The groom, however, wore an expression which could only be compared to that of an extremely satisfied cat who had just got away with an extremely large quantity of cream. Which, looking at the bride, the congregation found a little strange.
After the ceremony they all enjoyed the wedding breakfast, though why it was called breakfast at such a late hour baffled the bride.
Tom, being Tom again, there was an unparalleled array of food, though God knew where it had come from, Sydney not being quite the thing in the food line, but as more than one guest said, driving home through the moonlight, ‘Well, you know Tom.’
All the guests ate and drank mightily, except the bride, who for once felt sick at the sight of food, but found that her husband was as adept after marriage as before it in getting her to drink a rather large quantity of wine.
‘Come on, my dear, it will put roses in your cheeks,’ he told her, pouring her out yet another glass.
Sarah thought that she had never seen anything quite so forlorn as Hester Dilhorne in her splendid new home on her wedding night. She hoped that Tom would be kind to her.
Surprisingly, after everyone had gone home and husband and wife were left alone in their great barbaric mansion to retire for the night, Hester felt an enormous unreasoning resentment that they were keeping to their bargain when Tom took her up the wide staircase, kissed her hand and said, ‘Goodnight, Mrs Dilhorne,’ to her outside her room before retiring to his.
Of course, the bride did not really wish him to come in with her. The mere idea that he might made her breath shorten, her heart beat violently, and a dreadful flush mount from her toes to her head and back again. She felt so excited and queer, what with the wedding and the wine, that it needed a long drink of water and a cold flannel on her face to restore her composure.
The groom was well aware of what the bride was thinking, and was certain that good food, affection and comfort would bring them to a true wedding night before long.
Chapter Six
Tom Dilhorne’s marriage was more than a nine days’ wonder. Even when the initial excitement over it had died down, what passed for society in Sydney had so little to occupy it that, every time gossip flagged, someone was sure to start talking about it and wonder how the newlyweds were faring. After a short time even Sydney could not have foreseen what a remarkable titbit was going to keep their curiosity fed and their tongues wagging.
Often, in those early days, when Tom drove out in his gig, Hester sat beside him, and a mocking world noticed how solicitous he was in his care of her, helping her down, carrying her little reticule, and when it was very hot tenderly holding her parasol over her head for her.
‘He’s like a man with a new toy,’ one wag said. ‘Who’d have thought it of old Tom, eh?’ as though Tom were sixty and not in his mid-thirties, but he seemed like an institution these days. It was difficult to remember the time when he had not dominated Sydney’s economic and commercial life, even if he was not part of the Exclusives’ social world—other than being invited to Government House, that was.
Hester had no idea of what marriage to Tom might entail. Any attempt she had made to imagine her future with him had come up against her lack of knowledge of how a man like Tom Dilhorne would live, and what he would expect of her in the odd bargain she had made with him.
In the event her life was strangely easy. Her day began at breakfast, which was a leisurely affair, not a leisurely affair in Fred Waring’s manner, but one peculiar to Tom. He took the opportunity each morning to read through his papers and correspondence while eating and drinking at a slow pace, making the odd comment to her. He also made notes on small pieces of paper which he put in his pocket—and forgot.
Occasionally he threw a letter, or a piece of paper, over to Hester and asked her for her opinion of it. At first she was timid and said something noncommittal in the hope that he would not do it again. A useless tactic. Very soon she realised that the only way to satisfy him was to make some substantive comment, however slight.
It was obvious that he saw her dislike at having to commit herself, equally obvious that he was determined to make her do so. One morning he tossed across a letter from a business rival making him an offer, which on the surface was attractive, but which he sensed was dubious after some fashion. There was little in the letter to support this, only his own intuition which had stood him in good stead over the years.
Hester read the letter through carefully and then put it down with a sigh.
‘Yes, Mrs Dilhorne?’ He always called her Mrs Dilhorne now, whether to impress on her that, despite all, she was his wife or as a means of not using her Christian name—she was not sure which. She looked across at him. He was totally relaxed, like a great cat, she thought. His face was unreadable, immobile; only his blue eyes, hard and cold, watched her.
‘I don’t like it,’ she told him, her voice slow and hesitant. ‘I don’t know why, but there’s something wrong with it.’
‘True, Mrs Dilhorne. And I can’t tell you why either.’
He reached for the letter. ‘We shan’t be dealing with him—at least not on this offer.’
Relief swept over Hester. She had said the right thing. She was aware that Tom was still watching her while he swept his papers together and prepared to leave for his office.
‘What if I had approved?’ she asked.
He treated her to his grin. The one that said to friends and enemies alike that Tom Dilhorne knew what was what.
‘Oh, I knew that if you gave me an opinion that was the one you would give me.’
‘Just like that.’ She was as short as he usually was.
‘Just like that, Mrs Dilhorne.’ The grin grew. ‘You’ve a good mind there, be sure you cultivate it.’
She was suddenly Fred Waring’s high-bred daughter. ‘You patronise me, sir.’
‘No, indeed. Merely compliment you. The name is Tom, or Mr Dilhorne. No sirs from my wife—or anyone else—in this house.’
Cat and mouse, thought Hester furiously. That’s the game Tom plays with people. He won’t eat me, he won’t, he won’t. But her smile at him was as friendly as she could make it, and his response was to kiss her hand as he left: a response which somehow seemed to excite not just the hand, but her whole body in the strangest fashion, leaving it dissatisfied for the rest of the day.
I’m Tom’s pet mouse, she raged, when she went through to the kitchen to supervise the day’s work, tingling all over. He won’t even eat me, not he. He’ll keep me to prod with a gentle paw, to let me know who’s master.
But you like it, you know you like it, said her horrible Mentor, and don’t you wish that the cat would do more than play with you harmlessly. How about some more grown-up fun?
Oh, be quiet, she thought fiercely. Where do such dreadful notions come from?
Then there was the matter of dress. Hester had brought to her marriage a tiny wardrobe of elderly clothes. Outdated threadbare gowns, all of which had seen better days, and most of which had been made over from her mother’s old dresses. They were dark in colour. Mrs Waring had been in perpetual mourning for Rowland, and they did nothing for Hester’s complexion and figure.
Sitting at breakfast one morning, and throwing back a paper on which she had just given an opinion, Hester met Tom’s disapproving stare.
At first Hester thought that the disapproval was for her opinion, but Tom’s next words dispelled that.
‘Clothes, Mrs Dilhorne,’ he said succinctly.
‘Clothes, Mr Dilhorne?’ she mocked him gently.
He nodded his head. ‘Yours are hardly exciting, Mrs Dilhorne.’
‘My clothes are not meant to be exciting. They are meant to be ladylike.’
He nodded again. ‘Aye, they are that. Go to Mrs Herbert at the Emporium and order something less ladylike and more attractive. My wife must not look like a dowd. Her sempstresses will know what to do.’
To some extent Hester already had Tom’s measure. She knew how far she could go, and tha
t he preferred spirit to submission.
‘Must, Mr Dilhorne? Must?’
‘Must, Mrs Dilhorne.’ The blue eyes approved her show of spirit. ‘We are to dine at Government House on Saturday. I am, among other things, a rich merchant, and my wife must look like a rich merchant’s wife.’
‘But still ladylike, I hope. What do I use for money, Mr Dilhorne?’
‘Why, nothing, Mrs Dilhorne. You use my name. You’ll be astonished what it will do for you in Sydney.’
Hester found herself laughing. ‘No, I won’t. I already know.’ And she went and bought herself something less gaudy than she thought he might have chosen—although there she wronged him, as she was later to discover—but sufficiently fashionable to cause Captain Parker to raise his eyebrows when he saw her at Government House on Saturday.
Next it was food. Hester had spent her life since coming to New South Wales feeling hungry. As Tom’s wife she was suddenly able to indulge herself. She helped Cook and Mrs Hackett in the kitchen and attacked the results of their work with a kind of frantic delicacy.
One evening when she was eating her dinner with even more appreciation than usual, she looked up to find Tom smiling at her. It was his Cheshire Cat grin which said, I’m amused at something which other people can’t see. What in the world could be provoking it? thought Hester irritably. He’s seen me eat before.
‘Enjoying your dinner, Mrs Dilhorne?’
‘Indeed, this mutton is excellent.’
‘I think so, too. Compliment Cook for me.’
‘You may address your compliments to me, Mr Dilhorne.’
He bowed over his plate. ‘I will double them, my dear. Ability as well as beauty becomes my wife.’
‘Now you are funning, Mr Dilhorne. Your wife is no beauty.’
Tom looked across at her. Several weeks of good eating and affectionate treatment had made her lank hair glossier, was beginning to give it deep waves, and had improved her complexion, which now wore the look of health. She was beginning to acquire curves where none had existed before. His amusement grew as he watched the well-bred greed with which she disposed of her meal.
‘Do you never look in your glass, Mrs Dilhorne?’
‘Frequently—how else would I do my hair?’
‘How else?’
It was plain that she had no idea of how much she had changed and was still changing.
‘I thought that Captain Parker was a deal too attentive to you last Saturday—considering that you are my wife.’
‘Nonsense, Mr Dilhorne. Captain Parker has always been kind. Even when I was friendless and poor. He was rather less so than usual last Saturday.’
‘Kind, you call it,’ murmured Tom, ignoring the truth of the last part of her sentence, and that Hester had not yet changed sufficiently to attract a handsome young man. ‘Where I was brought up we had another name for it. I hope that he remembers that you are my wife now.’
Hester knew him well enough to know when he was teasing her. The idle drawl, the slightly hooded eyes, the look to see how the mouse was reacting. And yet, and yet, this time she was not so sure.
Tom Dilhorne’s mouse, she thought again. I wonder whether mice are ever allowed to bite back when the cat plays with them.
‘I’ve always thought Captain Parker rather handsome,’ she murmured idly, spooning cream lavishly on to her peaches. ‘It is to be hoped that he will find himself a young woman to please him.’
‘Careful with the cream, Mrs Dilhorne,’ was Tom’s answer to this sally. ‘We can’t have you getting fat. I know for a fact that Captain Parker likes ’em thin.’
It was almost impossible to get a rise out of him, thought Hester crossly, and to punish him spooned out a double dose of cream.
‘I like cream,’ she said, her manner all defiance, ‘eating it is one of the benefits of marriage.’
‘Only one, Mrs Dilhorne? What are the others?’
Hester waved her spoon in a totally unladylike manner. Tom had that effect on her. He’s corrupting you, her Mentor said. Then I like being corrupted, Hester thought back defiantly, pleased to be naughtier than her Mentor for once.
‘Besides eating cream there are comfortable rooms, not worrying whether I can afford a new pair of hose or a new gown—’ and before she could stop herself ‘—and someone to talk to.’ Her defiance had, quite without her meaning it, descended into bathos. She wondered what Tom made of this absurd catalogue.
His expression remained impassive. He would not de-mean her by expressing the pity roused in him by this recital of the ordinary comforts of life as a demonstration of the benefits which she felt marriage had brought her. Not for the first time he cursed Fred Waring’s lamentable selfishness which had so deprived his daughter. It would not do to let her know of his pity. Either she would not believe him, or she would resent it furiously.
‘And me, Mrs Dilhorne? Am I one of the benefits of marriage?’
The spoon was carefully put down. What was she to say to that? The truth, of course. The mouse could not escape the cat’s paws, but could avoid a mauling.
‘Indeed, Mr Dilhorne, as I said. The pleasure of your conversation more than makes up for the disadvantages of the situation in which we find ourselves.’
‘We could always remedy that, Mrs Dilhorne.’
Hester’s response to this dry suggestion that they dispense with their white marriage was immediate. Her hand flew to her mouth and her eyes were suddenly wide and startled.
Tom watched her ruefully. For all her gallant manner and apparent bravado she was not yet ready to contemplate being Tom Dilhorne’s wife in more than name. It was all a game which she could safely play with him, secure in the knowledge that there would be no consequences.
Well, let that pass. He would reassure her now. His time would come. He yawned and made no effort to speak again, to provoke her into saying something which she might later regret. If he made no move now, she would think that she had misunderstood him. Men and women had great powers of self-deception as he well knew to his own frequent profit.
Meantime he must try to make her see that she was slowly turning into an attractive woman, and when she smiled and defied him she was more than that. He had only been half joking when he had twitted her about young Parker. After all, he was near to Hester in age and his fresh, blond, good looks made Tom feel even more battered than he was.
For her part Hester, as Tom had thought, concluded that she had misunderstood him. The cat did not intend to pounce and Mrs Dilhorne might go safe to her lonely bed.
Hiring Mrs Hackett because Sarah could find no one else was an even greater mistake than Tom thought that it might be. To begin with she disliked Hester because she disliked all women younger than herself; besides, Hester was so plain, and drunken old Fred’s daughter to boot, who had no business marrying wealth, even Emancipist wealth. Tom she disliked because he had always frightened her from the days when she was Corporal Hackett’s wife, and he was a thrusting newcomer.
She was no fool, though, and soon grasped that her employers were man and wife in name only and were sleeping in separate rooms. She spied on them, watched them furtively in order to make sure that her suspicions were correct, and then took this gleeful gossip, too good not to share, and sent it on its way around Sydney.
What next? It beggared belief. Clever Tom Dilhorne had no more sense than to marry a wife who wouldn’t let him get into her bed! At last, gossip had something real to get its teeth into. Madame Phoebe’s rocked with the news; the garrison crowed with mirth. Jack Cameron started a book, taking bets as to when Tom Dilhorne would get into his wife’s bed, how long it would take, and whether it would last. Pat Ramsey told Lucy and Frank the unbelievable news one afternoon, after he had heard it at Phoebe’s the night before.
They all looked at one another and laughed immoderately. Even Lucy laughed, and hardly reprimanded Frank when, wiping his eyes, he said, ‘I didn’t think that plain piece had it in her. The great Tom Dilhorne outwitted by a wo
man, and too gentlemanly these days to give it to her without permission. Sorry, Luce.’
Other gossip was even more indelicate. Running around Sydney, the unlikely tale even entered Government House and reached Lachlan Macquarie, who pulled his lip and said to his wife, ‘What is that devious devil up to now?’ He knew Tom better than most and could not believe him put upon by Hester Waring. Others, though, wanted to believe him bested, and even Mary Wilkinson, late Mahoney, thought it likely that Tom had been cheated, and felt sorry for him.
The last to know were the Kerrs. Most people were too afraid of them to pass on the news, but Sarah, while visiting Lucy Wright one afternoon, overheard some rude laughter about Tom and Hester, and said as fiercely as only she could, ‘What is that, Mrs Middleton? You are speaking of my friends. What slander is that?’
Before her mother could answer, Lucy, fearing an explosion if Sarah were publicly informed of the gossip, signalled to her and took her into another room to tell her what all Sydney already knew.
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Sarah sharply, and then fell silent, as everything she had wondered about the marriage, and how the pair had behaved after it, fell into place.
Lucy watched Sarah’s face change, and thought, It’s true then, the gossip is true, and somehow, Sarah knows. Since, for all her matronly assumptions and her pretty child, she was young and careless, she thought gleefully, What larks!
‘Can it be true, Alan?’ Sarah asked her husband—he was the last person in Sydney to know. ‘Poor Tom. If it is true, what does it mean? Whatever can he be up to now?’
‘Yes, I think it’s true. I’ve suspected so for some time. Hester does not look, or act, like a married woman. Her appearance is healthier than it was, but that is the result of having enough to eat and drink at last. But, Sarah, you know Tom nearly as well as I do. Believe as I must that there is more to this than Sydney thinks. Trust him, as I do.’
Hester Waring's Marriage Page 11
