Hester Waring's Marriage (8 page)

‘I have to inform you, Miss Waring, that your late father's debts have been bought by a business colleague of mine, who then proceeded to burn the papers before me. The debts no longer exist. You may keep your money.'

There was a chair just behind Hester. She slumped down into it rather than lower herself in her usual ladylike manner.

‘Bought my father's debts and cancelled them, you say, Mr Larkin?'

‘Indeed, Miss Waring, you have it.'

‘But who?' she began, until a monstrous supposition overcame her. ‘Are you at liberty to inform me precisely which of your fellows paid my father's debts, Mr Larkin?'

‘No, Miss Waring. He gave express orders that his name should not be revealed.'

For some reason Hester felt almost indignant about the whole transaction, though God knew how happy she was that this millstone had disappeared from around her neck. She felt light-headed with relief, but angry with the man who had done it.

‘It was Mr Dilhorne, was it not, Mr Larkin?'

He bowed politely to her. Given that Tom Dilhorne had made himself her protector, it would be politic to be at evens with her, and not at odds.

‘I am not at liberty to say.'

‘There is no need for you to say anything, Mr Larkin. I know perfectly well that it was Mr Dilhorne. Who else could it have been? What business did he have buying up my father's debts without speaking to me?'

‘I can say no more, Miss Waring. If I may give you a
piece of advice, Miss Waring, it is this: that you should be grateful to the person who paid me and relieved for your good self.'

My good self, she thought indignantly, is about to ask Mr Tom Dilhorne what he thinks he is doing by buying up my father's debts. Bottles of port, biscuits, toddy, plum puddings, best wishes for Christmas! Has the man run mad? she asked herself, echoing Robert Jardine's selfsame query made earlier.

She set off for Tom's Counting-House, determined to beard him there. Yes, beard was the only word for such an officious man! But the nearer she got to his office, the greater her understanding of the service he had performed for her grew until, by the time she arrived before his polished cedarwood door in George Street, with its fine brass plate and handles, all the anger had run out of her, and she hardly knew what to say to him. But something must be said.

If Joseph Smith was surprised to see Miss Waring advance towards his cubby-hole, he did not show it.

‘Sir,' said Hester awefully, ‘I desire to speak to Mr Dilhorne. Pray tell me whether he is in and if he will see me.'

‘Certainly,' replied Smith, all courtesy, with a slight inclination of his head. ‘Miss Waring, is it not?'

In the face of her determined stare he disappeared into Tom's office. As though he has not known for years who I am, thought Hester rebelliously. She had reverted to the slightly giddy mood in which she had been so impertinent to Lucy, Frank and Stephen. Yes, it must be Tom Dilhorne's proximity which was having such a dreadful effect on her!

Smith returned from Tom's office. ‘Mr Dilhorne is in and is at liberty to see you. Please come this way.'

Tom's office was a large room with two high windows
in it. He had installed himself in one of the first buildings which were the result of Governor Macquarie's desire to turn Sydney into a beautiful town in the European mode. His desk was massive, and he came from around it to wave her into an armchair.

He was immaculately dressed, and his effect on her was as strong as it had been at the Christmas party, but in some odd way she was growing used to it and she was filled, not with fear, but with a strange excitement. Instead of ducking her head and appearing shy, she stared at him. Pay her father's debts, indeed! Who had authorised him to do that?

‘Good afternoon, Miss Waring. To what do I owe the honour of your visit?'

The honour of my visit, indeed! He was not wearing the peacocks, was dressed very soberly, but was still magnificent. There was a look in his bright blue eyes which she was not sure she cared for.

She said, in the aweful voice which she had used to Joseph Smith, ‘I have come to speak to you, Mr Dilhorne.'

He gave her his engaging, crooked smile, and in her strange state she registered the way in which his mouth curled at the end and one eyebrow rose, giving him a piratical appearance, which, far from frightening her as it would once have done, almost disarmed her. But she would not let that deter her from pursuing her quarrel with him. No, indeed not!

‘Yes,' he said, ‘yes, I see that, Miss Waring. What may I do for you?'

‘It is not so much what you
may
do for me, Mr Dilhorne, it is what you have
already
done.'

Somehow, everything came out all wrong as it usually did when she confronted him, for he simply smiled again and asked, his head on one side, an expression of intense
curiosity on his face, ‘Now, what is that, Miss Waring? I do not quite follow you.'

In her excitement she found herself saying, ‘As though it is not enough that you plied Mrs Cooke and myself with food, drink and
plum pudding
, you have also bought up and destroyed my father's debts. Pray have the goodness to explain yourself.'

He bowed very low and said most earnestly, ‘I thought that you and Mrs Cooke would enjoy the food and drink which I sent you. Was I wrong?'

Hester fixed him with a basilisk eye. ‘That is not it at all, Mr Dilhorne. Of course we enjoyed it. We enjoyed it so much that we were overset for two days. That is not the point. The point is that you bought up all my father's remaining debts and destroyed them. By what right did you do that, and for what reason?'

She ran out of breath.

He pulled up a chair opposite to her, sat in it, and leaned forward, his mouth twitching. ‘Well, I might have thought that you would like to buy your own port and plum pudding in future.'

He was now so near to her that she could see the tiny laughter lines on his face, the strength of the hands which lay in his lap, and could catch the scent of a clean man, so unlike the sour smell of her late father in his last days. Her indignation began to dissolve, her own mouth began to twitch. Her sense of humour, of the ridiculous, long hidden beneath oppression, drudgery and neglect, began to assert itself as before in their impossible conversations. His impudent refusal to come to the point had its charms for her.

‘You know perfectly well what I mean, Mr Dilhorne. How in the world did we come to be talking about plum puddings?'

‘I believe that it was you who introduced the topic, Miss Waring.'

‘Then it was very wrong of me,' she wailed. ‘Oh, why will you not be serious?'

‘Because you have been serious long enough. A moment, Miss Waring.'

He rose from his chair, and crossed to a splendid oak sideboard on which stood decanters of rum and brandy and an open bottle of red wine. He poured out two glasses of the wine and returned to his seat. He then handed her one of the glasses. Dazedly, she noticed that it was of the most exquisite quality, like everything else in the room.

‘Now you are plying me with wine again, Mr Dilhorne.'

‘It is usual, Miss Waring, when businessmen and-women end one deal and start another, that they take wine together.'

Hester was so stunned by this remarkable statement that she drank her wine in one vulgar swallow.

‘Another glass, Miss Waring?'

‘Certainly not, Mr Dilhorne. Are you trying to make me drunk?'

‘Not today, Miss Waring. Another time, perhaps.'

The glance Hester threw him was tragic. She was almost ready to clutch her head in despair. How had her perfectly reasonable request of him led her to this strange pass? End one deal and begin another, indeed! What could the man be talking about?

‘You mentioned business deals, Mr Dilhorne. What business deals are these? And how am I involved?'

‘Well, the first one is my buying up your father's debts, as you so cleverly surmised, and we are celebrating the fact that I burned them so that you may buy your own port and puddings. The second deal I am prepared to put to you when you are feeling a little more composed.'

‘I am perfectly composed, Mr Dilhorne.'

Hester made her voice as cool and firm as she could. To no avail.

‘I said
more
composed, Miss Waring. Now I am going to ask my clerk to bring in something to eat. It is my usual habit at this time. I hope that you will see your way to sharing my nuncheon, and when we have finished we may have a little chat together on matters of mutual advantage, which is the sort of nonsense fine gentlemen usually talk when they wish to impress fools. But you are far from being a fool, Miss Waring, and we shall, I hope, meet on terms of equality.'

Hester's first reaction to this speech was, Where on earth has short-spoken Mr Tom Dilhorne gone to? as these Gibbonian periods rolled out. Despite her determination not to become even more indebted to him in the matter of food and drink than she already was, she found herself salivating at the mere idea of partaking of what Mr Tom Dilhorne thought was a good meal. Judging by everything else about him, it would be remarkably fine.

‘I cannot imagine what business deal you can be proposing to me, Mr Dilhorne, but yes, I will take luncheon with you.'

He rose, rang a small bell on his desk and Smith came in.

‘The usual, no, rather better than the usual, Joseph, and for two today. As soon as possible, please.'

Tom turned to Hester. She now sat almost crouched in her chair, her eyes as wary as a hunting cat's.

‘Come, Miss Waring, what shall we discuss? I believe that it is considered the thing for ladies and gentlemen to mouth polite nothings at one another when they are in our situation.'

Nothing for it but to join him in his idiocies.

‘We could discuss the news from home, perhaps.'

Tom smiled his crooked smile again, and sat down. ‘Seeing that it is nearly a year out of date before it reaches us, I agree with you. It is certainly nothing.'

Hester could not prevent a giggle from escaping. He greeted this with approval. ‘Excellent, Miss Waring. I believe we understand each other very well.'

Several moments more of the most impolite banter followed, with each party trying to outdo the other in outrageousness. Hester had never felt so carefree in her life. Fun and banter were new to her and the ease with which she found herself responding to Mr Tom Dilhorne's naughtinesses surprised her. Excitement gripped her to the degree that she thought that her head might fly off, it felt so light.

‘You see how easy it is to engage in small talk,' Tom said when Smith returned, carrying a basket of food. Smith then went over to the sideboard and fetched out china plates and silver knives and forks, more glasses, some spoons of varying sizes and fruit knives with delicate ivory handles. Drawing up a small drum table, he arranged these before Tom and Hester, finally handing each of them a damask napkin from a drawer in the sideboard.

That done, he bowed and left, and Tom began lifting bread, butter, cheese, cold sliced meat and fruit out of the basket.

‘I can safely say that I am able to recommend everything, Miss Waring, including this bottle.'

He lifted another bottle of wine out of the basket and began to open it.

‘You may not believe this, Miss Waring, but I am an abstemious man where drink is concerned. I am, however, prepared to make an exception today in your honour.'

He poured her more wine in yet another elegant glass;
this time she drank it with proper decorum, and began to attack the beautiful food, not trying to conceal her hunger, for she had scarcely eaten since Boxing Day. Tom watched her with approval, occasionally recommending to her the choicest titbits from the basket.

The last thing that he lifted out was a large pineapple, which he divided between them. They ate it with a great deal of amusement, the sticky liquid from it running over their hands. Hester, now well into her third glass of wine, had never eaten pineapple before and she found it delicious.

‘But a little messy, Mr Dilhorne, is it not? Pray, is there no polite way to consume such a delicacy?'

She gave him a smile of such sweetness that Tom began to wonder what a properly fed and cared-for Miss Waring might look like.

The pineapple disposed of, its remains neatly wrapped in some of the paper from the basket, he rang for Smith to bring them a bowl of water and a towel so that they might wash and dry their sticky hands. After that, Smith and another man came in and took away everything but the bottle of wine and their glasses.

Alone again, Tom poured Hester more wine. Her third or fourth glass? she queried hazily. He was evidently trying to turn her into a toper as well as a glutton, but oh, what a delicious sense of well-being eating good food brought on! She could forgive him almost anything for that.

He was opposite to her again, his manner now quite serious.

‘Miss Waring, I have a proposition to put to you. Pray do not dismiss it out of hand. Think carefully about what I am saying. Your future happiness may rest on it.' He paused.

What could the man be about to say? My future happiness? I must be mishearing. It is all the wine I am drinking, thought Hester, absent-mindedly taking another great swallow in order to clear her fuddled head.

More elegantly arranged sentences followed. ‘As you may or may not know, Miss Waring, I am shortly to lose my housekeeper, who is getting married and going to live at Paramatta. I need not say what a blow this is to a man who likes an orderly life. Now, you, Miss Waring, would make an excellent person to run my home. You have a good mind, a bright wit, and would also make me an informed companion with whom I could usefully converse.'

Hester heard all this with her mouth open—not an uncommon occurrence when she was talking to Mr Tom Dilhorne. She tried to imagine herself usefully conversing with him—on what? Whilst thinking this over, she finished her wine and he neatly filled her glass again. She failed to notice that he was not drinking anything.