A Strange Likeness

by Paula Marshall

  ‘Yes, Sir Hart, that is true,’ said Henrietta pleadingly, nearly in tears. ‘He is too strong for me. Please relent: he does not know what he is saying.’

  ‘Oh, but I do,’ roared Beverley, ‘and I will not go.’

  Sir Hart put his hand on the bell-pull. ‘I shall ring for two footmen to remove you, sir, seeing that your mother has lost control over you.’

  Beverley struggled between his desire to repeat what his uncle had said of Alan and the possible humiliation of being removed by two strapping footmen who would laugh about him in the servants’ hall afterwards.

  ‘Oh, very well,’ he exclaimed ungraciously. He made for the door, plunging by and treading on the toes of a horrified Charles on the way. ‘But I shall tell you what Uncle Harry said of him another day.’

  Sir Hart said severely to Henrietta when she flew after him, ‘Once Beverley is settled in his rooms with his tutor, who, judging by this behaviour, is a remarkably incompetent young man, you will return here at once. You are not to remain with him.’

  ‘But, Sir Hart…’ wailed Henrietta.

  ‘Unless you wish to leave tomorrow, taking your ill-conditioned cub with you, you will do as I ask.’

  Later, Stacy, talking to Alan of Charles’s passion for machinery, said suddenly, ‘I am bound to tell you, Alan—and do not take this amiss—that others besides Beverley’s uncle Harry will comment on your likeness to Ned and the reason for it. I must say that I am surprised by Ned and Eleanor’s apparent innocence over the matter.’

  Alan smiled. ‘That is because I come from New South Wales, and my father sprang from the gutter in London, and they know that there is no possible connection between us.’

  He looked Stacy straight in the face while he told him this thundering lie—or rather half-truth. Try though he might, deviousness was a fundamental part of him and came without effort.

  He had told no one the little he knew of his father’s origins, of his grandmother and the possible link there. He had come to Yorkshire partly for that reason, and he was troubled by the portraits and Sir Hart’s commentary which had pointedly linked him with the Hatton deviousness—so sadly lacking in Ned and Beverley. He had been even further troubled on hearing of Sir Hart’s disgrace as a very young man.

  But surely that could have nothing to do with his grandmother? Sir Beauchamp would not have exercised himself over his son’s putting a servant in the family way: it was what gentlemen’s sons did to peasant girls. They should consider themselves flattered. No, the disgrace must have been for something else.

  When Alan was troubled, or disturbed, he did what he always did: he worked to take his mind off what worried him. The next day he rode to Brinkley. He told Sir Hart that he had business there, and would be back in time for dinner. They were all processing into the Great Hall when he returned.

  He was filthy. His face and hands were greasy, his linen was soiled, his fine coat was torn and there was a heavy bruise on one cheek. He had obviously been drinking, and although he was not drunk he had taken enough to lose the hard edge of his self-control. He spoke cheerfully to Sir Hart.

  ‘You pardon, Sir Hart, for my ruined appearance and my lateness for dinner. I have been doing business with hard-headed Yorkshiremen, and I had to follow their ways or be bested. I think that they may be feeling worse than I am. I must ask you to allow me to miss dinner this evening. As you see, I am not fit.’

  ‘I forgive you, young man, if you have been working, but I shall not let you off dinner. Repair yourself, and come down later. Food will help, not harm your condition.’

  He had scarcely finished speaking when Charles said eagerly, ‘Have you bought another mill, Alan?’

  ‘A little one, old fellow, and some workshops. Now, forgive me, I must obey Sir Hart.’

  He took the stairs two at a time. He thrust his spinning head into a bucket of water and Gurney helped him into clean clothes. His hair dark from its ducking, he returned, and ate his dinner under Sir Hart’s sardonic gaze.

  The old man does not treat me so when I overdo it, thought Ned resentfully—something which the other dinner guests had already noticed, Eleanor among them.

  The house-party grew in numbers. Sir Hart had given up his dream of a marriage between Stacy and Eleanor and had invited Jane Chalmers and her mother to Temple Hatton.

  ‘Chalmers of Biddenden,’ he said approvingly. ‘I think that I knew her grandfather, Anthony, at Oxford. The clergyman father is a younger son, I suppose.’

  So Mrs Chalmers—the Dragon Queen, as Stacy had nicknamed her—duly arrived, with Jane in tow. Jane, charming, shy and submissive, was soon on as good terms with Eleanor as Mrs Chalmers was with Eleanor’s mother.

  The biggest joke of all, though, was that Mrs Chalmers, far from eating Alan, or being eaten, was completely taken by him. Stacy she respected, because he was a tremendous catch for Jane, but Alan Dilhorne!

  She positively simpered at him from the first tea-time when he helped her to cake and turned his brilliant blue eyes on her.

  ‘They all love you,’ said Ned. There was almost a snarl in his voice, for he was jealous of the friend he had to share with others. ‘You don’t trouble yourself about me these days.’

  ‘Now you know that is not true,’ replied Alan. ‘You were the first person I asked to go on the Brinkley expedition.’

  ‘Oh, that!’ said Ned. ‘You know I don’t care for such things.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Alan with his usual—to Ned—exasperating common sense.

  The Brinkley expedition was to be arranged for those who wished to see the small mill and the workshops which Alan was in process of acquiring. Stacy had discovered that he had won them in a drinking session-cum-trial of strength with their owner, Jack Thorpe, on the day when he had been late for dinner.

  Thorpe had barely been making a profit, and when he had heard that Alan had bought Outhwaite’s and was in process of turning it round, he had offered Alan a deal dependent on Alan’s being able to overcome Yorkshire strength in an arm-wrestling competition with him.

  When Alan had won the contest, Thorpe had suddenly gripped him and demanded further payment if, in a real wrestling bout, he could overcome Alan by beating him two falls to nothing. If Alan won Thorpe would accept Alan’s original terms—hence his ripped coat and his dirty appearance, since much of the wrestling had been done on the inn floor.

  The heavy drinking had been done before the contest—‘Ale before work,’ Thorpe had said. Stacy’s delight had to be solitary, seeing that Alan kept silent about it—the devious dog—and it was Ralf who had told him what had happened.

  The expedition to Brinkley consisted of all the young people: Alan, Eleanor, Jane, Stacy, Charles and Mr Dudley. They went off in two carriages with hampers of picnic food, wine, china, plate and silver cutlery.

  ‘We must eat in the open,’ Alan told them, ‘for there is nowhere in the mill or shops fit for ladies to eat. And you must all wear your oldest clothes.’

  They accordingly put on their drabs—Eleanor’s word—and walked around the village. They inspected the workshops swaying through the noisy, dusty rooms where dull-eyed girls looked enviously at them—their drabs being princely here.

  Eleanor and Jane were both subdued afterwards, never having seen the world of industrial work before, merely driving, riding or walking through the village with little idea of what went on behind walls and windows.

  After they left the workshops Eleanor questioned Alan about the girls, some barely more than children. Jane clung to Stacy’s arm and said quietly, ‘I am glad that I am not a mill girl.’

  Consequently their picnic in a field outside Brinkley was a quiet one, since their ample food and drink, as Stacy said, seemed to mock the haggard faces which they had seen. Only Charles, who had taken paper and pencil with him to draw the machinery, was untouched, for he was too young to see what troubled his elders.

  ‘We are so fortunate and we do not know it,’ said Eleanor to Alan, who was drivi
ng her on the way home.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Alan, who had taken them to Brinkley for that very purpose, since none of them ever thought of the lost lives which sustained them in their idleness.

  ‘You would not have liked it,’ said Eleanor to Ned at dinner, ‘but it would have done you good to go there.’

  ‘Now, why is that?’ drawled Ned.

  ‘All those wretched people working such long hours for a mere pittance—especially the poor girls,’ Eleanor told him. ‘Compared with our lives it is quite dreadful.’

  Ned raised his brows. ‘Why compare them to us? They are nothing to do with us. They need not work if they do not like the mills nor the pay.’

  ‘They work because they need the money,’ exclaimed Eleanor, exasperated.

  ‘Oh,’ said Ned, ‘I see. Then why do they not go where the pay is better?’

  He offered this imaginary insight to the table with a triumphant smile.

  ‘Because the pay is not better at any other mill,’ said Alan.

  ‘And you should know, old fellow, because you employ them. If it makes you unhappy—and damme you look sour about it—why don’t you pay them more?’

  Alan spoke in the voice of one instructing a child. ‘Because if my competitors pay their girls low wages—which they do—and I pay mine high ones, their prices will be lower than mine and I shall not be able to compete with them in the open market.

  ‘The consequence would be that I should not be able to sell my goods. My factories and workshops would close and the girls would lose even the pittance they earn now. If you can instruct me on a way out of this impasse, Ned, then I shall be happy to adopt it, but, until then, matters must remain as they are.’

  ‘Don’t ask me, old fellow,’ returned Ned happily, quite unrebuked by this explanation, ‘I know nothing of it. Can’t help you, I’m afraid.’

  Eleanor looked shocked at this idle reply. Sir Hart sighed again on hearing Ned’s frivolity. To Alan he said, ‘I see that you have thought deeply about this painful matter.’

  ‘Oh, my father and I have discussed it frequently. “Think on,” he used to say, when I came up with noble but useless ideas of reform.’

  ‘Ah, an old Yorkshire phrase,’ said Sir Hart quickly. ‘I thought that your father came from London?’

  ‘So he did, but he had friends from Yorkshire,’ Alan explained. He regretted having spoken without considering his words, and his explanation, while not untruthful, was not the whole truth and had been designed to deceive.

  ‘Are you saying that you have no choice?’ Eleanor asked him.

  ‘None, and, begging your pardon, we all live on the backs of the mill girls, so if they lose, we lose, too.’

  ‘Well, I’m dam’d if I do,’ exclaimed Ned. ‘I don’t know any, don’t employ any, and they don’t do it for me.’

  Sir Hart closed his eyes.

  Jane’s mother said admiringly, ‘You are so clever, Mr Dilhorne, you are positively frightening. We poor women can only admire and wonder!’

  Alan tried not to catch Eleanor’s eye.

  Charles, who had been eating his dinner quietly, said, ‘Shall you manage Outhwaite’s and the Brinkley mill, Alan?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘They cannot afford me. When I have straightened matters out I shall put in managers, or overseers, who will report to me.’

  ‘I am sick of mills,’ said Ned pettishly. ‘Had I wanted to know about them I would have gone with you today. A boring outing you had of it, I must say.’

  ‘I found it interesting,’ said Jane Chalmers gently. ‘It was so different from anything I know—and I believe Stacy thought so, too.’

  ‘Stacy would enjoy himself reading the Lord’s Prayer,’ replied Ned rudely, ‘so that is no matter. Let us talk of something interesting—like the York Races.’

  Alan thought that there were times when Ned was little more than a nicer version of Beastly Beverley.

  Sir Hart looked weary unto death. He tried not to remember that Ned was his heir, and that the care and future of the House, the land, the servants and the tenants would fall on him soon, and he so ill-qualified for any responsibility.

  Chapter Ten

  Jane, Stacy and Eleanor found Alan waiting for them in the entrance hall when they met to take their usual pre-breakfast walk. He was not wearing the clothes in which he sparred with Ralf.

  ‘I thought that I might join you,’ he said. ‘If you will have me.’

  ‘Always welcome,’ remarked Stacy. ‘You’re not working out with Ralf today, then?’

  ‘He’s off on an errand for Sir Hart. I thought that Eleanor might like the use of my arm.’

  Jane and Stacy smiled at the speed with which Eleanor attached herself to Alan—matched only by Jane’s with Stacy. They set off towards Brant’s Wood, named after a Hatton heir who had died young, Stacy told them.

  ‘I had a letter this morning from Caroline Loring,’ Eleanor said to Alan. They were walking a little behind Stacy and Jane. ‘She tells me that she is now happily married to Anthony Beauchamp—so that’s one worry solved—and that Victor is still working at Dilhorne’s—to everyone’s surprise.’

  ‘Good,’ replied Alan absently. He had recently received a report from George telling him the same thing and that their deal with Rothschild’s had gone through. His more immediate concern was to try to manoeuvre matters so that he and Eleanor might spend a few moments alone.

  His chance came when Jane had to stop on the edge of the wood to remove a stone from her shoe. Stacy gallantly went down on one knee to help her, saying over his shoulder to Alan, ‘No need for you two to hang about. We’ll catch you up later when this major operation is over.’

  ‘Do you think,’ said Alan mischievously to Eleanor once they were well into the wood, ‘that Stacy is as pleased for an excuse to be alone with Jane as I am to be with you?’

  ‘Oh, I expect so,’ she said, laughing up at him. ‘Fortunately there is no one about to say to me, “Now, Eleanor, it is neither proper nor safe for you to be alone with Mr Dilhorne without a chaperon.” Is that true, Alan? Am I not safe with you?’

  ‘Do you want a polite answer, or a truthful one?’ he asked her, equally mischievously.

  ‘Oh, a truthful one, of course. One is always supposed to tell the truth.’

  ‘Then the answer is that I am not sure. Of course, I intend to behave like a perfect gentleman now that I am alone with you, but although the spirit may be willing, the flesh is weak.’

  They had stopped walking and the eyes he turned on Eleanor were flashing a message at her which was unmistakable. She remembered what had happened the last time when they were alone together in the railway tunnel and she shivered with delight.

  ‘What does your weak flesh wish you to do, Alan?’

  She could not help herself; the wanton words had flown out of her as though she were once again the wild Eleanor of old and not the decorous creature she had become. She was aware that she was tempting him, but the desire to challenge him was so strong in her that she was unable to resist it.

  ‘This,’ he said, and bent his head and kissed her tenderly on the mouth. He knew that they would not have long alone together, that Stacy would give them only a short respite from shared frustration.

  Her arms crept round his neck, but he resisted the temptation to do more than caress her gently. She gave a little cry when his kiss deepened and he felt her whole body vibrate in response to his lovemaking, gentle though it was.

  Stacy could be heard speaking to Jane, ‘I wonder how far they have got?’ he was saying, undoubtedly to warn them of his approach. ‘They’re probably almost through the wood by now.’

  Alan gave a short laugh, seized Eleanor’s hand and ran her gently along the path until they could see broad daylight again. Some minutes later Stacy and Jane joined them. Jane was slightly flushed and Stacy looked happy. They also had obviously used their short time together to great advantage.

  Breakfast called them when they had walked a l
ittle way beyond the wood, laughing and talking together.

  Ned stopped Alan in the Entrance Hall.

  ‘Robert and I intend to make a day of it. There is to be a prize-fight in the fields outside Bingley this afternoon. A bruiser from London is meeting a lad from Brinkley. And after that we shall join a group of the fellows for some fun. You will come, won’t you?’

  Alan debated with himself. He had neglected Ned lately, through no fault of his own, but the idea of a day spent in drinking and ending in more drinking and possibly riot in the evening did not appeal.

  Besides, he had promised to see his new workers at Thorpe’s that day, and it would be too bad to send word that he could not come if they found out that he had neglected them to visit a prize-fight.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ned. I’m already engaged to visit Brinkley. Had I known earlier I could have called it off. As it is…’ And he shrugged.

  ‘That is too bad! Why can you not come? You could go there another day.’

  ‘I have given my word. You must not tempt me to break it, Ned.’

  ‘Your word! Break it! You sound like Stacy these days—or a parson. Even Eleanor has become dull. Well, I see that there is no moving you. It will be a great day, and you will be sorry that you have missed it.’

  I doubt that, thought Alan, watching Ned stamp off in a temper. Eleanor, who had been listening to them, put her small hand on Alan’s strong arm. ‘Oh, dear—I see that Ned is upset again.’

  ‘Yes, and there is no help for it. I have my duty.’

  ‘And Ned has none,’ said Eleanor sadly, so sadly that Alan said impulsively, ‘I promise not to be too late back, and then we may go riding together this afternoon—if that would please you.’

  ‘Oh, Alan, of course it would. I shall be waiting for you, but do not hurry back if your business should overrun.’

  She was changing, Eleanor knew, slowly but surely. Such a consideration would not have occurred to her once. But, like a kitten’s, her eyes were slowly opening to a world far removed from the easy one in which she had lived since birth.

  If Alan should offer for me, she thought, and I am half certain that he will, shall I be brave enough to go to live with him on the other side of the world—if that is what he wishes?