‘Splendidly said, Miss Waring. Nursery rhymes and easy sums are the thing, I see. You have set my mind at rest. I shall not be haunted by thoughts of overset children.’
Hester gritted her teeth to prevent the giggles from escaping. ‘You may rest easy, Mr Dilhorne. I have no intention of oversetting them. Neither do I intend to teach them percentages or the rudiments of Hebrew.’
Her whole face, her body, her speech had changed. She was warm and living where previously she had been cold and inanimate. She was now twitting him with the memory of the foolish questions of Godfrey Burrell. Defeated Miss Waring had flown away, to be replaced by a lively girl who possessed a sharp wit and was not afraid to use it to try to set Mr Tom Dilhorne down. He decided to reward her immediately.
‘Excellent. I am glad to hear it. I shall be exceeding happy to report to the Board that I find your performance most satisfactory, Miss Waring.’
‘Thank you, Mr Dilhorne. I should not like to think of you being haunted, either by overset children—or anything else.’
Bravo, Miss Waring, was his internal response. His provocation had brought colour to her cheeks, a sparkle to her eye and her whole body vibrated with a combination of amusement and indignation. Judging by her expression, her opinion of Mr Tom Dilhorne would have been interesting if made aloud.
He bowed to her, she bowed back and ordered the little boys to bow to him, and the little girls to curtsy.
‘Splendid, very well done,’ was his comment to this. ‘You are obviously teaching them their manners as well as Mother Goose. I regret that I must leave you after so short a time, Miss Waring, but I have, alas, a meeting to attend. I remain your most humble and obedient servant,’ and he bowed elaborately on the last word.
You were never my servant and you may go to the devil for all I care, thought Hester, flashing him her most demure smile while she bowed to him. But he had seen the look in her eye and he knew what it meant: Miss Hester Waring was inwardly roasting Mr Tom Dilhorne again!
‘What are you doing here, Tom Dilhorne?’ asked Madame Phoebe, née Fanny Dawkins, who ran a most respectable gaming hell and brothel in one of Sydney’s newest streets, most such houses being found in less reputable quarters like The Rocks. Only the rich, the outwardly respectable and the officers from the garrison patronised Phoebe’s, particularly since you could get a good meal there, although how she managed that, Sydney always being short of good food, was a mystery known only to herself and Tom Dilhorne. Better than that, she ran an honest house and provided clean girls, so authority winked at her presence in a respectable suburb.
Tom, who had changed into his working clothes after leaving Hester, said nothing. He had been helping to unload cargo on the docks since he never refused even manual labour when the need arose, one of the reasons why those who worked for him were loyal. He rarely explained himself, and did not care to tell Phoebe that he was at a loose end since he and Mary had parted company.
In his earlier, wilder days he had been a constant customer at Phoebe’s, in her first house on the edge of The Rocks, not for the girls, but to use it as a meeting place for business and to play at cards—but never at dice.
Boredom had brought him back after a long absence. He knew that the officers of the garrison and the richer Exclusives and Emancipists would be there and it would be an opportunity to discover whether his old skills had grown rusty. The mixture of intuition and sheer cold calculation which made him such a formidable businessman was equally as formidable when applied to cards—which was why he never became involved with dice. Games of pure chance held little appeal: there was nothing for him to control.
In the past his presence at the table had deterred some, but was a challenge to others. To say that you had beaten Tom Dilhorne was almost an accolade and one that was but rarely earned.
‘It’s his memory, isn’t it?’ said green young Ensign Osborne to Captain Pat Ramsey, as they watched Tom who, before playing, was drinking with Madame Phoebe. She was known to have a soft spot for him. There were those who would not have believed the truth that they had never been lovers.
‘I never get into bed with anyone I’m going to do business with,’ Tom had once said, years earlier, to an impertinent question about his relationship with her.
‘Parker says that he seems to remember every card he plays—and yours as well. I’ve always wanted to see him in action, but he’s not been here for some time. What brings him here tonight, I wonder?’
‘His memory, is it?’ said Pat, who had lost to Tom more than once. ‘I doubt if it’s as simple as that. He knows the odds, does Tom, and he knows men, and it’s something you can’t teach anyone. I shouldn’t get into a game with him, if I were you, Osborne. Depend upon it, he’d fleece you.’
‘He wouldn’t fleece me,’ sneered Jack Cameron, who had come up as Pat was speaking. Cameron’s own bad temper and rather surprising good luck seemed to go together.
‘No?’ Pat shrugged. ‘You’ve not played against him, have you? Is it because he’s an Emancipist?’ For Jack, who had little beyond his pay, had become even more fierce in his condemnation of Emancipists since Dilhorne had refused to sell him his horse.
‘Damn him, no,’ snarled Jack, flinging himself into a chair. ‘His money is as good as anyone else’s, ain’t it? It’s chance I’ve not met him on the tables. He gave up coming here before I arrived from home. We’ll see how good he is tonight. I’ve a mind for a game with a so-called master.’
He looked around for those he considered easy marks to make up a table. ‘I can see Parker, but where’s young Wright these days? I thought he’d be here tonight.’
‘Oh, Frank.’ Pat yawned. ‘He’s a dull dog since he married Lucy Middleton. She won’t let him play often. He rarely visits Phoebe’s now.’
‘Damme if I’d let any skirt, wife or not, keep me from play,’ said Jack contemptuously. He swung around in his chair and shouted rudely across the room to Tom.
‘Hey, Dilhorne, they tell me you’re a master. Why not take a hand with us and let me find out? Be a pleasure to take an Emancipist down.’
Tom regarded Cameron mildly. He was drinking brandy and water and, since he had come to play, his glass contained a great deal of water and very little brandy. While other men drank deep while they played, Tom only seemed to. More than one of the glasses of rum, brandy and fierce rot-gut whisky which he appeared to swallow had ended up watering Madame Phoebe’s potted palms or the floor.
‘Happen I will,’ he drawled, and made his way over to the table.
Tom knew full well that Jack Cameron’s reputation as a gambler, both on the tables and at other games of chance, was suspect. However, to accuse a man of cheating at cards was something few cared to do.
There was a code of honour about these things and Jack’s cheating would have had to be sufficiently marked for anything to be said or done. A false accusation, or one which could not be sustained, would ruin the accuser, instead of the accused. Those caught cheating at cards or dice became pariahs. Honour demanded that they resign from the army and decent society.
Tom knew of, but cared little about, codes of honour. Gentlemen invented them to pass the time. The only code for which he cared was that governing survival. To survive you did anything, played any trick, destroyed enemies, defended friends fiercely, although if you were sensible you didn’t have too many of them. You kept your given word, but only if others kept theirs, and avoided stupidity—such as cheating at cards.
Above all, you watched your back. Honour was keeping to your own rules, not some imaginary niceties which merely served to perpetuate social differences.
So he began to play against Jack, using his excellent memory as the young officer had said, calculating the odds, and finally employing his intuition which rarely failed him at cards, as in life.
He soon knew that Jack was cheating, and that most of the other players were too green, or too drunk, to care. Too drunk to notice that the brandy in the bottle before Tom, its
level dropping, was not going down his throat. He thought, too, that Jack also was not as drunk as he appeared to be, and slowly he and Tom were the only consistent winners.
Tom’s success in life was partly based on his knowledge of how far to go in any enterprise. His cold eyes on Jack, he rapidly came to the conclusion that he was going to come off second best in any game he played against a man whose skill was nearly equal to his own, but who had the advantage of misusing the cards by false deals and shuffles and sheer sleight of hand. The deck had probably been marked, but Tom had no interest in how that had been done.
He had no objection to losing in fair play, but he had also no intention of enriching the grinning sharper opposite to him. Neither did he want the trouble of exposing him, and to cheat him back—using his own conjuring skills—would be to invite trouble for himself, the criminal outsider.
After a decent interval he stood up. His winnings had diminished in the last few hands. He scooped up his remaining counters, staggered realistically, yawned and said, ‘I’ve had enough. Time for bed.’
Jack leaned forward, sneering. ‘Scared, Dilhorne? Frightened of losing? Take another hand. Let’s see who’s master.’
Tom was all drunken charm. ‘Oh, you’re master, right enough—but of what, I’d not like to say.’
He staggered again, picked up the brandy bottle and in his turn grinned at Jack in the deathly silence which had followed his last words.
Jack, his face now purple, glared furiously at him. ‘What’s that, Dilhorne? What’s that? I’ll not have an ex-felon impugn my honour.’
Tom swayed, held on to the table to steady himself, waved the brandy bottle and took a long pull at it, a genuine one, this time. ‘Impugn your honour, is it? I was merely wondering what you were best at. Picquet or Hazard, which would you say?’
His speech was slurred but his eyes were impudent. The watching men, who ranged from the officers of the garrison through moneyed settlers down to a few who had come to see the fun rather than play, like Jack had the choice of taking his words at their face value, or of seeing them as a veiled accusation of cheating—which both Tom and Jack knew that they were.
‘Put up, or shut up,’ Jack roared. ‘Dam’ well say what you mean!’
Tom sat down with a crash clutching the brandy bottle to his chest. ‘What I mean is, Cameron, I’ll not play with you again. Not tonight, not tomorrow, or ever. You’re too purely skilful for a poor ex-felon.’
His last words came out in a clear, though mumbled, drawl, and after he had finished speaking he fell headlong under the table, still clutching his bottle. He lay quite still while the remaining liquor in it ran along the floor to soak his shirt and breeches.
Pat Ramsey, who had left the game a loser, much earlier, began to laugh. Like many of his fellow officers, he had long had his suspicions of Jack. He had neither dared to voice them nor stop playing with him, which would have been tantamount to an accusation.
But in a few well-chosen words the master of deviousness who lay prone under the table, had said what everyone in the room thought—and there was nothing Jack could do about it. To go on insisting that Tom had accused him of cheating would have been to protest too much. If there were those who suspected that Tom’s drunkenness was a masterly ploy, there were none who cared to test it.
What was worse, the accusation, however cloaked, had been made, and there were those around the room who would now use Tom’s words as an excuse not to play with Jack—he was a master. It would be a folly to throw money away playing against him.
Lying under the table, eyes closed, Tom laughed to himself at the altercation which followed. Jack loudly expressed his intention to pull Tom up, and deal with him. He was told not to be a fool.
‘When a man is incapable through drink,’ drawled Pat Ramsey, delighted to see Jack put down for once, ‘you can’t attack him for no reason at all.’
He smiled sweetly in Jack’s enraged face. ‘He’s just complimented you. What’s wrong with you, man?’
There was a lot wrong with Jack, but one thing he knew. Somehow he would get even with that damned felon Dilhorne before he left this benighted hole to which he and the 73rd had been consigned.
I’m happy down here, thought Tom, not so uncomfortable that I can’t sleep. Which he did, tired by the day’s exertions, his last memory, unaccountably, being of Hester Waring mocking him that morning, until, as dawn approached, Madame Phoebe arrived, stared at the recumbent bodies littering the floor, and took the trouble to prod Tom awake and push him to her room.
‘Don’t try to tell me you were drunk, Tom Dilhorne, I know better.’
About the time that Tom was having his fun with Jack Cameron, Hester heard that Tom and Mary Mahoney had parted—and was childishly pleased at the news.
Sydney thought that it was Tom who had thrown Mary out, particularly when she and Jem Wilkinson began to show signs of setting up in marriage. The breach was put down to Tom’s jealousy. No one knew the truth, nor that Tom had settled money on Mary.
Now the monster knows what it’s like to suffer a bit, Hester’s Mentor said uncharitably. Having an unfaithful mistress will be a good lesson for him. Teach him he can’t have his own way all his life. She sang around the house that afternoon to Mrs Cooke’s surprise and pleasure.
Mrs Cooke was, however, unpleasantly surprised to see that, despite her new salary, Hester’s living standards did not improve. She was not to know that Larkin, who had bought up all Fred’s remaining debts, had upped the rate of interest and consequently the quarterly amount to be paid, after he had heard the news of her appointment. Hester found that she was not much better off than before she had begun to teach at the school.
But she liked her work there, though, and this, together with the good news about Tom Dilhorne and Mary Mahoney, put a slight spring in her step. She even accepted Mrs Cooke’s invitation to take tea with her and her neighbour, Mrs Smith, and Mrs Smith’s little daughter, Kate.
Kate was a pretty child and she and Hester got on famously. After tea, Mrs Cooke, knowing this and wanting to have a good gossip with Mrs Smith about matters not fit for a single young woman’s ears, suggested to Hester that she take Kate into the backyard to show her the latest batch of newly hatched chicks.
She and Mrs Smith had just settled down to a comfortable chat when there was a knock on the door. Mrs Cooke’s surprise on seeing who her visitor was could hardly have been greater.
‘Why, Master Dilhorne, whatever can you want with me?’
He was as spruce as usual, but had left his cane behind and was carrying a small parcel of books under his arm. His bow to her was as punctilious as though she were the Governor’s wife.
‘Not with you, Mrs Cooke. I wonder if you would allow me to come in to speak to Miss Waring?’
Mrs Cooke smoothed down her apron. Overwhelmed by his magnificence, she wished that she had put on her best black dress.
‘Come in, come in,’ and she held her front door open.
Tom entered her small parlour and bowed to a curtsying Mrs Smith, also dazzled by his sartorial splendours. Putting his parcel on the table, he looked around for Hester.
‘Miss Waring is outside,’ said Mrs Cooke. ‘I’ll fetch her in for you.’
‘No need,’ replied Tom, ‘I’ll speak to her there—no need to interrupt your tea party.’
He walked through the lean-to kitchen and stopped at the door to the yard.
Hester Waring was on her hands and knees on the hard ground among a brood of chickens. Sitting by her was a small girl and, while he watched, Hester carefully picked up one of the fluffy yellow balls and placed it gently in the little girl’s hands. She then rose, took the child in her arms and sat on the low brick wall at the end of the yard. She kissed the child’s soft cheek as she did so.
Tom moved forward and Hester became suddenly aware of his presence. She grew quite still, like a frightened animal, ready to fly, and her grasp of the child tightened involuntarily. The liveliness
of a moment ago which had transformed her face, had disappeared, as it had done when he had caught her by chance in the schoolroom.
‘Mr Dilhorne?’ she said, her voice quite composed, whatever her inward fears.
Tom walked carefully towards her, being careful not to tread on the little balls of fluff while he did so. Hester could not suppress a smile at the sight of the big man in his finery treading so daintily.
‘You may laugh, Miss Waring, but I have no desire to slaughter any of Mrs Cooke’s flock.’
‘I was not laughing, Mr Dilhorne,’ Hester informed him primly.
‘Pray do not tell me that, Miss Waring. You were distinctly about to laugh. You are smiling now.’
Hester put on her most serious face. ‘I am not smiling now, Mr Dilhorne. I advise you to stand where you are. The chickens will be safer.’
‘Excellent advice, Miss Waring. I can see that your appointment was a wise one. You are able to instruct the older among us, as well as the children.’
‘You have a reason to speak to me, Mr Dilhorne?’
‘Even better, Miss Waring. You remind me that I am being remiss, and also inform me that my presence in Mrs Cooke’s yard can only be because I wish to speak to you, and not herd newly hatched chicks.’
Hester could not prevent herself from laughing aloud at his bland impudence, which served to exorcise her fear of him and silence her inward Mentor who saw him as a ruffian and a monster.
‘I fear that we never seem to engage in a proper conversation, Mr Dilhorne.’
‘I see nothing improper about this one, Miss Waring. I have merely called to bring you the reading primers which Jardine told me that you needed.’
Hester wondered briefly why it had not been left to Jardine to give them to her, and why it was necessary for the great Mr Tom Dilhorne to act as an errand boy. She decided that this was not a profitable line to follow with him, given his ability to turn conversation on its head.
Their meeting followed a more normal pattern thereafter. Tom asked to sit by her on the wall. He petted the little girl while he questioned Hester idly about her work with the children. Except that somehow, in the middle of this, she absent-mindedly handed him Kate and the chicken to hold without so much as asking him if she might.
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