Hester Waring's Marriage (10 page)

Goodness, I must be catching Tom Dilhorne's deviousness! She knew perfectly well that such a question would ensure Lucy's participation.

‘Mind!' exclaimed Lucy energetically. ‘He'd better not mind! I shall only be helping my best friend visit her future husband. What's wrong with that?' She looked suddenly enthusiastic.

‘Besides, Hester, I'm dying to see inside his new villa.
Rumour has it that it's splendidly barbaric. I can't wait to see it! By all means, I shall come, and we must go together in my carriage. I can't have you walking all that way. Most improper, if I am to drive there, that you are left on foot.'

 

Friday duly came and Lucy, resplendent in a new gown of cream muslin made up from the latest pattern book to come from England, arrived at Mrs Cooke's to collect Hester. She instructed her astonished coachman to drive on to Mr Dilhorne's new villa.

‘Does the master know?' he enquired impudently.

‘My husband's permission is not needed for my actions,' Lucy informed him loftily. ‘Drive on.'

Externally, Tom's villa, out on the Point with a superb view of the harbour, was a classical mansion of beautiful proportions. Inside, however, everything was different. The vast entrance hall contained only two blue and white Chinese vases of immense size and a giant bronze urn mounted on a wooden base.

The urn was covered with intricate carving, and around it was twisted a realistic dragon, its tail disappearing into the base and its head raised to roar at visitors. The floor of polished stone had one covering, a large washed Chinese carpet in the most delicate colours.

The disdainful Mrs Jones—so soon to leave—who thought her employer mad to fill his home with treasures from the Far East, led them into a huge room where Tom was waiting for them. To the eyes of most Englishmen and women, accustomed to Georgian elegance, this room was, if anything, even more startling.

There were more Chinese carpets on the stone floor, more porcelain vases in every shade imaginable, more bronzes, as well as lacquer cabinets and a Japanese screen which ran the length of the room. A tiger prowled along
it, one sardonic eye cocked at the spectators. It resembled, Hester thought, its owner, who was watching them, an enigmatic smile on his face. Before the screen stood a long table, whose top was made from one block of polished black wood.

Behind Tom was a giant hearth made from uncut stones, over which a Samurai sword hung. Beside the hearth stood a full suit of Japanese armour. Three or four chairs and several lacquered tables, one set with teacups without handles, and several delicate little cakes on even more exquisite porcelain plates, awaited his guests.

Lucy's eyes were like saucers. Hester, who was determined to take everything which came her way without comment, sat down and at Tom's request began to serve the tea and generally play hostess.

‘Well, Mrs Wright,' said Tom, after the preliminaries were over, ‘would you care to see more of my home when we have taken tea?'

‘Oh, yes, please…it's…unbelievable.'

Hester knew Tom well enough by now to know how he was reacting to this, although his face remained impassive. ‘So it is,' he said. ‘And you, Miss Waring, what do you think?'

‘I think that it's beautiful,' she told him truthfully.

He looked at her sharply. ‘Yes, I believe you do. But you know that if you don't like anything you have only to say, and I shall change it at once. Mind you remember that.'

Lucy listened to him in some surprise. She had not known what to expect of him, but looking at him as he lounged back in his intricately carved Japanese chair of state, and listening to the kind way in which he spoke to Hester, she thought that perhaps her friend could have made a worse choice.

But this house! Well, one thing you could say about it, it would be easy to clean.

The rest of it, when Tom showed them around, was the same. In the bedrooms there were beautiful silk hangings and great divans with long bolsters and giant cushions covered in wonderful fabrics. No dark fourposters for Tom Dilhorne. Tiny rice paper paintings of exquisite birds and flowers hung on otherwise empty walls. Outside the master bedroom two fat-stomached Chinese idols kept guard on either side of bronze doors. The impression of savage beauty was overwhelming.

After that, to find a modern kitchen and a severe study-cum-library with its shelves filled with books and papers was almost too much. Hester was acquiring a treasure house.

Tom watched the two girls in some amusement. His Hester had been correct in saying that curiosity would bring Lucy Wright here if all else failed, and he could imagine Frank and his fellow-officers being regaled with details of how an Emancipist lived.

He was also wryly aware that Lucy had succumbed to his personal attractions, although he had made no conscious effort to win her over. He would not have been surprised to learn that she had already decided that he was a fascinating man and that Sydney society was wrong to snub him.

What pleased him more than anything, though, was that by her expression and comments Hester was not going to turn his home into an imitation of an English country house. They lived in the Pacific, after all, and his home reflected that. So far as he was concerned he never thought of England as home: it did not exist except as a place to be traded with, and these days his trade was more often with the ports and centres of the Far East. He took the
world as his oyster and he had no regrets. New South Wales had rapidly brought him a fortune which he intended to make even greater than it already was.

It was also bringing him a wife who was a lady, one who because of her sad situation was happy to accept him, an ex-felon, a man whom in normal circumstances she would have refused to know. But, having risen above his dreadful start in life, he was now determined that the lady who was his wife would never regret her bargain.

And if love, and the softer emotions, played little part in the considerations which lay behind his choice of Hester, why, that was an advantage, too. For to love anyone was to give a hostage to fortune, and Tom Dilhorne had no intention of putting himself in the way of ever getting hurt again. His marriage was yet another of his business propositions and he had not deceived Hester when he had told her that.

Nor did he deceive himself over the fact that one of the reasons for it was to defy the conventions which governed Emancipist behaviour by demonstrating that, providing he was successful enough, an ex-felon could even marry a lady of such impeccable lineage as Hester Waring was, and to that extent poor, plain Hester was a trophy.

When, finally, he managed to make her his wife in the truest sense, as he fully intended to do, so that he might have a mother for his children, that, too, he told himself firmly, would merely be another business decision.

 

‘No, you must be funning, Lucy. For Tom Dilhorne to marry Hester Waring is of all things the most ridiculous. She brings him neither looks nor money…and for her to marry an Emancipist! Remember what her papa thought of them…and Tom Dilhorne in particular.'

Lucy Wright's mama's reaction was the normal one as
the news ran around Sydney like wildfire, and the gentry who gathered in Hyde Park that week spoke of little else. Gossip was the fuel of Sydney's small social world, and here was a morsel so prime that it eclipsed even the Governor's latest vagary. This also involved Tom Dilhorne, whom Macquarie intended to make a magistrate as well as his crony, Dr Kerr.

‘Thought Dilhorne had more sense,' guffawed Jack Cameron to his hangers-on in the Mess, ‘than to marry Fred Waring's plain and penniless piece.' He was always nastily eloquent about Hester—for some reason her helplessness offended him.

He thought the joke an exquisite one, the unmentionable marrying the unfortunate. Like many he considered that Dilhorne's usual common sense and his eye for a bargain had deserted him. What kind of a bargain was Hester Waring? Unless of course he was taking her on merely because she was a gentlewoman—which just went to show how desperate an Emancipist rogue could get in his struggle for respectability.

Even the Governor, when his wife told him the surprising news, had raised his eyebrows but made no verbal comment. He thought that whatever Dilhorne did was carefully considered, so this marriage, too, must have its reasons.

Not only the Exclusives were entertained by it. Tom Dilhorne's latest coup was celebrated with derision in Sydney's grog shops, much reduced by Governor Macquarie's latest edict which had closed many of them—another count in the tally against him. Rich Tom, who could have had anyone—well, almost anyone—had chosen the school-ma'm, Fred Waring's dreary dab of a daughter. Past it, or desperate for some reason, was the general verdict.

If Hester knew none of this by direct report, she could
not but be aware of the furore which her proposed marriage to Tom had excited—turning heads, meaningful stares, and almost sneering congratulations from people who had hardly spoken to her for years.

Far from weakening her resolve, this criticism strengthened it, and her Mentor's comments on the response of the respectable was even more unprintably harsh than usual. After all, few of her critics had so much as offered her a crust—only Mrs Cooke had helped her in any way before she had met Tom.

Even Mrs Cooke was as surprised as the rest since Hester was so different from Mary Mahoney, who was intrigued by Tom's choice of a wife. While the rest of Sydney thought that Tom had, for once, shown less than his good sense, Mary, who knew him well, wondered a little. With Tom there was always more than met the eye.

 

The arrangements for Sydney's oddest wedding went ahead rapidly. Neither Tom nor Hester wanted a great fuss. They were both privately agreed that, providing the banns were called and they both stood before a priest, the presence of others was not needed. Nevertheless, there were some whom both bride and groom agreed must be present.

There were other problems to solve. Hester was worried that her marriage might mean that she would leave her children without a teacher. She confided in Tom and, knowing his resourcefulness, was not surprised when a few days later he told her that he had found a solution.

‘Quite by chance I spoke to Captain Ramsey about our wish not to let the children down. He had a word with Sergeant Fenton whose wife has been running a Sunday school for the garrison's children and she would be only too happy to take your place in the little school, provided
that you assisted her to begin with—seeing that you have been so successful with them. Will that do?'

‘Oh, yes,' said Hester eagerly. ‘I would like to continue teaching for a little time, at any rate, but in future my first responsibility must be to you.'

And so it was settled.

One Saturday Hester accompanied him on his visit to the Kerrs. They had particularly asked that she be present. Hester had no real wish to visit them; she was still a little frightened of Tom, however, and dared not tell him that she did not wish to go with him. At the back of her mind, he was still the Tom Dilhorne whom her parents had hated.

Lucy had said, after their little tea party, that Tom would look after her, but Hester was not so sure. Catching sight of him sometimes, when he was frowning, knowing that there were those who cringed away from him when he spoke to them, she wondered what she was marrying.

His great physical strength alternately attracted and frightened her. What, if after the wedding, he insisted on his marital rights? Could she take him at his word? She knew of his reputation for deviousness; after all, had he not practised it on herself? She knew, too, that there were dark stories about how he had acquired his wealth, and he had certainly arrived in the colony in chains. It was rumoured that he had been a successful thief in London's underworld.

She would also have been worried if she had heard Sarah Kerr's reception of the news of Tom's choice. He had wanted to tell Alan and Sarah of his intention to marry Hester before he told anyone else, but a series of circumstances deprived him of the chance.

He was only able to speak to Alan briefly, one morning when he met him on his doctor's rounds, before the news reached them from other tongues.

‘Tell Sarah I'm sorry I wasn't able to inform her myself,' were his last words.

Alan was as disbelieving as the rest of Sydney. Hester Waring! He could think of no one less suited to be Tom's wife and the mistress of his grand home. Much later Sarah was to say of this time that every occasion on which Hester's name was mentioned there was an exclamation mark behind it. Her own reaction was the same.

‘Hester Waring! You are funning, Alan!'

‘I know how you must feel. I felt the same myself. But no, I am not funning. I had the news from Tom today.'

More exclamation marks followed, with a few question marks thrown in.

‘But why Hester Waring of all people? I always imagined that Tom would marry someone grand, handsome and clever who would stand up to him. What can he be thinking of? More to the point, what can
she
be thinking of? He'll eat her.'

‘Perhaps she wants to be eaten. Or to eat,' offered Alan helpfully.

Typically Sarah rounded on him and on herself. ‘What a cat I am! Poor, half-starved monkey. What on earth will the wedding be like? I know one thing, everyone will want to go, just to make sure that it's really happening.'

‘Oh, it's happening,' replied her husband cheerfully. ‘Tom gave me the date. He says that the banns are being called straight away. And I invited them both for dinner on Saturday.'

‘It explains why Tom hasn't been visiting us lately,' Sarah exclaimed. ‘The dog! He's been courting. I'm glad you asked them. Whatever I think of the marriage I mean to do my best for them.'

‘What will amuse you,' went on Alan, watching his wife bound about the room, exclaiming further and rearranging
things in order to give vent to her feelings, ‘is that she took Lucy Wright with her to have tea at Tom's new villa, and that Lucy went without consulting Frank. The first he knew of it was when Pat Ramsey twitted him about it in the Mess after he heard the news.'