The men around Tom were still reluctant to let him go. Who knew but that he might follow Jack and end what he had begun, as he had promised?
He, and they, were saved by the arrival of Madame Phoebe whom the uproar had brought downstairs, and who had watched it, silent, from the beginning.
She had waited for a suitable moment to intervene, and seeing instantly that the worst was over, imposed her authority. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? Let go of Tom immediately. What’s the matter with you all? Has it got so that officers and gentlemen can’t behave themselves when they’ve a bottle of wine in them?
‘Tell Captain Cameron he’s not welcome here until I give him leave to come again, and he can refrain from mentioning a decent woman’s name in a whore-house. Go home, Tom Dilhorne, letting you loose among gentlemen is like setting a tiger at kittens.’
Tom laughed at the offended expressions of the military as she walked to the damaged gaming table.
‘God love you, Tom Dilhorne, can’t you settle your affairs without ruining a poor woman’s business? I shall want recompense for this, mind.’
Tom suddenly felt wonderfully happy. The thought of Jack Cameron’s mutilated face filled him with savage pleasure. Madame Phoebe’s knowing manipulation of the assembled gentlemen added to it.
‘Recompense you shall have, my darling.’ He retrieved Jack’s discarded shako from the floor and tossed it to Parker. ‘Pass the hat around like a good fellow, Captain Parker—and pay for your fun at Madame Phoebe’s.’
All Sydney was agog. Typically, in what was a frontier society, everybody knew everybody else’s business. The story was too good not to be told. How cool, collected Tom Dilhorne had reverted to his wild origins and wrecked, not only Jack Cameron’s face, but Madam Phoebe’s gaming hell—for the story grew with the telling.
The cream of the joke was that, at the end, he had somehow made the officers of the 73rd pay for the damage, and when the hat had reached him he had put his hands in his pockets, and said that since he had been considerate enough to provide the entertainment he didn’t see why he should have to pay for it as well!
The only person in Sydney who wasn’t enjoying the joke was Hester. No one spoke to her of it. She had heard Tom arrive home in the small hours of the morning. He had taken the stairs two at a time, and later she had heard him whistling while he prepared for bed. Despite herself she longed to know what had made him so happy, and the next morning at breakfast he had sat smiling at her with an expression on his face which, had it been on any other man, she would have called daft.
He had decided to tease her a little, to have a grand reconciliation that night, because by her manner she appeared to be ready for one without explanation. He had laughed to himself at her bursting curiosity and her determination not to give in to it. Oh, we’ll celebrate tonight, Mrs Dilhorne, see if we don’t!
When he left her to go into Sydney he had kissed the top of her head murmuring, ‘Tell you all this evening, Mrs Dilhorne’, which provoked her mightily. Nevertheless, as she watched him drive off, her face had already softened, and downtrodden Hester Waring had disappeared into a limbo from which she was never to return.
She decided to go into Sydney to do some shopping. She was perhaps the only person in the town not to be aware of what had occurred at Madame Phoebe’s the night before, but she immediately knew that something odd had happened involving Tom and herself when she saw people’s reaction to her, the stares, and the smiles.
She walked into Tom’s Emporium. Every head turned as she entered. Conversation stopped, to start again. She could hear her name and his being whispered, which was nothing new, except that this time her presence was creating even more excitement than usual.
When she reached home again the stable-hand who had driven her into Sydney, greatly daring, thought that she ought to know how the master had defended her good name, but after a stammering beginning he fell silent. This left her to understand that somehow, Tom, the military and herself were involved in some incident of which everyone knew but herself. Well, if the military were concerned, then Lucy Wright would be sure to know of it.
She put on a new gown, something which Tom had picked out for her before their quarrel, and with it she wore the new bonnet, parasol and the parure of garnets he had given her. Thus attired for war, she ordered the carriage again and visited Lucy, who was delighted to see her after a longish absence.
‘Oh, Hester, you do look splendid! Did Tom choose that for you? I will say that for such a masculine man he has the most remarkable taste when it comes to women’s clothes. More’s the pity he no longer serves in the shop.’
‘Yes,’ said Hester briefly. She did not want to talk about Tom, but she did want to find out what the gossip was all about. She had learned patience in a hard school, though, and it was only after she had admired the baby, drunk some tea and Lucy was fetching out her needlework that she raised the topic which lay behind her visit.
She looked shyly at Lucy and asked, ‘Has Frank said anything to you about some trouble involving Tom and the military?’
Lucy put down her sewing with a gasp. ‘Oh, Hester, don’t you know? Hasn’t Tom said anything?’
Hester’s reply was a model of the deviousness which she was learning from her husband. ‘You know Tom.’
‘Of course, well, perhaps it would be best for you to know. I can’t tell you all the details because Frank thought that they weren’t fit for my ears, me being a virtuous female and all that. He didn’t want to tell me that it happened at Madame Phoebe’s—I’m not supposed to know that such a place exists. I ask you! How could I not know?
‘But he told me enough to make out that Tom went to Madame Phoebe’s last night when all the garrison’s officers were there, and had some sort of argument with Jack Cameron and Jack got the worst of it, Frank was there, you see, and saw it all. Apparently Tom half-wrecked the place, too, and the joke of it is, Frank says, is that somehow Tom made the officers pay for the damage while he got away scot-free! Typical Tom, if I may say so.’
She laughed, and was plainly not going to enlarge on what had caused the argument.
Hester was not having this. ‘What were they quarrelling about, Lucy?’
Lucy hesitated, and then decided to tell Hester as much as she knew, which was very little. Frank had decided not to tell her exactly what Jack had said, or Tom had done— Lucy’s supposed virtue again.
‘It was something to do with you and Tom. Captain Cameron was drunk and insulting. Frank thinks he had been telling lies about you and Tom.’
Hester closed her eyes. Then opened them again. ‘You mean Tom attacked him because of me?’
‘Yes. Frank says he made an awful mess of Jack’s face. He wouldn’t tell me how. I must say, Hester, I should be happy to think that Frank would be as fierce as Tom if I were insulted in a gaming hell or anywhere else, for that matter.’
‘Why did Tom wreck the place?’
‘Well, he didn’t exactly wreck all of it. Just the gaming table and what was on it when he went for Jack.’
Both girls contemplated the scene Lucy’s words conjured up. They knew so little of the places where men and ‘those women’ went that it was hard for them to work out exactly what might have happened.
So many vital facts were missing, and only Hester knew that Tom had undoubtedly been punishing Jack for what he had said at the ball, for bribing Mrs Hackett, and for any further insults offered at Madame Phoebe’s.
‘Frank says Jack wants to call Tom out—fight a duel—but there’s even an argument about that. Frank says that no one can decide who is the challenging party, Tom or Jack, since Tom broke all the normal rules governing disputes between gentlemen.’
‘But why does it matter who challenges whom?’ asked Hester, baffled by the silly intricacies, or so they seemed to her, of the gentlemen’s code of honour. ‘In any case, I don’t think that Tom sees himself as a gentleman.’
‘Oh, it does matter.’ Lucy was
earnest. ‘You see, the challenged man gets the right to decide which weapons to use—and no one knew who challenged whom. Was it Tom when he hit Jack? Or was it Jack challenging Tom because Tom hit him?’
She suddenly laughed. ‘Yes, it is silly, isn’t it?’
‘Tom would say it was silly,’ agreed Hester.
She suddenly felt flattered that Tom had attacked Jack on her behalf. He deserved it for the dreadful things he had made her think of Tom, and the awful way he had mocked her for her lack of looks. She suddenly knew who had been telling Jack Cameron tales, and that the bet Tom was supposed to have made about getting her into bed had never existed.
With the thought came the memory of Tom’s face when he had pleaded with her on the night of the ball. She turned slowly away from Lucy and began to collect her belongings. He didn’t deserve her stupid anger, he didn’t. Not a man who had wrecked Madame Phoebe’s for her.
‘Must you go so soon?’ asked Lucy. ‘I haven’t told you about the guinea.’
Hester looked at Lucy. Mrs Hackett’s guinea. ‘It started the fight,’ she said slowly.
‘Yes. How did you know that, Hester?’
‘I didn’t. I guessed.’
She must go home immediately and get to the bottom of this.
‘I’m sorry, I have to leave you now, Lucy.’ She smiled a dazzling smile, and looked better than she had done since the ball.
Lucy watched her walk determinedly to her carriage. Now, what on earth did I say to her to make her leave in such a hurry? Frank said that Jack claimed that she and Tom were at outs. But I don’t believe it. Not the way she looked at me every time I said his name.
That afternoon Jack Cameron took his two black eyes, his broken nose, his swollen mouth and loosened teeth into Colonel O’Connell’s room at the Barracks. Previously, he had not left his quarters, except to consult Dr Kerr, who had told him that apart from his broken nose, for which he could do nothing, everything else, including his teeth, would mend, given time.
His opening words were peremptory. ‘I want that bastard Dilhorne arrested, put in chains, and charged with aggravated assault.’
O’Connell looked at him with weary distaste, but spoke to him as a man, not as a superior officer to an inferior.
‘You know I can’t do that, Jack. Much as I would like to see Dilhorne in gaol, I can’t do anything to him over this.’
Jack pointed to his damaged face. ‘The brute nearly killed me last night. Isn’t that sufficient?’
‘You know it isn’t. You provoked him. If you’d merely insulted him, well and good. I’d have had him in irons by now. But you insulted his wife, and whatever he is, she’s a lady, and what’s more, there’s never been a breath of scandal attached to her. Other, of course, than that she married Dilhorne. But that ass Fred Waring left her so dirt poor that marriage to him was a better alternative than starvation or Madame Phoebe’s.’
Jack began to bluster. ‘Well, all I can say is that you’ve been misinformed. Who told you that?’
‘Parker gave me a full account last night.’
‘Parker!’ Jack’s sneer was as vicious as he could make it. ‘That green boy. It’s what I might have expected of him.’
‘Even you, Jack, can’t call Pat Ramsey green,’ said O’Connell wearily, ‘and his account matches Parker’s.’
‘So Dilhorne gets off scot-free, and he won’t even give me satisfaction.’
‘Oh, do shut up, Jack. You should learn to hold your liquor.’
Jack’s expression was murderous. ‘It’s the thought of that swine walking around Sydney as though he owns it that I can’t bear.’
‘Oh, come on, Jack. He does own Sydney, or very near,’ growled O’Connell. ‘No, Jack, cut your losses, and make sure that you pick an easier target next time. If you don’t know by now that Dilhorne’s dangerous, you never will.’
Jack turned away in disgust, but was brought back by O’Connell’s next comment. ‘Plain, I hear you called her. You haven’t been looking at her lately, Jack. Loath though I am to say it, since she married Dilhorne that girl has been transformed. She’s turning into a regular little beauty.’
O’Connell’s last words rankled. A regular little beauty, is she? thought Jack furiously. I can’t say I’ve noticed it, but if O’Connell says so, there must be something there. He’s a ladies’ man, is O’Connell. I wonder how the devil I can pay that vile brute back—through his wife or his business might be the easiest, but best of all would be to destroy him, see him dead!
Tom sat down to dinner that evening still bathed in the remnants of the exhilaration which he had felt ever since he had assaulted Jack Cameron. He had seen Alan Kerr that morning, and Alan had twitted him on what he had done to Cameron. ‘I’d forgotten what a bruiser you are, Tom. You’ve come such a long way since we first landed in New South Wales.’
Tom looked at his old friend. ‘He insulted Hester,’ he said simply.
‘I know. I don’t need to tell you that the story’s all round Sydney today. Did you really have to wreck Madame Phoebe’s as well, though?’
Tom burst out laughing. ‘Is that what they’re saying? No such thing. I merely rearranged the table when I improved Cameron’s looks. I owe his fellow officers a debt of gratitude. They stopped me from killing him—which would have been the end of me.’
He paused. ‘You know, I thought that it was all gone. That I was a civilised man. When he said that about Hester, added to his other misdeeds, I was eighteen again, ready to kill if I were crossed. Not that I ever did, mind. But the thought was always there.’
He shrugged. ‘There’s a lesson for me to control my temper. Funny, though, if he’d stuck to insulting me, I’d have laughed in his face. It was Hester I could have killed him for.’
Now, sitting opposite to her, Tom wondered what had caused Hester’s slightly flushed face, and why she had chosen to wear the garnets he had given her, and the matching gown whose deep crimson matched her cheeks. She seldom wore so elaborate a toilette when they were alone together.
The forlorn look which had returned on the night of the ball was gone, and she ate her soup avidly. He was about to ask her why she was thus honouring their table when she looked up, and said to him in the bantering tone of their conversations before the quarrel, ‘What were you doing in Madame Phoebe’s last night, Mr Dilhorne?’
‘What do men usually do in Madame Phoebe’s, Mrs Dilhorne?’ he countered.
She primmed her mouth comically. ‘I don’t like to say, Mr Dilhorne.’
‘Well…I wasn’t doing that.’
‘Then what were you doing?’
‘I thought I was paying a business call, Mrs Dilhorne, but then I found out that I was in a mill with one of O’Connell’s officers. I think I may have improved Jack Cameron’s manners, but I can’t say the same for his face.’
‘Oh, Mr Dilhorne, it’s the talk of Sydney! Tell me, I long to know, why did you wreck Madame Phoebe’s?’
His face was as comical as hers had been a few minutes earlier. ‘How many times do I have to say that I didn’t wreck Madame Phoebe’s? Shall I get old Smithson to print me a bill saying so?’
‘Well, if you didn’t, Mr Dilhorne, and of course, I accept your word, what were the officers paying for?’
‘A damaged table, Mrs Dilhorne, and some spilled wine—all done in a good cause.’
‘For me, Tom?’ Her voice was soft. ‘Because of what Jack said at the ball—and at Madame Phoebe’s?’
He nodded. ‘For you, Hester. Always and only for you.’
They stared at one another across the table.
Hester put her spoon down as he rose from his chair and walked towards her. He knelt down by her side, took her hand and kissed it. ‘I am forgiven, then?’
‘There was never anything to forgive. It is you who should forgive me. You were right. Mrs Hackett told tales, and Jack Cameron was lying. I don’t know why I didn’t believe you.’
‘Because you were hurt by what you overhe
ard.’
‘I was as unkind as I was at the Christmas Party. It was very wrong of me.’
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ he said gently, kissing her hand again.
‘Oh, but it does. I was cruel.’ She paused. ‘I think that it was partly because I couldn’t believe that I was intended to be happy, and partly because of all that my mother and father said about you. When Lucy told me this afternoon what you did for me, I felt guilty all over again.’
‘Lucy told you.’ He was amused.
‘Well, not everything. Only the gossip and a little of what Frank said. I’m wearing the garnets, Mr Dilhorne.’
‘So I see. I think you’d better take them off. I want to do dreadful things to you, Mrs Dilhorne… On second thoughts, keep them on.’
She leaned against him and put her lips to his cheek. ‘Anything you like, anything you like.’
‘This is what I like.’ He picked her up, and threw her over his shoulder as though she were a sack of coal. She hung there, laughing. ‘Oh, Mr Dilhorne, whatever will you do next?’
‘This,’ he repeated, and strode through the door. At the bottom of the stairs he met Mrs Hackett carrying the roast, the little maidservant behind her.
‘Ah, Mrs Hackett,’ he said, swinging around so that Hester’s face, scarlet with amusement was hidden from her. ‘We shall not be wanting dinner tonight. You and the maid may eat it yourselves.’
He laughed into her dumbfounded face. ‘And you have my full permission, nay, it is an order, to tell the whole of Sydney that Tom Dilhorne is taking his wife to bed tonight!’
Leaving Mrs Hackett gasping behind him, he took the stairs at a run, and passing through the bronze doors, he deposited his burden on his bed, there to make love to her in a passionate frenzy which did not even wait for such niceties as the removal of clothes, until at last they lay, laughing, fulfilled and exhausted, together again, and this time for good.
Chapter Eleven
Those first months after they had re-consummated their marriage were for Hester a time when everything was new and exciting, when she and Tom were as wild and irresponsible in their loving as the tigers she sometimes imagined they were.
Hester Waring's Marriage Page 18