Hester Waring's Marriage

by Paula Marshall

  They were particularly impressed by the screen with the running tiger on it.

  Young Parker could not help regretting that he had callously rejected the rare piece of womanhood which Hester had become. Once he could have had her for the asking. He wondered, as Pat Ramsey was doing, how the brutal pirate they were assisting to his bed, and whose handiwork was lying battered in the lock-up, had managed to create such a rare treasure.

  They followed Hester up the massive staircase, past the Chinese idols and through the bronze doors. Hester began to light the numerous blue and white candles, thick in their porcelain holders, which stood about the lovely room.

  She was amused to see that the two officers’ eyes were everywhere after they had lifted Tom on to the big divan bed. She went into the dressing-room and emerged carrying a priceless Chinese bowl: the two men stood back to allow her to wipe Tom’s face, one side of which was rapidly turning purple.

  Miller’s arrival, after seeing to Tom’s horse and carriage, left them free to leave, full of what they had seen. Hester took them into the room where the tiger rampaged. A maid brought them sandwiches and Hester poured brandy for them into Tom’s priceless glasses.

  After a moment’s small talk she said coolly, ‘Now I must ask you to tell me exactly what happened before and after you found him.’

  The note of authority in her voice was such that Pat took her at her word. When he had finished she asked, ‘Have you any notion of who his attackers were—or why he was attacked?’

  Hester was privately of the opinion that this wretched business had something to do with Tom’s recently changed manner, but she was not about to tell Pat so.

  He shook his head. ‘No, I can tell you nothing. The most likely supposition is that they saw a splendid opportunity to rob him, the hour being so late. The brutes were so badly hurt that I doubt whether they will be able to tell the watch anything, either.’

  ‘He would not be kind,’ she said dismissively. ‘You have both been as considerate as I might have hoped. We cannot thank you enough.’

  They left. Although whether it was the house or Hester which impressed them the most, neither of them could have said.

  In the Mess on the following day they told their story and it was the house which they dwelt on.

  ‘You should have seen the bedroom,’ exclaimed Pat. ‘Lucy Wright didn’t exaggerate, she didn’t even tell all. It was filled with treasures: ivory gods, Chinese vases, silks, lacquered furniture—and the bed! You’ve never seen anything like it. No curtains, just pillows and bolsters everywhere and it was as big as a ballroom. I swear to God it was large enough for him to have entertained all Madame Phoebe’s girls at once if he’d had a mind to.’

  Tom recovered quickly from the ambush. He told Hester that it must have been a botched attempt at robbery. Both of the injured men were escaped convicts who had been living in the bush around Sydney and were known to be petty thieves. The one who could speak told the magistrates that they had been after Tom’s money and valuables: both Tom and Hester for their different reasons doubted this. Tom was sure that Cameron was behind it, but he had no proof.

  He had other things to worry him. His wagon trains, which operated between Sydney, Paramatta and other outlying settlements, were coming constantly under attack, each one worse than the last. They were not armed, but the bandits were, and in the most recent attack one of the accompanying men had been badly injured.

  Again it was supposed that escaped convicts and masterless men were responsible.

  ‘Any idea who might be behind it?’ Tom asked his wagon master, O’Neill. He had met him on the quay by the harbour.

  ‘None, except…’ He hesitated. ‘No one else is suffering, only us.’

  ‘Right. If we’re the target again on the next run, I shall ride with you on the one after that. I shall be armed, with half-a-dozen reliable ruffians I know of at my back. They’ll be armed, too. We can’t afford a running sore of this nature to damage us.’

  He said nothing more. Only time would tell whether the attacks on his wagons were merely coincidence or a sign that Jack had changed his tactics. Something else to keep from Hester, unfortunately.

  Governor Macquarie invited the Dilhornes to a small private dinner party. It was to be one of Hester’s last outings before her baby was born. The reason for the privacy was that the Governor wished to discuss some matters with Tom in an unofficial, rather than an official, capacity.

  He noted, with his usual kindly, slightly inquisitive concern for his fellow men, that all Sydney was right when it gossiped about heartless Tom Dilhorne’s loving care for his heavily pregnant wife. He could not miss the occasional touching of hands, the speed with which Tom moved to effect anything which might add to her comfort, or relieve her discomfort, nor the way in which they looked at each other. It made the Governor feel old even while it pleased him.

  After dinner, his wife helped Hester to her pretty withdrawing-room while her husband offered Tom brandy and cigars. Tom took a little of the first, refused the latter. He was wondering what all this was leading up to, and now thought it advisable to resume his business persona: during dinner he had been an exquisitely mannered English gentleman.

  ‘The thing is,’ began Macquarie after they had made small talk about the possibilities of exploring and settling further inland instead of being content to remain on the edge of the vast continent, ‘you know how hard I’ve been pressing you to allow me to nominate you as a magistrate.’ He paused.

  Tom nodded wisely. ‘But…’ he said, and said no more.

  Macquarie looked surprised, so Tom, for once, explained himself.

  ‘I’ve learned,’ he said, ‘that when someone looks as confidentially at me as you’ve just done, and then offers me that kind of statement in that tone of voice, that there’s always a but in it somewhere!’

  ‘Well, the but in it is this,’ said the Governor, laughing, ‘that while I want you to be a magistrate—and I know that you’ll be a good and fair one—magistrates don’t usually rearrange the features of Army officers in Madame Phoebe’s! I was prepared to overlook that, so my but refers to something else. It’s this. I have gained the impression that until recently you were prepared to agree to be a magistrate, but that something has changed your mind again. Without amplifying matters further, I believe that I know and understand why that has happened.’

  Tom smiled at him. ‘Lots of buts there—and I know that you understand why I wish to delay being nominated, for the moment.’

  The Governor nodded before murmuring, apparently inconsequentially, ‘You’ve recovered from the attack on you, I see, but I gather that you’re having other problems—or so gossip says.’

  ‘True, so you will understand that I don’t want anything to compromise my freedom of action at the moment.’

  ‘Understood—and here’s another but—but I want you to understand that when this affair has blown over satisfactorily for you, I want your word that you will agree to be a magistrate. I know that you will keep it and I am not going to allow you to wriggle your devious way out of doing as I wish. It is your Governor speaking, Mr Dilhorne, and not your friend. Otherwise I shall allow you no freedom of action while you settle your current problem as discreetly as possible.’

  Tom toasted him, and gave way at last to the Governor’s wishes. He could do no less. Macquarie had heard, God knew how, that Jack Cameron was behind the attacks on him and was giving him permission to settle the matter as he pleased. At the same time he was using it to blackmail him into becoming a magistrate—something which he had privately vowed never to do.

  Like it or not, respectability was going to claim him for its own!

  ‘Of course,’ he said, and for once drank long and hard.

  Events moved quickly after that. The week he had discussed with O’Neill passed, and in it his wagons and drays were attacked again. O’Neill, disturbed, arrived at Villa Dilhorne with the news.

  ‘It’s bad, Master Dilhorne. One w
agon load lost, on the Paramatta run, and two men injured.’

  ‘That’s it, then,’ said Tom. ‘I’m on the next as I promised. No one is to know that I shall be with you. Send word when you’re ready for me.’

  ‘Two or three days, that’s all.’

  Tom rubbed his close-shaved chin reflectively. ‘Make it four or five. I look a little respectable.’

  When O’Neill had gone, he returned to the living-room where Hester reclined on the settle, a book in her hand.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he told her. ‘I need to spend a few days in Paramatta—business takes me there, and I don’t care to leave you alone. Instead, you might like to pay a visit to Alan and Sarah while I’m away. Alan told me yesterday that he wishes to examine you at leisure, and you would have him and Sarah, to say nothing of baby John, for company.’

  Hester looked at him. She knew immediately that this was something to do with what she privately thought of as Tom’s trouble.

  ‘If it will make you happy, of course I will go. I always enjoy visiting the Kerrs.’

  ‘Then that’s settled,’ he said, kissing her.

  He whistled as he walked out to his gig. At least he did not need to add a deserted and vulnerable Hester to his other worries. Things might yet work themselves out.

  Tom arrived at Paramatta with O’Neill, three bullock drays, two horse-drawn wagons and the half-a-dozen ruffians he had promised O’Neill earlier.

  He was indistinguishable from them. He had neither washed nor shaved after he had left Hester with the Kerrs and he wore the coarse clothing of his early days in Sydney. He had passed Pat Ramsey on the road out of Sydney and Pat’s cursory glance had roved unseeing over him, over his scuffed boots stretched out in front of him, his clothes and face filthy, and his battered hat pushed to the back of his greasy head.

  At Paramatta they unloaded what had been ordered from Sydney and stocked up with farm produce, wooden arte-facts and the lengths of the coarse cloth which the farmers’ wives had woven. They waited for the evening before they set off home. Three of the ruffians were hidden under the awnings of the big drays, the other three helped with the loading, their arms concealed. Tom drove the first wagon.

  He had decided on a night drive home. O’Neill was sure that they had been watched from a distance and that the highwaymen might think a night attack easier than a day one. Tom had instructed his men to hide their arms and behave in a loose, drunken fashion.

  They were singing, seemingly half-drunk, when the attack came near some abandoned huts which the bush-rangers had been hiding in after following the wagons from Sydney. Half-a-dozen men suddenly appeared on horseback and ordered them to get down from, and abandon, the wagons. They fired a ball over Tom’s head and were obviously determined to make a real killing this time.

  ‘Be damned to that,’ Tom sang out. He then gave the shrill yell which was a signal for the counter-attack from the men hidden in the drays, whereupon a short skirmish followed.

  The thieves were not expecting such high-level resistance, and since Tom’s party had the advantage of surprise this time, they made short work of overcoming their attackers. Their leader, an Emancipist named Kaye, a noted Sydney scapegrace, was taken on one side after being captured.

  Tom left O’Neill to reorganise the wagons and drays which had been scattered in the attack and went into one of the huts, giving orders that Kaye should be brought in after about fifteen minutes. The delay was designed to unsettle him even more than the failed attack had done.

  The wretched Kaye was thrust into the candle-lit room. On a rough deal table in the middle of the room he saw Tom Dilhorne, a cigarillo clamped between his teeth and a pistol in his hand. Dilhorne was no longer the respectable man who walked Sydney, but had the grimy raffish air and dilapidated clothing of the young ruffian who had arrived to take the town by storm.

  Kaye did not immediately recognise him, so changed was he from the man he had become. His heart sank: he had forgotten how dangerous Dilhorne was.

  Tom took the cigarillo from between his teeth and tried Kaye’s nerves by making him wait while he ground it out on the table and then by gesturing at him with the pistol.

  ‘What do you propose that I do with you, Kaye?’

  His eyes were as hard and cruel as Kaye had ever seen them.

  ‘Don’t hand me over to the military, Master Dilhorne. I’ll surely swing this time.’

  ‘So you would. But what makes you think that I should want to?’

  He gesticulated with the pistol again. ‘A quick shot would rid me of a problem and save Sydney the cost of a trial.’

  Lifting the pistol, he pointed it at Kaye and almost absent-mindedly sighted down the barrel. Kaye gave a great gulp.

  ‘Don’t do that, Master Dilhorne. Your life for mine would be a fair exchange.’ His voice quavered on the last word.

  Tom did not lower the pistol, merely looked over the top of it.

  ‘Would it, indeed? Now what makes you say that?’

  ‘Put that thing down, and I’ll tell you.’

  Tom said agreeably, ‘You’ll tell me with it up, or you won’t be telling anyone anything.’

  ‘It might go off accidental-like.’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t. I never do anything accidental, Kaye. Don’t try my patience. I’m not quite myself tonight.’

  Kaye thought that he’d never seen anyone more like himself than Tom Dilhorne sitting there, threatening to send him into eternity.

  ‘Right then, here it is. There’s a nob wants to do for you, Dilhorne, and he wants it bad. So bad he paid Fitzpatrick’s lot to do you over a few weeks back. Poor Fitz made a botch of it, and won’t be telling anyone anything again. So then the nob hired me to loot your wagons to do you more hurt. He’d see you dead if he could, God’s truth.’

  Tom put the pistol down and looked at the miserable wretch before him. His own suspicions had been confirmed. There had been nothing accidental about the attack in the street, never mind the shot which had whistled through his hat earlier.

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘This nob must have a name. Tell me, I’m curious. What did he pay you with? The man I’m thinking of has no money.’

  ‘Nor he has, Master Dilhorne, but he’s privy to the garrison’s liquor stores these days and that’s better than money.’

  ‘So it is,’ rasped Tom, ‘but if you don’t come out with his name I’ll kill you where you stand.’

  ‘But you know his name, don’t you, Master Dilhorne? It’s Captain Cameron, whose pretty face you spoiled.’

  Tom picked up the pistol and pointed it at Kaye—who let out a shriek of despair at the sight—and fired it at Kaye’s shoulder. Kaye fell to the ground, clutching himself.

  ‘I told you what you wanted, Master Dilhorne. A life for a life, you agreed, and you broke your word.’

  Tom threw the smoking pistol on the table as the door opened to admit O’Neill, who grinned when he saw the writhing Kaye.

  ‘No, I didn’t break my word,’ remarked Tom affably. ‘I offered you your life—I said nothing about your shoulder. O’Neill, see that he gets to Dr Kerr. As for you, Kaye, that should teach you not to interfere with me again.’ He thrust his hand into his pocket, took out a guinea and handed it to O’Neill.

  ‘Pay the doctor with that, and give Kaye the change.’

  Once O’Neill had led Kaye out, telling him that in his opinion Master Dilhorne had grown a deal too soft these days, and that he, O’Neill, would have had Kaye’s guts for garters for this and the other nights’ work, Tom reloaded his pistol.

  His expression when he rammed the ball home would have shocked, but not surprised, Hester. So, his suppositions had been correct. Jack was running around like a mad dog trying to kill and ruin him. Now he had several levers he might use against him. To begin with, O’Connell might like to know who was responsible for looting the Regimental stores. The question was, how could he let O’Connell know what Cameron was doing without his knowing where the information cam
e from?

  Tom laughed. Guile was sure to find a way: it always did.

  After Tom had returned from Paramatta and had brought her home again from the Kerrs, Hester’s fear that he was hiding something from her was as strong as ever. He said little about his time there other than to tell her some nonsense about renewing contracts with the locals—an explanation which she thought would scarcely have deceived a child!

  Tom Dilhorne to spend a week renegotiating minor agreements which Joseph Smith could have dealt with in an afternoon! What did he take her for? She said nothing to him, though. Two could play at that game. Sooner or later she would discover what had really been going on.

  When he had finished talking nonsense to her—she was lying on the settle and Tom was seated on the floor beside her while she stroked his head—she said almost idly, ‘I trust that your business at Paramatta was successful enough to warrant your journey there.’

  He glanced sharply at her but her face gave nothing away and the stroking never paused. Mrs Slyboots, he thought with some amusement, giving as little away as I do.

  ‘Tolerable, my dear, tolerable. I have to keep O’Neill and his cohorts in a good humour—wouldn’t do to think that I’ve lost interest in them. It’s a problem with having so many irons in the fire.’

  ‘Oh, indeed, Mr Dilhorne.’

  Was her tone slightly satiric, or was he imagining it? He debated about telling her the truth, but Alan had privately warned him how frail she was, and that she needed loving care.

  Instead he rose to his feet and walked across the room to pour the one glass of brandy which he allowed himself each night.

  ‘Water, my dear?’ he queried. Alan had recently advised against her drinking spirits—they might damage the child she was carrying.

  Hester watched him standing sharp against the candlelight. Her stroking hand had lifted his sandy-blond hair around his head, and when he turned towards her, she caught her breath at the sight of him. The passion which she felt for him was all the stronger because of their enforced abstinence.