A Strange Likeness

by Paula Marshall

  Alan looked Knaresborough square in the face.

  ‘I understand your concern for her, Knaresborough. It is most natural, given everything, and if we marry I shall try to make her as happy as her father might wish.’

  Knaresborough whistled. ‘You know, boy. How do you know? That was, and is, a well-kept secret.’

  ‘Now, that I shall not tell you, nor will the secret ever be revealed by me. You may be sure of that.’

  ‘The only thing that I am sure of is that Temple Hatton deserves one like you, and not like Ned.’

  ‘That is as may be, Knaresborough.’

  Alan bowed—and left him. For once the Belted Earl had been given his congé by an inferior, and had accepted it.

  Eleanor motioned for Alan to sit beside her. She had been reading—or pretending to. ‘He’s splendid, isn’t he?’ she said. ‘I ought to tell you that Ned hates him.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. If he does not like you, or consider you worthy of his interest, he could be cruel.’

  ‘Sir Hart says that he is a splendid relic. They were all like that when he was a boy.’

  They thought together of that distant, different, world, so far removed from the one which they inhabited. Eleanor was restless: she was becoming aware of the body’s demands.

  ‘Ned says that you could have beaten Ralf. Is that true?’

  ‘Half true,’ he said, not wishing to hurt Ralf, but not wishing to lie, either.

  ‘Ned is sometimes right,’ she offered.

  ‘We are all of us sometimes right, Ned included, only the sometimes is greater for one than for another.’

  Eleanor said doubtfully, ‘That does not seem fair.’

  ‘Life is not fair, Eleanor, or we should not be sitting here in comfort while they half starve in Brinkley.’

  She shivered. ‘You live in the real world, Alan.’

  ‘A little—but all worlds are real to those who live in them.’

  He laughed, and added wryly, ‘We are sober tonight.’

  ‘Yes. Stacy is sober, too. He is playing chess with Jane in the library to get her away from her mama. My mama is teasing me about making a great marriage now that Stacy and I are no longer a pair.’

  ‘Is that what you want, Eleanor?’

  ‘You know it is not, Alan.’

  She did not add, It is you I want—for that would not be the act of a properly brought up young lady—but her face told him what she thought.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know.’

  He also knew that he could not offer yet. Knaresborough must tell Sir Hart what he had learned, and then Sir Hart would speak to him of it. He knew that as surely as he knew each new day would bring the dawn.

  ‘I’m afraid that we must prepare ourselves for tomorrow,’ Eleanor said, trying to lighten the conversation, ‘for Sir Hart has decreed that Beverley may join us again.’

  ‘Poor Charles,’ said Alan, and he was not speaking lightly.

  ‘Poor all of us,’ riposted Eleanor. ‘But I think that if he misbehaves again Sir Hart will have him beaten, or sent away.’

  She shivered, although the evening was warm. ‘I often wonder why Sir Hart, who is goodness itself, should be plagued by such unworthy children and grandchildren as we are. You must know that my father and uncle were such disappointments as a man could scarcely bear to have for sons.

  ‘I sometimes think that Mama and Ned are so flighty because that was the only way in which they could manage to live with Papa. Ned, though, is more good-hearted than Papa ever was. They say that Beverley is exactly like my father was when he was that age. I only know that I was glad when he was absent when I was a child. Such scenes there were. Such hate. Me, he particularly disliked, but then, he liked nobody but himself.’

  She thought that Alan ought to know all this before he offered for her: it was only right.

  ‘When he died I felt unworthy because I was not sorry. He would never beat Mama nor Ned again. It was strange—he never touched me. I sometimes think that Ned is as he is because of our father’s treatment of him as a boy. Sir Hart would not tell us how he died, but I fear that it was disgraceful, like Uncle John’s death on the day that Beverley was born. Only Uncle John was kind, but silly, and Father was neither.’

  Alan could see that telling him this pained her, but he could only admire her honesty. What was he to say to her? That we cannot choose our parents, or our children, only accept them as they are? The father of whom she had spoken so sadly must have been well aware that Eleanor was not his child—and fearful of what Knaresborough might do to him if he mistreated her.

  Thinking of Eleanor’s timid and frightened mother made him wonder how exactly she had come to have an affair with Knaresborough, of all people. But that was no business of his. Only that she had, and the result was Eleanor, who had inherited the bottom of sound common sense which lay beneath Knaresborough’s theatrics.

  After that they spoke of lighter things. She was to attend a friend’s wedding in York soon, with Ned, and they would be away for a few days. ‘I know that you must be fretting for London and occupation,’ she said, ‘but I hope that you will not leave until after we have returned. Sir Hart likes you, I know, and he has little enough to comfort him.’

  Alan did not think that he comforted Sir Hart, but he did not tell Eleanor so.

  Alan sparred with Ralf again in the early morning, but it was not the same. Knaresborough, in his careless arrogance, had spoiled it for them. He would have given up this much-needed exercise, but he needed it, not only to keep himself in trim, but to provide him with something to look forward to and to do.

  Eleanor was right: he was missing occupation. That is why they are so unsatisfactory, if beautiful, these great ones, he had decided, for everything is done for them and they live only to please themselves, which they cannot do, for they have no lives to live; their servants do it for them.

  Well, if Eleanor married him she would find that she would have occupation, for he did not intend his wife to be a mere decoration, a toy, but that she would take her part in his life, as his mother had done in his father’s.

  Sir Hart did not come down to breakfast on the morning after Alan had told Knaresborough of his grandmother’s past, but Knaresborough did. A messenger from Castle Ashcourt brought him letters, and he sprawled in his chair, eating and drinking and exclaiming as he read them.

  ‘I have to leave sooner than I intended,’ he told them. ‘Matters call me home—but my business here is ended—for the time being, at least.’

  He took Alan on one side before he left that afternoon.

  ‘I told the old man last night of your father’s mother, and he took it hard, I know. Very hard, although he said nothing. I hope that you fix yourself with Eleanor. You have my blessing, and if you marry her in London she shall be sent off from my palace there. I ought to marry myself; my life is lonely since my poor Jenny died. Why should all I own go to the little Queen when I die? She has enough already. Mind you visit me before you return to London, else I shall follow you there and persecute you.’

  The House seemed empty when he had gone. I do not like him, Alan thought, but he does not want to be liked, and I shall visit him because I admire such splendid arrogance.

  He had thought that Sir Hart might have sent for him straight away, but he stayed in his room that day, sending word that he had a megrim and was unfit for company.

  ‘Which is very unlike Sir Hart,’ Eleanor told Alan.

  Stacy agreed. ‘He is seldom ill.’

  Stacy consequently proposed that it was such a fine day they should all ride over to his home, Culverwell Manor, which was not far distant. They could take food with them for a picnic there, leaving the House quiet for its owner.

  ‘We will all win that way,’ said Stacy cheerfully to Alan. ‘In the afternoon the mamas will want to sit on the lawn in the sun and we can take the girls for a walk, unchaperoned, if we promise not to roam too far away.’

  ‘I can see a successful car
eer for you as a diplomat,’ Alan told him gravely. ‘Such an ability to please everyone should ensure that you rapidly become an ambassador.’

  He shared the joke with Eleanor when, mounted on Abdul, he rode alongside the landau in which she sat beside Jane.

  ‘It is nonsensical, is it not,’ Eleanor remarked, ‘that we should have to go such lengths to be alone together? Particularly now that I have discovered that it is an open secret that Lord Knaresborough and Mrs Lorimer have what is known as an “understanding”, and that her husband is quite happy to turn a blind eye to it because he has one with another man’s wife. Her daughter, Polly, on the other hand, is kept in what the Turks call purdah, and is barely allowed to speak to a young man. Mrs Lorimer thinks me horribly forward because I chat with you and Stacy.’

  Jane nodded her head in agreement. Eleanor said eagerly, ‘I have read that in America women are allowed to become doctors. Do you think that could ever happen here?’

  ‘Would either of you like to be a doctor?’ Alan asked them.

  Jane shook her head, but Eleanor said thoughtfully, ‘I am not sure whether or not I should wish to be a doctor, but I would like to think that if I wanted to I might be allowed to try.’

  Alan thought that Eleanor was becoming more like her unknown father every day—and less like Ned and Beverley.

  ‘Would you object to me becoming a doctor?’ she asked him suddenly.

  ‘I might not,’ he said, ‘but many men would.’

  ‘Because they think it would be indelicate, I suppose,’ Jane said.

  Later, when she and Alan were walking in the little wilderness of shrubs and plants at the back of the Manor, Eleanor raised the matter again.

  ‘It does seem odd to me,’ she told him, ‘that while it is not considered indelicate for women to work alongside the men down the pits in the Yorkshire coalfieds, it should be considered wrong for them to be doctors—or lawyers, for that matter—for that very reason.’

  ‘Ah, but the world is not a reasonable place,’ was Alan’s answer. ‘For example, as you rightly pointed out, married women may take lovers, if they so wish, so long as their husbands do not object, but the behaviour of young girls is regulated so that they must not be alone with young men lest the young men do this to them.’

  He turned towards Eleanor, put his arms around her and kissed her gently on the lips.

  They were quite alone in the warm and balmy afternoon among the scents of the flowers and plants. In the distance they could hear Jane and Stacy. Hidden from them by the trees, Mrs Hatton and Mrs Chalmers sat half-dozing in the sun. Ned had cried off from such a ladylike expedition, preferring to be roistering somewhere else with Robert Harshaw.

  Eleanor, not to be outdone, kissed him back. ‘I may not be allowed to become a doctor,’ she murmured, ‘but I can do this—so long as no one is about.’

  ‘Much more fun for me,’ agreed Alan. ‘It wouldn’t heal a broken arm, though!’ He kissed her again.

  There was a rustic bench in a little bower. They sank on it together.

  ‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ murmured Alan, giving her a third kiss.

  ‘No, you shouldn’t,’ agreed Eleanor, blushing. She did not add, But I like it, for common sense was telling her not to allow him overmuch licence—who knew where such pleasant self-indulgence might end? It was not so much that she distrusted Alan, but rather that she distrusted herself. Her mind was telling her one thing and her body was telling her another.

  For the first time she was beginning to understand how girls could allow themselves to be betrayed—to put it politely. It was not, she was slowly grasping, entirely the man’s fault. Every time Alan started to make gentle love to her she found herself responding with greater enthusiasm—and consequently each time their lovemaking grew a little less gentle.

  Perhaps, after all, there was some sense in the etiquette which forbade unmarried men and women to be alone together!

  Alan must have thought so, too, for he suddenly drew away from her. He was rapidly becoming roused. The warmth of the day, the beauty of their surroundings, the beauty who had been briefly in his arms, were eroding the self-control on which he prided himself.

  ‘We must be good,’ he said.

  The Eleanor she had once been might have said or done something to weaken his resolve, but the new woman who had learned responsibility moved sadly away from him so that they were no longer touching—since it was touching him which was doing the damage.

  If he truly loved her, he would offer marriage, she thought, but so far, although Alan had shown her how much he felt for her, he had never said anything which could be construed as an offer. On the other hand she was now sure that she was the real reason why he had come to Yorkshire. Oh, how difficult life and love were for a poor girl, since in them the final initiative was always left to the man.

  Alan had some inkling of what Eleanor was thinking but he also knew that it was imperative that he speak to Sir Hart before he offered for Eleanor—and that Sir Hart knew that too. If his delay was hard on Eleanor, it was also hard on himself: the strange likeness stood in their way and needed to be explained.

  After their brief interlude together they continued to enjoy themselves, but for both of them the bright day had darkened a little. They privately comforted themselves with the thought that the unknown future might prove their friend.

  Alas, the immediate future brought more delay. They arrived back at Temple Hatton to find a messenger from Bradford waiting for Alan.

  ‘Maister Wilkinson bids me tell you that you mun come at once to Bradford or he cannot answer for the consequences. The hands are threatening to strike if their wages are not raised.’

  ‘I will do as he asks,’ Alan told the man, who was staring warily around at the magnificence which was Temple Hatton, ‘but when I leave for London what will Wilkinson do then? Wait for me? He must learn to manage the mill himself. Go to the stables, find my man, Gurney, and tell him that I need my horse and my kit packed for a short stay in Bradford.’

  Before he left Temple Hatton he walked with Eleanor in the long gallery upstairs.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to leave you again so soon,’ he said. They were standing before the great painting of Venus. ‘It’s my own fault, of course. I would get involved in the affairs of the district. You will forgive me, I hope—and Ned, too. Present my apologies to him when he comes down for lunch.’

  ‘I think that he’s reconciled to the fact that you have other duties which claim you,’ said Eleanor gently.

  Alan made a wry face. ‘Nevertheless, I think that when he invited me here he thought that my visit was going to be one long bout of fun.’

  ‘Then he didn’t know you very well,’ she said, her voice brisk.

  ‘But you don’t resent that?’

  ‘Not at all. I only wish that Ned were more like you. You will be careful, though. Robert Harshaw was saying last night that the mood among the workmen in the Riding is ugly and that violence has been threatened.’

  ‘I promise to be careful,’ he said, knowing that he was not quite telling the truth.

  They kissed goodbye beneath the great portrait of Sir Beauchamp and he left, but not before Sir Hart had sent for him.

  The old man, looking white and ill, said, ‘I had hoped to speak to you before now on most urgent matters, but I have been unwell and you must do your duty. I shall send for you when you return, that I promise.’

  On the way out he ignored Beverley, who bellowed questions at him. ‘Where are you off to now, hey? I hope that you do not come back!’

  Charles said sadly, ‘I wish that I could come with you, Alan.’ He feared that Beverley, released again, would torment him cruelly once Alan, his protector, had gone.

  ‘Not today, Charles. It would not be suitable, I fear. I shall try not to be gone too long.’

  The fuss made on the sweep outside when he set out amused him. Sir Hart watched him go from the big window in his bedroom, and could not help thinking t
hat the arrival of this one young man had caused more excitement at Temple Hatton than it had known for many a long year.

  Eleanor also watched Alan leave with a heavy heart. If she were to marry him their life would consist of many such partings while he followed his star, and she would have to learn to accept it. She shivered, remembering Sir Hart’s warning—that Alan’s duty might prevent him from marrying her. For she knew that with him duty would always come first.

  Ned came towards her and echoed her thoughts. ‘So, he has gone. His duty again, I suppose. But it is really his pleasure, you know.’

  This was perceptive for Ned.

  ‘I thought that you liked him,’ Eleanor said gently, disturbed by his tone.

  ‘Oh, I did, I did, but he is not the man I thought he was. He will be a good companion, I thought, and that is true—but he frightens me.’

  ‘He saved you from ruin, Ned. I would have thought that he had earned your gratitude for that, even if he has lost your friendship.’

  ‘He has not lost my friendship,’ said Ned restlessly. ‘I hardly know how I feel about him. Respect, perhaps, a little. I used to think his having my face was a joke, but now I don’t. It has begun to trouble me. Partly because he is so much Sir Hart’s favourite.’

  Eleanor began to protest, but he said wearily, ‘You must know that is true. I suppose it may be because Alan is like the grandson he always wanted. Someone who is serious—and worried about his duty.’

  He almost spat the last words out.

  Eleanor looked at him. Ned might know what he ought to be doing, but he would not do it. He was too stiff-necked to try to please others.

  ‘Do you intend to marry him, Eleanor?’

  ‘If he asks me. I know that I love him—but he has said nothing yet. Sir Hart warned me that he might not. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I almost wish that you would marry him, and then…no. He’s like my dam’d conscience, Eleanor—and he’s so hard. Do I want him around? To remind me of what I am not?’

  He flung himself down on the sofa, stretching his booted legs before him. ‘I want to enjoy myself with jolly good fellows like Robert Harshaw, and Alan will always want more than that from me. And you, Eleanor, do you really want to be Golden Boy’s tireless wife?’