Hester Waring's Marriage (17 page)

Madame Phoebe greeted him affectionately.

‘Thought you wouldn't come here again, Tom, after you'd married gentry.'

He grinned at her, ‘You know better than that, Phoebe. Besides, Mrs D. won't mind me coming here, so long as we confine affairs to business. She's hot on business, Mrs D.'

Madame Phoebe nodded. Long ago Tom had lent her the money to start her house in Sydney, but once she had
paid him off, he had never had any stake in it, although she always sent for him when she needed money or advice.

Mrs Hackett's latest piece of gossip about Tom and Hester had already reached her via Jack Cameron, so she knew that Tom had been banished from his wife's bed again. Now, smiling, she offered him not only the customary bottle of wine to share while they talked, but discreetly hinted to him of her own availability.

As usual, he refused both offers, but was willing to lend her money to extend her flourishing business. She needed to redecorate and refurnish. She even offered him a share of her profits—to see his shaking head.

‘It's not that I disapprove, mind, but I have a wife, now, and a future to think on. Yours isn't the kind of business I need any more, Phoebe. But I'll always bail you out,' he added as he rejected her, but his rejection was a gentle one. He admired and respected her—one more woman making her way successfully in the world—and his rejection was not based on any self-serving morality, or on contempt for what she offered.

She was a sensible woman and accepted what he said without offence. ‘I offer a necessary service,' she said simply, and wondered how long Tom would go without needing it if his wife proved obstinate, and now that Mary Mahoney was respectably married.

The house was already roaring. Tom made his way to the gaming room which was crammed with the officers of the 73rd intent on making another night of it.

He looked around and found the man he wanted seated at the big main table in the middle of his cronies, and walked the length of it towards Jack, every jeering eye upon him.

Above the noise he heard his own name, and then that of Hester's repeated, followed by loud laughter and Cap
tain Parker's voice saying, ‘Steady on, Jack, the lady's a good friend of mine.'

Tom stopped and pushed his way through the group of officers who fell silent at the sight of him. Quite deliberately he had not shaved himself and was still wearing his working clothes: he had visited the brickfields that afternoon.

At last he found himself facing the author of the jests and the man he most wanted to see.

Jack was not a whit abashed by Tom's arrival. He raised his glass, and sneered, ‘The man himself', before offering Tom a mocking toast. Parker, standing by him, put a restraining hand on his arm. Jack shook it off.

Tom ignored the mockery and the toast. ‘Captain Jack Cameron, I believe.'

‘As you well know, dammit, Dilhorne. Now what may I do for you?'

‘You can tell me what you have been saying about my wife, Jack.'

‘
Captain
Cameron, sir, to felons, Dilhorne, and what I say about your wife is my affair, not yours.'

He drank from the glass, emptied it, and poured himself another. Parker again laid his hand on his arm. Again Jack shook it off.

Tom spoke into the silence which had followed Cameron's last words. ‘Oh, but it is my business, Jack. I ask you again: what were you saying about my wife?'

‘Leave it, Dilhorne, he's drunk,' said Parker, his pleasant face worried.

Tom ignored him. The attention of the whole room was now centred on Jack and himself as though they were a pair of gladiators homing in for the kill.

No sense of propriety, of what was the done thing, governed matters in a brothel. Many thought that since Dil
horne was an ex-felon and not a gentleman Jack might say anything he pleased to Tom about himself and his wife—who had put herself beyond the pale by marrying him.

Knowing this, Tom put his hand in his pocket, pulled out Mrs Hackett's guinea and flung it on the table in front of Jack.

‘If I give you your money back, will you tell me then, or shall I have to beat it out of you, Jack?'

Jack's response to this was a reddened face and a bellow of laughter. He ignored the coin lying before him.

‘By God then, Dilhorne, you shall have it. I was saying what a fine fellow you were. Such a fine fellow that even that plain piece your wife, and damme, they come no plainer, ain't so desperate for it that she'll let an ex-felon like you into her bed again. What do you say to that, Dilhorne, hey, hey?'

His drunken laughter pealed into an appalled silence.

Tom had gained what he wanted. Jack had been provoked into saying something which even the class-hardened officers of the 73rd might find difficult to stomach. But in the doing he had destroyed his own iron control. It broke.

He had hardly raised his voice when he had spoken to Cameron. He was indifferent to abuse of himself. He was amused by it, even. He knew that he had been a thief and a rogue: that was a statement of fact, not an insult. What he had not grasped was that he would be so enraged at Hester being bad-mouthed.

To hear her jeered at by a drunken roué in a vile dive before half the officers of the Sydney garrison was almost too much.

‘This!' he riposted, and lunged across the table at Jack.

Glasses, bottles, wine, gaming counters, IOUs, and cards sailed in all directions. Before anyone could stop him he
had seized Jack by the ears and smashed his face down into the hard mahogany of the table.

He was lifting Jack's now lolling head to repeat the action, but the men around him, initially stunned by the speed and ferocity of his attack, pulled him away, leaving his victim head down, semi-conscious, with the blood from his ruined face mingling with the spilt wine.

Deathly silence was followed by uproar. One group clustered around the fallen Jack and another pinned Tom hard against the wall. He made no effort to resist. His face was suddenly as calm as though he were taking tea with the Governor wearing his beautiful clothes and speaking in the cultured accents of a scholar and gentleman.

‘By God,' shouted the officer whose arm was across Tom's chest to prevent him from attacking Jack again, ‘it's easy to see that you're no gentleman, Dilhorne.'

‘And you call
that
a gentleman.' Tom's quiet drawl was deadly. ‘Just let me loose and he'll never insult a lady again. My work's only half-done.'

His voice was all the more disturbing for being so indifferent.

‘I've no doubt that he'll call you out when he's recovered,' said the young officer who held Tom by the right shoulder.

Tom turned his head to stare coldly at him. ‘So's he can poke his little sword into me, I suppose. I know a trick worth two of that. He'll not insult or tell lies about my wife again if I have to cut his tongue out to stop him.'

This last threat was uttered so pleasantly that the young officer recoiled.

The officers around Jack moved away, suddenly sobered. Parker, his face grave, came up to Tom and said, ‘He shouldn't have said what he did about Hester, Dil
horne, I grant you that, but you've marked him for life. His nose is broken and his teeth are loose.'

‘Are they now?' Tom's drawl was at its most provoking. ‘Do you think that will teach him to be careful of what he says about my wife in future?'

‘Well, he was in drink,' said Parker dubiously. ‘You should have waited to get satisfaction from him in the usual way, not gone for him like that, without warning. As it is, he's bound to call you out when he's recovered.'

‘Is he now? He wants satisfaction from me? I should say he's got it already. I'm not playing your daft games, Parker.'

‘If he won't give Jack satisfaction,' said the young officer still grasping Tom's shoulder, ‘I vote that we hand him over to the law to be tried for assault.'

Before Parker could answer Pat Ramsey took a hand. He had been leaning against the wall watching the fracas with the sardonic amusement of a man who favoured neither party in it.

He rounded on the officer. ‘You damned young fool, what good would that do? Do you want this affair aired more publicly than it will be? A squabble in a brothel? The whole room heard Jack insult Dilhorne, and what's worse, Dilhorne's wife. Hester Dilhorne is a lady. For defending his wife from an insult such as Jack offered her, Dilhorne would be chaired from the court. Do you want to disgrace the Regiment? Isn't what has been said and done enough?'

These evident truths silenced the uproar for Tom's blood. A stalemate seemed to have been reached. In the silence that followed Ramsey dropped the authoritative tone he had been using and, picking up the guinea from the table where it still lay, somehow having avoided the
chaos which Tom had created, said, in his usual airy manner, ‘Now, what was all that about a guinea?'

He looked at Jack who was being carried from the room, drink and his injuries combined having rendered him senseless. ‘D'you think Jack might tell us? If he's able to speak, that is?' His lack of sympathy for the fallen Cameron was obvious.

Young Osborne, sitting in the corner, nursing his thick head, and watching the fun, suddenly spluttered and said, ‘Time Guinea Jack got his, you know, and Dilhorne was the man to do it. Shun't have talked like that 'bout poor Hester.'

Tom's revenge was complete. Guinea Jack was Cameron's derisive nickname from then on.

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 af
fairs 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 ap
peared 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.