A Strange Likeness (25 page)

A
lan thought the next morning that even the weather was in tune with life. The sun of the last few weeks had disappeared, and it was raining hard. Sir Hart did not come down for breakfast: only Eleanor was present.

She had arrived early because she wished to speak to him before beginning her work in the library. They took a turn together in the large drawing room, where he told her more of his adventures in Bradford and his strange friendship with Brough.

She told him of her work with Mr Rivers and how much she was enjoying it and how much she was learning.

‘The Latin and the little Greek I studied with Stacy and then with Charles have been so helpful, as well as the French which Mother insisted I learn.' She had found her
métier
, and Alan could only hope that, whether he married her or not, it would always be there for her.

Characteristically, while she was enthusing over the merits of various fine types and exquisite bookbinding, Alan found himself thinking that if she were to become his wife publishing was a business and book-collecting could be made one, and that might be something which
they could develop together. She could learn about book-keeping and business management. For if she could work so sensibly with Mr Rivers, then there was little that she might not be able to do.

But there was Sir Hart to see first, and when they walked upstairs, she to the library and he to Sir Hart's study, he wondered whether what Sir Hart would tell him might destroy that dream, too.

The old man did not look so ill this morning. He was standing between his desk, on which lay an open ledger, and the windows.

They wound through the empty preliminary courtesies of Sir Hart's world.

‘Now, Mr Dilhorne, I must ask you a question, which I know that you are expecting. You may choose to answer me or not, as you please.'

He wondered if Sir Hart had heard of what had happened at Bradford, and was mocking him, but he thought not. This was not the first time that he had heard echoes of himself and his father in Sir Hart's speech.

‘Why, sir, ask me, and I shall choose.'

‘I wish to know if you will tell me of everything which concerns your father's origins.'

‘Willingly. I see no point in further evasions.'

‘Nor do I.' The old man waited.

‘I really know very little, and that at second-hand. My father has never spoken of them to his children. Once, though, when my twin brother and I were made to do manual work by him, we went to our mother. We told her that he had no right to make our lives so hard, for we were a rich man's sons after all, and we asked her to intercede with him for us.

‘I shall never forget her reply. She had always been gentle with us, but not then. “Hard!” she said. “Hard!
You do not know what hard is. He asks nothing of you that you are not able to give. I will tell you what hard is, for he will not. And you are not to speak to him of what I shall tell you. After that, if you still wish me to complain to him, you may go where you will, both of you, although you are my sons and I love you.

“‘Your father's mother was a farmer's daughter, sent to work in a great house on the moors in Yorkshire. He never knew, or has forgotten, its name. She was seduced by the son of the house. The boy abandoned her when she was with child, and she was turned out. Her family abandoned her, too, and she became a servant on a farm. Your father was born there. Before your father was ten years old the farmer raped her before him, and made her his unwilling mistress. He was then compelled to turn her out by his wife's brothers.

“‘They moved on to another farm where they were both cruelly ill-treated. One day the farmer began to beat your grandmother so brutally that your father feared that he would kill her. He was then about twelve years old. He took a knife and attacked the man with it. He never knew whether he had killed him or not, for they fled to London.

“‘They walked there, and the journey killed his mother. She was ill with a lung disease before they fled. Your father was alone on the streets of London, without a home, a family, proper clothing or an education—that he got much later. He was trained for nothing and had nothing. He slept in the street and under bridges. He stole to live, for there was nothing else for him to do.'”

Alan's voice was cold and uninflected—as his mother's had been—and like her he looked away from his hearer, through the window towards the moors, grey under the driving rain.

Behind him Sir Hart, his face as grey as the landscape, listened as Alan had listened. Alan continued with his mother's story.

“‘He became a thief and an organiser of thieves while still young. He was too clever; his elders betrayed him to the Runners. He was sentenced to death, but it was commuted to transportation for life. Do you still think that your lives are hard?'”

Alan turned to look at Sir Hart, as he had looked at his mother. ‘Neither Tom nor I knew what to say. We had often speculated on his early life, but, careless boys though we were then, what had happened to him, and to our grandmother, was too shocking for us to dwell on. We said nothing more, simply slunk out of the room. Neither of us spoke to the other—or to him—about what we had heard. Lifting loads at Campbell's Wharf seemed little enough after that.'

He fell silent. Sir Hart rose and walked to his desk.

‘It is as I thought when I saw your face. When Ned told me that he had invited someone named Dilhorne to stay at Temple Hatton I was a little disturbed. The name is not uncommon, but when you arrived and proved to be a Dilhorne who had my family's face, and was in every way so like the Sir Beauchamp whom I remember—although without his cruelty—
that
was too much to be a coincidence.'

He beckoned Alan over to the desk and pushed the ledger towards him, and invited him to read an entry in it. While Alan studied the page, Sir Hart walked over to the window and, as Alan had done, stared out at the rugged stretch of landscape.

The entry was brief and uncompromising. ‘Dismissed this day, Mary Dilhorne, under-servant, for immorality. She is expecting a bastard child.'

‘My father.' Alan was suddenly filled with anger, and was about to speak, to say he knew not what, but the old man forestalled him. His voice was low, as though it came from a great distance, and not from just behind Alan's back.

‘The entry is wrong. The child was not a bastard. I had married her.'

‘You married her? In God's name, how? You were how old? Sixteen?'

‘Nearly seventeen. She was very pretty. The same age as myself. Perhaps a little younger.' He paused. Alan could not bear to turn to look at him, or to question him. A marriage!

‘I had an uncle.' Sir Hart's voice was stifled. ‘They called him the Mad Parson. He had read Rousseau and believed in the equality of men and women. They gave him a little living, over in the Dales, without much of a congregation. She was a good girl. I told him that she'd never let me touch her until we were married—so he said that he'd marry us. He called the banns, quite legally and proper. Only some daft gaffers and gammers were there to hear him and to act as witnesses.'

Sir Hart paused again. This time Alan did turn to look at him. He was staring out of the window as though he saw something there. The ghost of a pretty girl long gone, perhaps.

‘I shall never forget that summer with her. I dared not tell my father what I had done. We were all frightened of him—family, servants and friends. I never stopped to think what I ought to do after I had married her. I only knew that I wanted her and could not have her without it. But I feared him so. I started to tell him once, and then I looked at him and stopped. That was the great wrong which I did, for suddenly it was too late.'

‘She became with child. I didn't know—she didn't tell me. I think now that she was frightened of him and what he might do to us. They were jealous of her, the other servants. They knew that she pleased me. One of them guessed and told the housekeeper. She told my father…'

This time his silence was a long one, and Alan did not interrupt it.

‘I shall never forget that day, either. I'd been out shooting. I came in and my father was in the Hall. “To your room at once, sir! No questions.” His face was… I started to argue. I suppose I realised that I had been found out. I tried to speak, but he roared at me, “No insolence, sir. To your room.”'

Sir Hart stopped again. His head was bowed, resting on his hand. ‘He came to my room with a whip. I had known him angry before, and I had endured many of his cold rages. He always thought me unworthy. “I've sent your whore and your bastard away,” he said. “You could have tumbled as many as you pleased, but what you have done is unforgivable, if she was telling the truth.”'

‘He cut at me with his whip each time that he ended a sentence. “You have sent her away,” I cried, aghast. “But you can't. She's my wife. Uncle Harry married us.”'

‘I thought that he would have killed me then. He beat me until I fell to the ground, half-conscious. “
That
is what is unforgivable: the marriage. And it didn't happen. Understand me, my boy. If you persist in claiming you married her, I'll break you as well as my parson brother, and send the girl to a brothel.”'

‘I said—I don't remember what I said. Only that I loved her. “You fool,” he roared at me, “to think to waste yourself on a peasant. Any way, she's gone. I sent her away this morning. She's gone where you won't find
her. Tomorrow you'll go to Cousin Jacques in France, and you'll stay there until you unlearn this folly that Harry has taught you. Equality. Marrying peasants. Fathering scum.” And he struck at me with every word.'

Sir Hart paused for a moment, then said, ‘I've not thought of this for over sixty years. I know that I was a coward. I have tried to forget how, in the end, I betrayed both her and our child. But what was I to do? I was locked in my room. For a week I spoke to nobody. The servants had orders not to speak to me. Two footmen were needed to carry me to the coach that took me away, because I refused to walk to it. I was exiled to France for the next five years. Years later, after Sir Beauchamp died, I tried to trace her, but the trail ended at the first farm of which you spoke.'

He stopped speaking with a groan.

Alan thought that this must be the end—but it was not.

Sir Hart continued. ‘Do you know how old your father was when his mother died?'

It could not hurt to tell him the truth. The pain and the grief were the old man's, not his.

‘He was twelve or thirteen, I think. He does not know exactly how old he is.'

‘Twelve or thirteen.' Sir Hart's laugh was harsh and humourless. ‘Ned's father was seven years younger than yours, God forgive me.'

This was almost too much. Alan said, stunned, ‘You mean…?'

‘You know what I mean. My wife, Mary Dilhorne, was still alive when I married again. And if you weren't the man I think that you are, I wouldn't have told you this. There's no proof now, beyond my word. My father took the living away from my uncle and destroyed the Parish Registers. My uncle died a broken drunkard in poverty.
It was as though the marriage had never been. But it happened. What does that make of me, and my second so-called, wife, and my English children and grandchildren?'

‘Why have you told me this?' demanded Alan. ‘There was no need. You could have acknowledged my father as your bastard—you say that there is nothing to prove him otherwise.'

‘Guilt. Guilt for the lie which I have lived. I never thought to hear anything of mother or child again. When I first saw you, and your name was Dilhorne, I could not believe it. When you told me, just now, that your grandmother's name was Mary, and how your father came to be born, and that she had worked in a great house in Yorkshire, then I knew, that after all these years the past had returned and I could not lie again.

‘My life has been a living lie. Good Sir Hartley Hatton, who destroyed his wife and his child. I did not even know that I had a son.'

His face twisted again. ‘He lied to me. Sir Beauchamp. When he wanted me to marry Priscilla Carhampton he said to me one night, as we drank after dinner, “You will be pleased to know that your whore is dead, and the bastard, too.”

‘Did I believe him—or was it an easy way out for me to pretend I did? He wanted me to marry and the girl was pretty, a great heiress because her worthless brothers killed themselves early in their folly—as my sons did. Later she became a faithless shrew. So I was well served for my cowardice. It was her sons and mine who were the bastards, not your father—and she who was, in effect, my mistress, not your grandmother.'

Alan scarcely knew what to say. He had not expected this. He had merely thought to hear some tale of a youth
ful peccadillo—a seduced and betrayed servant girl sent away. Instead he had discovered that the likeness was not a scandalous joke, but, because Sir Hart had married again—or rather had unknowingly committed bigamy, while his first wife was still alive—was more like a threat held over two generations of Hattons. A threat which—if it were revealed—would deprive them of legitimacy, land and title.

He thought of Ned's careless words to Almeria—that Sir Hart would not be presenting
him
with an unexpected cousin to claim the inheritance—and of the idle fashion in which he had dismissed the likeness and had brought Alan to Yorkshire. An act which had merely served to prove to his grandfather that the past is never over and that ‘the whirligig of time brings in his revenges', as Shakespeare had so aptly put it.

‘I ask you again,' he said, and he had no notion of how cold and stern he looked and sounded, so that his likeness to Sir Beauchamp was almost too much for Sir Hart. ‘Why tell me now?'

‘Perhaps…perhaps in order to call you grandson without insulting you.'