A Strange Likeness (10 page)

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.

The whole sad story slowly emerged: she could not bear the notion of marrying Victor, he was repulsive to her, but what would become of Ned if she refused? It was all too much—particularly since Sir Hart would almost certainly disinherit Ned if he should ever find out the truth.

‘Indeed!' said Alan grimly. ‘Quite understandable if he did. Is this the whole truth, Ned?'

Ned lowered his head, mutely agreeing. Alan's rage drained out of him and he flung Ned away so that he ended up against the wall.

‘Victor Loring! You were proposing to sacrifice your sister to that gentlemanly piece of filth who can't so much as treat a horse decently! He has your IOUs?'

Ned fingered his damaged throat and nodded a yes.

‘Will you leave him to me?' The rage reared again inside Alan. It demanded satisfaction, was cold, not hot—which made it the more terrifying.

‘What will you do?' quavered Ned.

‘I don't know yet. Something.'

‘Oh, God, Alan, if you could save me I'd be so grateful.'

That you would sell Eleanor to me instead, thought Alan disgustedly, but he did not say so aloud, wondering what all this had done to his growing rapport with her.

She stood up, drying her tears. ‘Oh, Alan, please be careful. There is something else you ought to know. However tempted I might have been, I would never have obliged Ned in such a way—not even to save him.'

‘But he asked you. I have no doubt, too, that Loring suggested the whole rotten scheme to him. No, you need not answer me, Eleanor, I know the truth now, about you and Ned both, and further talk will only cause you pain.'

You're the only man in the family, he thought, barring the unknown Sir Hartley Hatton, that is. He could not help comparing her favourably with feckless Ned. Likeable and charming he might be on the surface, but there was nothing to him, and by all accounts his grandfather, the poor devil, had no one who might be the family's saviour, given that Beastly Beverley was the next heir!

 

Below-stairs the duty footman from the entrance hall dashed into the kitchen where the staff, Staines included, were drinking tea.

‘It's all gone quiet in the study,' he reported excitedly. ‘I thought that young Dilhorne was going to murder Master Ned, that I did. One good thing—poor Miss Eleanor won't be marrying Victor Loring after all.'

‘Listened at the door did you?' said Alan's servant Gurney, putting down his teacup. He did not expect an answer. ‘Put things right, has he?'

‘What I want to know,' said Staines magisterially, ‘is how he does it? Young Dilhorne, I mean.' He looked expectantly at Gurney.

Gurney shrugged his shoulders. ‘I dunno. I only know that he puts things right, does Golden Boy. Put things right for me, didn't he? When Lord Gresham couldn't. Put them right at Dilhorne's—and more beside.'

Golden Boy was his nickname for Alan, one which his hearers delightedly seized on.

‘One thing,' said Gurney, hopefully holding out his cup to Cook for more tea, ‘I wouldn't advise anyone to cross him, or get on the wrong side of him.'

‘Handsome, though, isn't he? And he always speaks polite to me, too,' said one of the parlour maids dreamily.

‘Polite to everyone,' said Gurney, ‘except those he don't like, of course.'

‘He didn't like Master Ned much this afternoon,' sniggered the footman. ‘Good idea of yours, Mr Staines, to steer him into the study.'

Staines put a finger by his nose, and murmured, ‘A good servant looks after the best interests of his masters.'

‘Aye, aye,' said Gurney, and drank his tea down before conversation moved on to other upstairs gossip.

He wondered privately how Golden Boy was going to trick his way out of this mess and put things right for flighty Ned Hatton.

P
ushing Ned Hatton further and further into debt had seemed a good idea to Victor Loring. After that, piling pressure on him to persuade Eleanor to accept him had seemed an even better one. It appeared, however, that his plan was not working as well as he had hoped.

Eleanor was now avoiding the Lorings. She was not at home when they called, although an unhappy Caroline had discovered that she had been at home to others on the days when she had been refused. She had also ceased to visit them. She had deliberately avoided the whole family when they had seen her in Hyde Park and, all in all, it seemed that stupid Ned Hatton was living up to his name. He couldn't even persuade his sister to save him.

So Ned would have to be pushed even harder. He could threaten to write to Sir Hart, demanding that he pay Ned's debts of honour, or he could run him even deeper into the mire by persuading him to gamble at Rosie's yet again, with the bait that this time luck would be with him and he could recoup some of what he had lost.

The trouble was that Ned, strapped for cash, was now dodging him as well.

Alan was doing some planning of his own. Several
options were open to him. He could pay Ned's debts himself, but that would merely serve to destroy Ned even further, by making him think that all his scrapes could be easily solved by the actions of others, not his own.

On the other hand he had promised to extricate Ned from this pit of his own making, but how? And by what means? And when—and if—he had done that, he might then try to steer Ned on to the straight and narrow path of virtue, by threats as well as bribes.

One ploy he could use was his strange resemblance to Ned, but Victor might be on the look-out for that, so it could be dangerous. On the other hand Alan knew that he was a better mimic than he had already revealed. It was not only voices which he could master, but body movements, too, and he was prepared to take the risk if Ned was. Ned, though, would always be the weak link. He would have to trust him to play his part correctly, and pray that his trust would not be misplaced.

His plan of action decided, Alan outlined it to Ned, and with all the foolish optimism which made him such a bad gambler Ned was mad to adopt it immediately, without even examining it for possible weak links.

Alan told him severely, ‘Think it over. It might go wrong. You might end up in even greater debt to Victor, if, as I believe, he is rigging the cards.'

‘Never,' said Ned with the sublime innocence of a pigeon ready for yet another plucking, ‘not Victor. He wouldn't cheat, he's a gentleman.'

‘Oh, yes,' said Alan sardonically. ‘That makes him pure in heart, I suppose. Do you think that a man who would blackmail another man's sister into marrying him wouldn't stoop to cheat at cards?'

Alan was sure that Victor was a cheat. The Patriarch had spent many happy hours warning his sons of what
cardsharps might get up to. He had shown them all the tricks of the professional gambler's trade, including rigging and marking the cards, false shuffles, false cuts, sleight of hand, how to cheat at Find the Lady as well as the cogging and switching of dice.

‘I am telling you this,' he had said sternly, ‘not so that you shall do it yourself, but so that others can't do it to you. Watch for the warning signs, and the moment that you see them make an excuse to leave the game at once.'

Alan had watched Victor at play, and had seen all the signs for which his father had told him to look.

 

It was Eleanor who almost prevented him from carrying out his daring plan of rescue for Ned. He had been working in the City and arrived at Stanton House in the late afternoon to find Ned was visiting Hyde Park but that Eleanor was in.

She had spent her day with Charles in the schoolroom and then in thinking about herself, Ned and the Hattons generally. She was compelled to acknowledge that her affections, even though she had known him for such a short time, were fixed on Alan.

Something in his manner, the affectionate way in which he teased her, as though he was the ideal brother whom she now knew that she had never had, encouraged her to think that he might have something of a
tendre
for her. The trouble was that she had seen little of him recently because he was so occupied by his responsibilities to Dilhorne's, and now by this wretched business of Ned's. But she was sensible enough to admit that the world was not only made for love and pleasure, however much the novels which she read might suggest.

She sighed. She also had to admit that men had the whole world to rove in. Alan, yes, and even Ned, had
occupations and business to fill their days as well as a range of other interests. She, on the other hand, had had to fight in order to spend a few serious hours a week with Charles's tutor instead of spending her life talking about balls and bonnets, giggling over young men and engaging in the vapid world of making a good marriage where she would most likely be neglected in favour of horse and hound.

It might have been better for her to have been born a boy—until she thought that she could have turned out like Ned and, much though she loved her brother, that thought filled her with horror.

She was seated, trying to read, when Alan arrived. She put her book down and said in her pleasant and straightforward manner, which contrasted so strongly with that of most of the other women whom he had met in London, ‘You always come at the right moment, Alan. Ned is still out, which is fortunate since I wish to speak to you privately—whatever the conventions dictate.'

The stigmata of tiredness were on her face, but somehow Eleanor seemed more beautiful in her worry than other women in their vapid serenity.

‘Firstly,' she continued, ‘I will ring for tea, so as to make things a little more proper. I know that men and women should never talk seriously to one another. Tea will confer frivolity.'

Alan laughed at that. ‘Dinner, I suppose, being a stage further on, allows us to rise to higher things.'

‘Quite so. Slightly weightier matters may be discussed. Tea is for bonnets and balls,' she finished, echoing her own thoughts of a moment ago.

‘I must remember that,' he told her. ‘What is this serious matter you wish to raise with me?'

Eleanor put her finger to her lips: Staines and the par
lour maid were arriving with the tea-board. She was not surprised that Alan's answer had been a straightforward one. Most men would have responded by murmuring, Do not worry your little head about such serious matters, my dear. Leave that to us.

The servants gone, she began to pour the tea, saying, ‘I am troubled that you might put yourself at some risk by attempting to help Ned. Whilst I want to save him from Sir Hart's anger, I do not wish it to be done at your expense. Pray do not think me forward in raising this matter with you—and alone. After all, Ned involved me, and then we both involved you—to my regret.'

Alan put his cup and saucer carefully down. He had not yet learned the art of talking whilst trying to balance tea, bread and butter and cake.

‘I'm flattered that you should care enough to wish that I may not find myself at a loss. But I owe Ned a great deal, you know, and I would like to do him a good turn.'

‘You owe Ned?' Eleanor was surprised.

‘Yes. Oh, I suppose it happened through the chance resemblance, and Frank Gresham mistaking me for Ned, but after that Ned chose to introduce me to his world, where I met his family and friends—and you. My life in England has been made pleasant and easier by his kindness.'

‘That may be so, but still—' She looked at him, her eyes troubled.

His answer was swift and considered. ‘I'm sorry to appear to rebuff you when you have done me the honour of considering possible consequences for me so carefully. Of course, you are right to be worried. I have warned Ned that matters might go awry. But…'

It was his turn to pause.

Eleanor finished the sentence for him. ‘But Ned is fool
ishly optimistic, as usual. Tell me, Alan, why is it that although you are little older than Ned, Frank and the rest, you seem to be so much more worldly-wise and…harder? Forgive me for calling you that, but no other word will suit.'

This amused Alan, as well as revealing to him that Eleanor was showing a shrewdness foreign to Ned. They might be brother and sister but they could scarcely be more different in character. He decided to tell her the unacceptable truth. She seemed to be able to take it.

‘It is because none of you have genuine occupations or responsibilities. You are all idlers for whom other people do the real work. I was not brought up as a rich man's son, Eleanor. When I was sixteen years old I was made to work at Campbell's Wharf as a common labourer, lifting freight. After that I did a stint in the brickfields my father owned before I was promoted to hauling goods between Sydney and Paramatta for him.

‘At night I was made to study, not only Latin and Greek, but book-keeping and mathematics. When I had mastered them I became a junior clerk in my father's counting house, no favours granted. My brother Thomas followed a similar path. I was resentful of such drudgery, but he was not. Thomas was always steady and serious whilst I was wild.

‘I spent one summer as a deck-hand on the Macao run and back, and saw the world with nothing in my pocket but a deck-hand's pay. It makes a man see true to do that. There were times I hated the Patriarch, when he allowed his workmen to bait me on the wharf as though I were any chance-hired boy—and for other humiliations, too. What was I a rich man's son for if I were to suffer as though I were not?

‘But now? Now I cannot properly describe my grati
tude for what he made me do—and I know that I had it easy compared with his life at my age. So, when I look at Ned and the rest…'

He fell silent, but he did not need to finish.

‘I see,' said Eleanor quietly. ‘Yes, that explains a great deal.'

That Alan had been wild surprised her, he seemed so steady—until she thought of the way in which he had dominated Ned. Her understanding of his difference from all the young men she knew was heightened by what he had told her. It would have done Ned good to live like that, she thought, but the impossibility of it almost made her smile.

She said no more. Alan's plan to deal with Victor would go ahead.

Alan, drinking his tea and admiring her calm self-control, thought of all that he had not told her of that bygone summer on the sea. Of the hard work and the comradeship, the fun and the fighting and drinking in the ports they had visited. He remembered the rich man's widow in Macao who had taken the eager boy he had been into her bed.

He thought, too, of how he had argued and fought with the Patriarch to avoid going, before he gave in and finally consented. On his return, bronzed and muscular, a man among men, he had said simply to him, ‘Thank you, Father,' because in some ways it had been the finest experience he had ever had, despite the hazing and the back-breaking work.

Dealing with Ned and Victor was child's play after what the Patriarch had put him through!

 

The plot against Victor Loring depended for its success on two things—making a successful switch between him
self and Ned at some point in the evening, without Victor detecting it, and Alan's own ability to defeat a man who was cheating without being caught himself. One advantage was that if Victor thought that he was playing stupid Ned Hatton he would be careless.

Victor, determined to turn the screw on Ned, was delighted to find him willing to be friendly again. He was not to know that Ned was following Alan's instructions. So friendly was he that Victor found it easy to persuade him to indulge in yet another night's play at Rosie's, where he would consign Ned to a ruin so dire that even Eleanor's resolve might be broken.

‘Time for you to try to get your revenge,' he said generously. ‘Piquet shall be our game, and to give you a chance to recoup, let the winner take all.'

He was a little surprised that Ned agreed to these terms immediately—he must be even more desperate than Victor had thought he was.

He arrived at Stanton House to collect Ned, to find that that colonial savage Dilhorne was there: he had no wish to have him watching over Ned like a bear leader with his charge. He was only too relieved to learn that Dilhorne was going on to the Palmerstons' reception that night—every dam'd fool in London seemed to have nothing better to do than make a pet of him.

Eleanor was there, too, and greeted him so pleasantly that Victor's hopes rose again. She was not accompanying Alan to the reception—she said that she had a migraine coming and consequently Almeria would cancel also. Almeria was not in the plot, but had taken Eleanor's explanation at face value. Ned having cried off as well, Alan would have to go on his own.

Ned rapidly consented to visit a dive near the Haymarket before they went on to Rosie's, where they both
drank heavily. At least Ned drank heavily, on Alan's instructions, and Victor was more careful. Rosie's was crowded when they finally reached it.

Several of the
habitués
shrugged knowingly when they saw Victor steering his unsteady pigeon towards the table of drinks whilst loudly promising the half-cut Ned a good game. The light in Rosie's was not good, a fact that had influenced Alan in his plan to change places with Ned before he began to play with Victor.

‘Must go outside,' said Ned shortly afterwards, ‘can't play you in this state.'

He stumbled into the smelly yard at the back, where a privy stood. Alan, having earlier shown his face at the reception, had already arrived there after scaling a low wall. He was waiting for Ned to appear.

Fortunately the night was fine, and they changed places as quickly as they could in the shadow between the wall and the privy. Ned was wearing a ruby stick-pin, distinctive rings, and a gold hunter given to him by Sir Hart. He pulled them all off and handed them over to Alan, whose clothing was identical to his own.