ‘Now, let me explain to Mr Simpson that if he wants our business he’d better dip under what Jenkinson has to offer, and after that we’ll see what Jenkinson has to say in the way of fresh terms. I’m sure, Mr Simpson, sir, that you will understand why I needed to know your exact terms. I thought at first that they were a hum, you see.’
His smile when he said this was so engaging that it nearly undid George.
It was Simpson who was purple now. ‘No one from Dilhorne’s has ever complained before. Not Mr Johnstone, here, nor his predecessor, Mr Montagu.’
‘Well, Montagu wouldn’t, would he?’ said Alan agreeably. ‘Seeing that you were giving him a cut of your profits to get him to sign preposterous agreements like the one you just offered me. Not preposterous for you, I do acknowledge. But you soon saw that George here was green—begging your pardon, George—and you offered him nothing. Another big mistake. Greedy, weren’t you? Think how poor George felt when he learned what you’d been giving Montagu. I had to up his stipend to console him.’
He got up, tossing the paper on to the table before them and saying negligently, ‘Think it over. You’ll find my offer is at the bottom. I expect to hear from you, one way or the other, tomorrow.’
George bursting behind him, he swept out. It was not the first time, nor the last, that he was to leave a room in an uproar. The recriminations at Simpson were severe.
‘Now how the devil did he find out that Montagu was on the take?’ moaned one.
‘Went through all the books like a hawk when he first got here,’ said another. ‘I always thought that we should have listened to the talk about him—and his father.’
‘But who would have thought it?’ wailed Simpson miserably. ‘
Perfect picture of a ninny when he came in, and then there was all that wretched business with the paper. He looked like Johnstone’s worst.’
‘Not giving Johnstone a cut was a big mistake,’ said the first speaker, wise after the event. ‘Bound to help that bastard of a boy crucify us when he found out.’
‘Laughing their heads off at us this minute, no doubt,’ said Simpson miserably. It was the truest statement he had made all morning.
‘Never had such fun in all my life,’ gasped George when Alan treated him to a drink in the City Road. ‘You should have seen his face when you started writing on that piece of paper as though you didn’t know what writing was, after you’d made him repeat his awful terms three times running. Once to me, and twice to you. You even got him choking out a fourth. You should be on the stage, Dilhorne. You looked like the village idiot at play. Where did you learn such tricks? God, you’re a fly-boy. No one’s safe around you.’
This was a sentiment echoed by an embittered Simpson at the end of the uproar.
Alan looked modest. ‘I may be fly, but I never cheat—until I’m cheated, that is. Anything goes then—no ceiling to it. Mind that, George. Honesty first, last and always, if you can. It pays better in the long run—but take the dishonest for every penny. I’m sorry I had to cut you up a bit, but it was all in a good cause. Not your fault that you were brought up to live a soft life, not a hard one. At least you’re learning fast.’
Unlike Ned Hatton, was Alan’s private judgement.
George nodded, then exploded over his claret. ‘Worried about getting your sums right, were you? That was the richest bit of all! I’ve never met anyone faster with figures than you.’
Alan nodded, amused by the pleasure of his recent recruit to hard work and common sense. When George asked him if he thought that Simpson would agree to the terms he had offered, he answered him plainly.
‘Bound to, aren’t they? They need our business. They won’t want to lose it—particularly since somehow the truth about today will get out. Biter bit, and all that.
‘Close with us and they get something. Lose us to Jenkinson and Queer Street might beckon. Question really is, do we want them? Think it over, George, and let me know in the morning. Home now. Dilhorne’s is on the up and up at last and we’ve earned the right to play a little.’
Eleanor had spent two sleepless nights worrying about Ned and his monstrous offer. She acknowledged that when she had first met Victor she might have agreed to marry him, but the more she knew of him, the less she liked him. He was rude and unkind to everyone, family, servants and even his horses. How, then, once he was married, would he treat his wife?
She could not help comparing him with Alan Dilhorne. She was well aware from the gossip which ran round society that he was a hard man in the City, but he treated everyone he met, including scapegrace Ned, with unfailing civility. Almeria’s head groom had commented in her hearing on his considerate treatment of the horse which Ned had lent him until he had acquired one of his own.
To refuse Ned’s wishes meant condemning him to social ruin and a debtor’s prison, since, for the life of her, she could think of no way of saving him. She thought of asking Alan for help, but this was family trouble—and how could she reveal to him that Ned was, in effect, trying to sell her?
The other question was, how would Sir Hart take this latest piece of folly? He had already let Ned off so many times. He seemed doomed to die disappointed in all his descendants, and, looking at the trail of ruin which had begun with his faithless wife—of whom her great-aunt never spoke—and which had been continued by her father, her uncle and Emily the Bolter, to say nothing of Beastly Beverley, who looked set to follow the same dreadful path as the rest, she could not repress a shudder.
Was all that was left to her to try to live a good life herself, so that Sir Hart might have something to hold on to? Yes, she must disappoint Ned, and so she told him when he dragged her into the study again.
‘No, you can’t do this to me, Nell. He’s ready to offer for you tonight and he’s promised to tear up all my IOUs when you accept him,’ shouted Ned angrily in the middle of their first real quarrel. ‘You know that you like him—or you will when you marry him.’
‘I can’t like, or want to marry, a man who would stoop to blackmailing my brother to compel me to marry him. You should have thought of what you were doing before you wagered so much.’
‘Dammit, Nell, I only did so because I lost so much to him that I believed that my luck must change and I could win it all back—only it didn’t. I was hoping to clear all my other debts, too.’
‘How do you propose to pay these other debts, Ned? Marrying me to Victor will only settle his.’
‘Oh, good God, Nell, don’t be such a flat. You know perfectly well that Sir Hart will settle a fortune on you when you make a good match. Victor comes from a good family, even if he is poor. You can help to bail me out when you’re married.’
Worse and worse! Eleanor felt that she could sink through the floor at this revelation of how far Ned had sunk into moral idiocy.
‘No, Ned. You must take this as final. If you and Victor have concocted this scheme between you then you are both even viler than I thought. That is my last word.’
Ned suddenly fell on his knees before her and, taking her hands in his, began to beseech her desperately.
‘Oh, God, Nell, for old times’ sake, do what I ask. You know that marriage is a lottery. As well marry Victor as another—and I shall be saved…’
As cold as ice, shivering between disillusion and shock, Nell gazed down at him while he shrieked almost frantically at her to save him from the ruin which was about to destroy him.
Alan, his business with Simpson safely concluded, drove home to his rooms in the Albany to ready himself to visit the Hattons. At the Leominsters’ ball he and Ned had agreed to pay their delayed visit to Cremorne Gardens that evening.
He arrived at Stanton House to be let in by Staines, who did not announce him—he was now one of the privileged few who came and went as the family did.
‘Mr Ned and Miss Eleanor are in the study. I believe that you know the way, sir.’
Alan was later to wonder whether Staines knew something, and had steered him deliberately towards the confrontation between brother and sister. The noise of their quarrel came through the door carelessly left open by Ned in his excitement. He hovered for a moment, wondering whether he ought to leave and wait elsewhere, until the sense of what he was hearing had him standing silent and shocked.
So Ned Hatton was asking his sister to save him by selling herself to that swine, Loring, and was bullying her brutally in order to persuade her! To go, or to stay? The quarrel had reached the point where Ned fell on his knees and was wailing desperately at poor Eleanor.
Alan’s disgust was extreme. He knew that Ned Hatton was weak—but this was beyond anything!
He pushed the door open and strode into the study to find a white-faced and shaking Eleanor standing over Ned, who had no more sense than to rise to his feet and say with his usual facile charm, ‘Oh, you come àpropos, Alan. We were having a tedious argument. Eleanor, as usual, is being unreasonable.’
At this bare-faced piece of dishonesty Alan found himself gripped by something he had felt only once or twice before. He had told Pat Ramsey—incorrectly, although he did not know it—that he was not as ruthless as his father, that his response to life was easy and relaxed.
But the cold rage which flooded through him in response to Ned’s careless words was frightening. It was as though he saw the whole world with dreadful clarity, with movement in it slowed down and himself the pivot of it. At the same time he felt a killing anger: a truly berserker rage.
He reached out and took Ned by his cravat with both hands, half lifting him off his feet. Behind Ned he saw Eleanor, her eyes wide and frightened. His face, although he did not know it, was almost unrecognisable: it was a cold mask of anger.
‘What was that you said, Ned? Explain
yourself. What was your argument with Eleanor really about?’
Ned was paralysed with fright. The transformation of easy, charming Alan into a cold and cruel stranger was the worse for it being his own face which looked at him. He put his hand up to try to relax Alan’s grip on his throat. By now Alan’s expression was such that any resemblance between the two men had disappeared completely.
‘No, Alan,’ cried Eleanor, ‘let him go, please.’
He did not hear her. His whole attention was focused on Ned’s face. The pivot of the universe was transferred from himself to that.
‘I said, explain yourself, Ned.’
‘Then let me go,’ croaked Ned, ‘and I will.’
‘Not until you have explained yourself. What was that about Victor Loring?’
‘I owe him,’ mumbled Ned.
‘Louder. You owe him what?’
‘Thousands. He has my IOUs for thousands.’
‘He has demanded that you sell Eleanor to him as the price for destroying them, is that it?’
‘Oh, God, Alan, you put things so crudely.’
‘Is there a way of putting it elegantly, then?’
Ned’s eyes dropped.
‘You’ve no need to pay him anything. You know that. Gambling debts don’t exist in law.’
‘They do in honour,’ Ned moaned.
Alan’s laugh was humourless. ‘Honour? Are you all run mad in England? What honour is there in selling your sister to a vile bully to rid yourself of your gambling debts?’ He shook Ned as though he were a rag doll. ‘By God, I’ve a mind to thrash you before her.’
‘No, Alan.’ Eleanor’s hand was on his arm. ‘Please, Alan. Let him go. He’s…’
‘Weak,’ said Alan, and shook his head. He still held Ned by the throat.
He turned to Eleanor and said, ‘Tell me that you really wish to marry Victor Loring without Ned’s pressure and his blackmail and I’ll leave at once. Neither of you will see me again.’
Two pairs of eyes looked mutely at him. Both dropped before his own steady gaze. Eleanor sank into a chair and began to cry, speaking in a muffled voice through her sobs.
A Strange Likeness Page 8