A Strange Likeness (27 page)

It was pleasant without Gurney nursemaiding him. Lunch was bread, cheese and ale. He ate it outdoors in his shirtsleeves, surrounded by geese, an old goat, and a number of village children to whom any stranger was a curiosity. After that he resumed his fine London coat and boots and mounted his horse, and under the curious stares of the villagers he rode off towards Leethwaite, up the rough road, and then along the even rougher track, towards the farmhouse. It was a low grey building, set on a slight rise, with a cottage garden at the front and the back.

More curious stares from a burly man with dark hair and a brown face greeted him. The farmer—for his clothes were superior to those of the labourers he had seen—was tending to a shaggy pony. There were stables at some distance from the house. An idle boy was filling a bucket from a well. A woman in a sunbonnet and a print dress was carrying dried washing in a wicker basket.

Alan tied his horse to a stump which had obviously done similar duty before and walked towards the farmer and the woman, who, despite their curiosity, greeted him with a gaze so blank that it was almost hostile.

He pulled off his tall hat, another fashionable result of his friendship with Ned, and said as pleasantly as he could, ‘Am I correct in supposing this to be the farm where the Dilhorne family live?'

‘Aye,' said the farmer, in true Yorkshire style determined to give nothing away. In any case gentry—and this young sprig was such obvious gentry—were always folk to be wary of.

Since nothing further was offered, Alan spoke again.
‘I wonder if you would be good enough to answer a few questions for me.'

‘Happen. Depends what they are.'

‘I understand that a Mary Dilhorne lived here nearly sixty years ago. I know that the chances are small, but is there anyone alive who might remember her?'

‘Mary Dilhorne? Can't say that I remember a Mary,' said the farmer.

He looked at his wife, who said hesitantly, ‘Ezra might know. He'd be the right age.'

‘Aye, Ezra's my great-uncle,' he explained. ‘Take the young gentleman round the back, Lottie.'

He turned to Alan. ‘The old man likes to lie outside in fine weather.'

Lottie Dilhorne beckoned to Alan, and he followed her round the house to a small flower garden with a wild lawn, next to beds of vegetables and some small fruit bushes. A wooden settle was drawn up beneath an apple tree, and an old, white-haired man lay on it, covered with a knitted blanket.

He looked up at Lottie, who screamed at him, ‘Great-Uncle, here's a young gentleman enquiring after a Mary Dilhorne. Would be about your age. Do you remember a Mary?'

‘No need to shout,' said the old man petulantly. ‘Of course I remember a Mary. She were my older sister. Long gone, is Mary.'

‘Can you tell me anything of her?' asked Alan, raising his voice a little.

‘Aye, she were a bad girl, were Mary. Went to the Big House, Temple Hatton, over the moors, she did, and got herself a bastard. I mind my feyther's anger. He wouldn't have her back. Disgraced us all, she had. But when my mother were took ill a few years later, she swore she'd
never rest easy until she knew what had happened to Mary and the child.'

He stopped and appeared to fall asleep. ‘Where were I, young sir? Aye, Mary. Feyther went to the place where she'd been sent. He missed her by a few weeks. She'd been a bad girl again, so they'd turned her out, and the little lad, too. Never did know where she'd gone. Handsome little lad, they said. I mind a gentleman came round some time later, after Mother died, asking for Mary, and that were all we could tell him.'

He was silent again: lost in a world where Alan's father had been a handsome little lad, turned out with his mother into an uncaring world.

The old man looked at Alan, standing there in the pride of his youth: at his confident bearing, big and strong, his handsome face, his beautiful clothes especially made for him by Ned's tailor and his polished boots. He stared at Sir Hart's splendid horse, tethered where he could see it.

‘And you, my fine young gentleman? What can the likes of you want to know about Mary Dilhorne?'

Alan debated—and then made up his mind. He was aware of the farmer's sudden interest, but he also knew that he would never come here again. The truth could not hurt.

‘She was my grandmother. My father is—was—her little lad.'

‘Aye, and is she still alive, then?' asked Ezra, staring at him in wonder.

‘No, she died not long after your father tried to find her,' said Alan, recalling how little he knew of his grandmother, beyond her name.

‘How come you're gentry?' said the farmer. ‘Seeing that your father was…' He stopped, embarrassed.

‘A bastard,' said Alan gently. ‘My father is a clever
man who made a great fortune. I'm not really a gentleman. I only look like one.' His tone was quite unoffended.

His last remark was greeted with complete disbelief, except that Lottie said, ‘Ezra is your great-uncle, too, so we must be cousins.'

‘Yes,' said Alan.

‘A cup of tea, then,' said Lottie. ‘Come into the house.'

The house had been improved recently. There was new furniture and a small piano. He was persuaded to sit down, and Lottie brought him tea in a bright china cup and saucer. They had no idea what to make of him. He was so alien to everything they knew.

It seemed preposterous that he was Mary's grandson, and the unlikelihood grew when Alan confessed that he was from New South Wales, on the other side of the world. They were almost afraid of him. Such a great gentleman to be sitting with them and claiming to be thier cousin.

The strange afternoon wore on. They asked him to wait to see their two sons, who were out working, but he refused. He had to go back, he said. It was obvious that they had nothing in common. He said goodbye to Ezra, who was drinking his tea in the open, and then he rode away.

Sixty years had gone by and Mary Dilhorne was a dream, a fading memory in the mind of a moribund old man, and her son and grandson had no place here. His presence distressed them—he was an outsider very different from those who had turned Mary away—without mourning either her—or her little lad.

 

Alan left for Temple Hatton at dawn the next morning. The landlord packed him half a loaf, a piece of hard
cheese, some apples, and filled a bottle with water for him. He rode slowly home to Temple Hatton, noting wryly that he thought of it as home, and that, in reality, it was more his home than anyone's who lived in it—apart from Sir Hart himself.

Seated on a slope by a waterfall he ate his snap, as the locals called a light meal, and considered the world and his place in it. He would tell his father of the farm, its decency, the good, sound stock who lived there, and the fading old man who, beside his father and Sir Hart, was the last to remember Mary Dilhorne.

More than that, he had come to understand himself, and the farm had helped him there. He was Alan Dilhorne, a gentleman, whether he liked it or not. Everyone told him so, and the Dilhornes had stared at him: he was not one of them.

His rightful name was Hatton—and what a sad joke that was. He was Sir Beauchamp's great-grandson, something of which he preferred not to think but would have to, for he must be sure never to go down the dreadful road which his forebear had taken. He must—he would—control himself, so that he would never be tempted to inflict suffering for its own pleasure—or for his own ends. He was unaware that his father had faced this dragon and had conquered it.

It gave him pleasure to remember that he had not ruined his cousin Victor, that he had stayed his hand when he had fought with Ralf and had offered himself up for punishment rather than destroy Ralf for his own and Knaresborough's pleasure. He had also saved the mill at Bradford when he was sure that in his place Sir Beauchamp would have closed it. To remember him would remind him always never to treat people as things, for if
the habit should grow it would destroy him as well as them.

Now he was faced with choices—as he had faced others. But choice was life and life was choice, whichever way you looked at it. He thought that he knew how his father would choose when he told him Sir Hart's story, but he could not pre-empt that choice. He was sure that the Patriarch would not choose Temple Hatton and England rather than Sydney and the Antipodes—he had renounced England long ago.

But how should he, Alan, choose between England and Australia? The pull of both were strong. Eleanor drew him to England, he had fallen in love with Yorkshire, and, if the truth were told, life in London excited him, too. To stay, though, would mean that he would lose his parents and his family.

He had no notion of what Sir Hart might do, now that the truth was out at last. Could he make a decision before he knew what Sir Hart would decide? Or was to wait a sign of weakness: that he would let someone else make up his mind for him? Alan sat so long that noon was well past before he remounted his horse and rode on, his choice still to make.

He needed a sign, he thought. His father had once said that he believed in signs and omens, and he had laughed a little at that hard, downright man for saying such a thing—but now he knew what he had meant. He rode into the deserted stableyard and Ralf came to meet him, to hold his horse as he dismounted.

‘I'm right glad to see you, Mr Alan, sir.'

‘Not sir, Ralf.' He felt like his father suddenly. ‘Never sir. Maister Alan will do.'

‘Maister Alan, then. I talked to Jem Briggs today, and of how he fought you. He said that he had his work cut
out to beat you, and that there was no way I could hold you in fair fight. I knew that, and I hated you for giving me the victory. But when he told me what a brave fist you had made of it, though hungry and tired, I thought on. For all I have left in the world now is my skill, and that I am unbeaten, and you left me that rather than make a joke of me before that lord and the others. I honour you for that, and for what you did for poor Nat. I should not be saying this, I know, but the talk is that you will be marrying Miss Eleanor, and we all hope that this may be so, because this place needs a man, and there will be none left when Sir Hart dies if you go.' He put his hand out when he had finished speaking and Alan took it.

‘I could not have beaten you when you were champion,' said Alan.

‘That's as may be. You did not fight me when I was champion. You don't mind me saying what I did about Miss Eleanor? I thought that it would be a pity to let that man spoil it for us.'

No,' said Alan slowly, ‘for what you have said has decided something for me. I needed a sign, and you have given me one.'

He shook Ralf's hand and went into the House. He would offer for Eleanor and stay in England, and in some measure try to right the wrong which Sir Beauchamp and Sir Hart had done between them. He would claim his love and guard the House, which needed guarding.

T
he first thing Alan wanted to do when he entered the House was to find Eleanor who, he hoped, would have returned by now, but his duty demanded that he see Sir Hart first.

He was in his study. His desk had been cleared of everything but some letters and documents, many with large red seals attached to them. He was seated in a great chair, almost like a throne, which had belonged to the founder of the family. He no longer looked ill: rather there was a feeling about him of decisions made and conclusions reached. Sir Hart was in sight of harbour and was making the ship secure.

He motioned to Alan to sit down.

‘You have decided?'

‘Yes. Visiting Leethwaite helped.'

‘I thought that it might. Well, sir?'

‘I have decided to marry Eleanor, if she will have me. I shall return with her to Australia, to tell my father and brother of what I have learned from you. They must decide what action—if any—to take, although I think I know what their decision will be. Then I shall return to
England, to settle here. That decision is a hard one, but I have made it.'

‘You would never avoid a decision because it was hard, I think,' said Sir Hart. ‘I have spent the time since you left me with the lawyers, and I am ready for death.'

He paused. ‘All my life I have avoided making decisions because they were hard. I see now that by doing so I have always succeeded in making bad worse.'

He picked up a letter. ‘This is for your father. To do with as he pleases. It tells him his story. There is a sealed copy at the lawyers'. They do not know of its contents: I have informed them that it is to be handed to you after my death—to do with as you please. These dispositions would have been different, I may add, if you had chosen not to marry Eleanor.

‘This is my will, and this is a signed disposition of matters to be done—again, only if you marry Eleanor. As to the will, I had Shotton in the other day, worried that Ned refuses to learn the business of the estate and that the staff are in distress at the prospect of his inheriting. They fear for its future.

‘Unfortunately, they are right. Yesterday I received letters from London. Like your cousin Loring, Ned has borrowed great sums against his inheritance. Something has troubled the sharks from whom he got the money, and they want it now, from me. I have long thought how to secure the estate from him, without completely disinheriting him, and it was bound up with my hopes that Eleanor would marry Stacy Trent. Now the burden will fall on you.

‘I have set up an arrangement for the estate to be held in Trust, with you in charge of it. Ned, Beverley and Eleanor will be left incomes, commensurate with their standing, to be paid annually. Others such as Hetta and
Eleanor's mother will receive legacies, but you will be responsible for the administration of the Trust. I am hoping that Ned's resentment at not inheriting outright will be lessened by his loss of a responsibility which he plainly does not want. You are strong enough to face his resentment—should he feel any.

‘I have arranged matters to provide for Eleanor and Ned's children, but the estate will no longer be tied to the title. I have no wish to see Beverley Hatton despoil it should Ned have no heirs. If both Ned and Beverley die without heirs, then everything but the title will go to Eleanor. Of course, should your father make a successful claim, then all this fails, too. I have tried to provide for every eventuality. Needless to say, the lawyers know nothing of your father.'

He fell silent. Alan looked hard at him. ‘You are sure that this is what you wish?'

‘Quite sure. My responsibilities are towards those who have served me on all my lands, not to worthless grandsons who would see them ruined in order to gain money for high living.' His voice was bitterness itself. ‘You see, I trust you, and I do not think that I am wrong to do so.'

Sir Hart handed Alan another signed paper. ‘I am transferring all my guardianships to you, and this paper gives you those rights immediately Eleanor accepts you. I am no longer strong enough to do what should be done. I have no wish to compound the sins of my youth.'

Alan read the paper and said, ‘You are sure that you wish this, too?'

‘Most sure.' Sir Hart leaned back in his chair, relieved. ‘And now I suppose that you will speak to Eleanor—the sooner the better.'

‘Yes.' Alan rose, holding the paper. ‘Mary Dilhorne was not forgotten,' he said quietly. ‘There was an old
man there, her brother. He was the only member of the family who remembered her. He said that she was pretty and that my father was a handsome little lad.'

He moved to the door, and as he placed his hand on the knob, the old man said, ‘I know that you will do your duty, Grandson. If I may so call you for the first—and last—time.'

 

Alan found Eleanor in the herb garden where they had sat on the morning that Nat had tormented her, and he had rescued and reassured her.

‘Oh, you are back earlier than I had expected—or hoped. Grandfather said that you had gone to explore the Dales. They are beautiful, are they not? Not so beautiful as the moors, of course.'

He put out a hand to assist her from her seat. ‘Walk with me a little, Eleanor. I have something to say to you.'

Eleanor knew at once what that something was going to be. She had spent the time since she had last seen him in a fever of doubt, fear and expectation. She knew that he was due to leave for London soon. We have so little time left, she had thought, and now, to her great relief, the expression on his face told her what he was going to say before he spoke.

They walked to the end of an alley giving on to a view of the House, dark ochre in the growing night. He turned to her, took her hand, and kissed it.

‘Eleanor, I think that you know what I am going to say. You may even have wondered why I took so long to say it. But I had decisions to make, grave ones, before I dare ask you—but now I am free. Eleanor, my dearest heart, will you marry me?'

His face was so grave and so loving that Eleanor wished to kiss him, to lighten the gravity but keep the
loving. For the first time she initiated action. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him on his brown cheek.

‘Can you doubt my answer, Alan? I have been a complete spectacle in the weeks since you came here. I wonder that no one has complained of my dreadful boldness. I thought that I was going to have to be like the Maenads with Orpheus and drag you off—without tearing you to pieces, of course! Even Ned and Mother, who never notice anything, have wondered what was the matter with me.

‘If you do not kiss me immediately I shall expire of frustrated love on the spot. There, I can say all that now that you have asked me. I have always been told what a bold, forward creature I am, so I feel that I really must do something to earn that description.'

He laughed at her eager, glowing face. The load he had been carrying since Sir Hart first told him the truth about his father fell from his shoulders. The day was suddenly bright again, his fears and worries banished.

‘Right, my girl,' he told her. ‘For that you shall get the full treatment. Your first lesson in love begins now.'

He took her in his arms and gave her her first real kiss, to set her alight and take her on the first step into her future.

 

Seated at dinner, Eleanor was surprised that what had happened was not plain to everyone. The thought of what had passed between them in the garden set her blushing. Afterwards she and Alan had been to Sir Hart to tell him that they had agreed to marry. He had kissed her, wished her happy, and given her his blessing. They were to inform her mother and Ned of their decision after dinner. But plans, however well made, do not always come to pass exactly as intended.

There had already been uproar earlier that day because Beverley had managed to damage and dirty with ink and crayon many of Charles's possessions. He had claimed that it was an accident and his mother had supported him. Sir Hart had been appealed to and Beverley had been threatened with exile to his room again. He had been forbidden dinner with the family, but Eleanor's mother, and his, had agreed that this punishment was too severe. A place had been laid for him and he was in it by the time Sir Hart appeared.

Sir Hart had looked his displeasure, but said wearily that, since he was there, Beverley might stay. Beverley took this victory as an excuse for being more obnoxious than ever. He kicked poor Charles, already smarting over his vandalised property, under the table. He snarled at his mother, and greeted Alan most charmingly with, ‘What? Are you back again? Why could you not stay away?'

Alan fingered the paper in his pocket and looked meaningfully at Sir Hart. Sir Hart nodded. Eleanor smiled at Alan across the table. Even Beverley was not to be allowed to ruin her happiness.

He did his best to try, though. Ned was asking Alan about his journey to the Dales when Beverley cut rudely across their conversation, exclaiming, ‘I wonder at you, cousin Ned, that you trouble yourself with
him
.' And he pointed at Alan. ‘My uncle Harry says that he wonders at you all for allowing a Hatton bastard with your face to sit at table with you.'

There was an appalled silence at this. Both Ned and Eleanor turned white. Sir Hart sank back in his chair, grey and half-collapsed. Beverley's mother and Eleanor's exclaimed together. Only Alan kept cool in face of the gross insult offered him.

He rose to his feet, his wine glass in his hand. ‘Why,
Master Hatton,' he said, and his voice would have shattered glass, so cold and hard it was, ‘Your speech is timely. It is not how I would have chosen to announce this, but so be it. This afternoon your cousin Eleanor has done me the honour of consenting to be my wife, and Sir Hartley, as her guardian, has agreed to it. He has also made over all his guardianships to me, from the moment of her consent—and that includes you, Master Hatton.

‘What is more important is that both myself and Sir Hart are willing to swear, on oath, that neither I nor my father are bastards, Hatton or otherwise. So you may save your insults, for those who deserve them. I drink,' he said, ‘to Sir Hartley and to my future wife, and ask you all to do the same.'

The company did as he bade them in the deadly silence which followed this announcement.

He put his glass down. ‘And now, Master Hatton, for my first exercise in the duties of a guardian.' So saying, he strolled slowly around the table to where Beverley sat, mesmerised, spun his chair around, plucked him out of it in one rapid movement and swung him over his shoulder. Beverley began to kick and scream until Alan's large hand covering his mouth silenced him.

Alan strode to the door, where he stopped and said to Sir Hart, ‘When he is fit for normal company again he will apologise to you, sir. Before that I shall wash his mouth out with soap, administer a suitable drubbing and see him fed on bread and water in order to teach him to leave Charles alone.'

Beverley's mother began to protest at this cavalier treatment, particularly since after kicking Alan hard on the shins he had received the first blow of his promised drubbing. When she had finished Alan offered her his most charming smile.

‘I assure you,' he said, ‘that you will not need to intercede for him so much in future. I promise you that by the week's end you will be the first person to whom he will apologise, for shaming you so often.'

With that, Alan was gone.

Ned began to laugh, and Charles gave a relieved smile on hearing his tormentor's roars fade into the distance.

‘Oh, famous,' Ned cried. ‘How often have I longed to do that. I congratulate you, Eleanor. I said that you would be a busy wife if you married Alan. And the likeness! Fudge to the likeness. There is nothing in it, as I always thought.'

He addressed his dinner with an appetite which told of his relief.

The colour slowly returned to Sir Hart's cheeks. He sat up again. Oh, the devil, he thought. The devious, clever devil. To turn disaster into such a triumph, to use my dreadful grandson to neutralise all scandal, and while not telling the whole truth, not lying while he did so!

He looked down the table, and for the first time since Alan's arrival he smiled at them all. At Ned, deprived of his worries, at Eleanor in her new-found happiness, at Charles, freed at last from torment, and at his two daughters-in-law, angry but resigned.

Eleanor's mother was pleased that her daughter was at last fixed, and although she was annoyed at the man she was fixed with she did not dare to say anything in the face of the united front of her daughter, Sir Hart and the formidable giant whom Eleanor was marrying. Instead of railing uselessly against fate she turned her mind to thoughts of the wedding and what she would wear at it—and what Eleanor's father, Knaresborough, would think of it.

He would approve, of course. He had made that plain
to her in his direct way before he had left for London, so that when Alan returned, Beverley disposed of, she offered him her congratulations in a voice which rang true.

 

Sir Hart, as well as the lovers, had insisted that the wedding should not be long delayed.

‘I wish to be present,' he had said, ‘and it must be a grand one. In London. Never mind that the season is over.'

Privately he told Alan that it must not be a hole-and-corner affair. The likeness must be flaunted, not shuffled off, and the half-truth that Alan had uttered after Beverley's provocation would satisfy more than Ned when Ned repeated it. After all, the unlikely idea that marriage, not a seduction, had taken place, making all Sir Hart's English descendants illegitimate, would never enter anyone's head—as it had not entered Alan's before Sir Hart had confessed to it.

The wedding was thus suitably grand.

Knaresborough insisted that they should be married at his great palace off the Strand—for Hatton House, he said, was not sufficiently large to accommodate all who would wish to attend. He also brooked no refusal to his other proposition to Alan.