Before Lucy could reply, Yes, she already knew, Jack gave a strangled cry and created a sensation by crushing his cup in his hand, scalding himself in the process, and cascading boiling liquid and pieces of Lucy’s precious china on her carpet.
Such a to-do followed with Jack’s cut and burned hand being dressed, a servant being sent for, pieces of china being retrieved, and the carpet mopped, that the reason for Jack’s strange behaviour was overlooked. Only that sardonic onlooker, Pat Ramsey, a late arrival come to view the spectacle of Guinea Jack at an afternoon tea party, raised his eyebrows, said ‘Well! Well!’, to nobody at all—and came to the correct conclusion.
Jack sat in a daze with all the females exclaiming over him. He was the object of more sympathy than he had received for years. Everyone assumed that Lucy had overdone the hot tea and that Jack had had some sort of accident with it. No one—other than Pat Ramsey—could conceivably have guessed that when Jack had learned of Hester’s pregnancy he had received an almost mortal blow which was to drive him on to his final acts of madness.
Pregnant! By that appalling swine! Jack rode back to the Barracks, nursing his bandaged hand and his hate, recalling something which he felt made the mere idea of a pregnant Hester Dilhorne even more obscene.
It had happened some weeks earlier when his private hell had become unendurable.
That day he did not know what was wrong with him. The previous evening when he had been in bed with one of Madame Phoebe’s girls, trying to forget that he was an unhappy Jack Cameron, Hester Dilhorne’s face had risen before him and effectively ruined his pleasure. Even Ramsey, that turncoat whom he had seen in cheerful conversation with Dilhorne more than once, had tried to be kind to him, but damn him, too, a gentleman should know better than to consort with a felon.
Desolation saw him saddling his horse and riding off, alone, towards the bush. He tried not to think, looked about him instead, but sun and scenery had no attraction for him and his mind turned round and round in the ruins of his life.
He came to a great stand of gum trees and shading greenery and rode into it to escape the sun which mocked his dreadful mood. He sat there for some time, hidden from view—until he suddenly had company.
Some distance away, beyond a large level opening in the bush, two riders emerged from another clump of boskage. One of them was that unspeakable cad, Dilhorne, dressed in an odd costume—white silk shirt, loose black silk trousers tucked into beautiful cavalry boots and a grey slouch hat on his head.
The other rider—and Jack’s heart leapt with savage glee—was a boy! A boy wearing black and white jockey’s silks and a black and white jockey cap whose broad peak obscured his face.
What a tale to tell Sydney! Tom Dilhorne, alone in the bush—with a boy!
Fascinated, Jack watched them dismount. Dilhorne first, and then, steadying the boy, he helped him from his horse. They stood for a moment close together, talking, but he could not hear what was said, they were too far away.
Dilhorne put his hand into his saddle-bag, took something out, and then he and the boy walked towards an open expanse of green, and he saw that it was a ball which they were throwing the short distance between them as they walked.
Tom had brought the ball home some days earlier after joining in an impromptu game of cricket between the regiment’s officers and men, assorted Government clerks and anyone who cared to play.
When the pair reached the green they faced one another and began throwing the ball to and fro. Slowly they lengthened the distance between them, still flinging the ball back and forth.
There was something odd about the boy’s catching and throwing even though he was skilful at both. At first Dilhorne threw easy balls which the lad caught, equally easily, and then suddenly they became stronger and more difficult, until he flung a very low one, slightly sideways.
The boy dived to retrieve it, and when he did so he threw his other hand triumphantly into the air to celebrate his success. His cap flew off and Jack knew that he would tell no one in Sydney what he had seen, for the boy was Hester Dilhorne!
Their laughter and shouts floating towards him, he watched the game in an agony of jealousy. It ended when Hester reached the limit of her powers, and Dilhorne, misjudging a little, threw the ball high above her head, and in trying to catch it she fell over backwards into a clump of bushes.
Dilhorne ran towards her and lifted her out, hugging and kissing her. Fortunately for Jack’s sanity their game did not end as it usually did, for their time was short and they were due to dine with Will French.
They stood close for a few minutes, Dilhorne’s arms around her. He kissed Hester’s cheek before throwing her into the saddle, and she kissed his hand in return. They rode away rapidly, passing not far from where Jack was hidden, and the last thing he heard was Hester’s voice shouting, ‘Race you home!’
Jack never knew how long he sat there. He was bathed in sweat and filled with emotions which he had never before experienced. Why should that devil have such a treasure? How could he be so careless of her? He was laughing when the poor little thing fell into the bushes. He, Jack, would care for her better than that. What God was there who left him almost broken and let that swine take his pleasure around Sydney, riding his fine horses and showing off his prize?
The feelings for Hester which had swept over him on the night of the ball were intensified. His memory showed him her grace when she had run and jumped for the ball. That devil should take more care of her, not let her risk herself so.
Jack knew that he was being irrational. He hardly knew whether he desired Hester for herself, or because she was Dilhorne’s wife. He only knew that since the night of the ball he could not rest easy.
Now that graceful child was to be burdened because of Dilhorne’s base passions. It was not to be borne. He would put an end to him and achieve the twin aims of his life: revenge on the man who had humiliated him, and his desire to have Hester for his own. Surely with Dilhorne out of the way she might look more kindly on one who loved her so dearly.
Consumed with hate, Jack had ridden back to Sydney to begin watching Dilhorne’s every movement. He had discovered that his prey regularly drove to the quarry on the same afternoon each week and he had decided that Dilhorne’s journey home might provide a suitable spot for a shot from ambush.
Jack took his horse, musket and pistol. Dismounting, he lay in the shadow of a clump of small trees not far from the track along which Tom would pass. Lying in the bush, waiting for his victim, served only to increase his torment. Here he was, stranded in an alien wilderness, pursuing a man whom back home he would hardly have known, but who had become a potent symbol of the ruin into which his life had fallen.
Dilhorne’s appearance brought Jack a relief almost sexual in its power. He raised his musket, sighted carefully and loosed a shot to finish off the impudent swine once and for all.
Tom’s hat flew from his head. His horse reared beneath him at the sound of the shot, and with the instinct which rarely failed him, he fell from its back into the bush, to lie quite still in the hope of deceiving his attacker. With luck he would either leave the scene thinking his fell deed done, or would come over to finish what he had begun, giving Tom an opportunity to get at him.
In the silence which followed the sound of Dilhorne’s horse bolting, Jack rose, seized his pistol, and debated whether to go over and finish off his victim. Even in his growing madness caution held him back.
No, he thought. Best leave him. If he’s dead, well and good, if not, folly to tangle with such an artful bruiser, who would certainly be armed and might be waiting for him. There would be another day.
He could not confess the truth to himself: that his fear of Dilhorne was nearly as great as his hate.
Tom, lying prone, his right arm extended—he had plucked his pistol from his belt after his fall—was ready for his enemy as Jack had suspected. He heard the departing hoofbeats and waited for some time before rising again.
His face tho
ughtful, he chased after his horse which had abandoned its flight into the bush to begin peacefully grazing while his master mused on Jack Cameron and his now murderous proclivities. Tom had no doubt as to who had fired the shot and that it was no accident. He regretted that he had driven Cameron too hard in his interview with him when he had been unaware that Jack’s obsession with Hester had been the final straw which had tipped him over into madness.
He also had no doubt that he must watch his back since he was sure that Cameron was likely to attack him again once he discovered that his first attempt had failed.
Above all else, Hester must not discover what had happened for a new reason and one which was beginning to trouble him. Her health and strength, which had returned once her morning sickness had ended, had disappeared again and he wanted nothing to disturb her.
By the time he reached home there was nothing in his manner to betray that he had been the subject of a murderous attack—except that Hester, sensitive to everything to do with him, knew that something was wrong, but what, was quite another thing. Wisely, she said nothing.
Jack soon discovered that he had not so much as winged his enemy and tried to drown his disappointment in drink. There were, perhaps, safer ways of disposing of Dilhorne than killing him himself: ruining him might be a good start. He had friends in The Rocks who might do him a favour, particularly if he asked them to help him to loot the Regimental stores of liquor again—he badly needed the money which such a ploy would bring him. One way or another, he would do for the wretch.
Chapter Thirteen
‘Is anything worrying you, Tom?’ Hester asked him.
They had been playing chess: the athletic activities of their early married life had stopped now that Hester’s pregnancy had advanced. She had grown very large quite early on. The weight of the child seemed to be almost too much for her to carry. Even walking was difficult.
There were no more romps in the open, no excursions which took them to strange places, no driving out to the quarry, or to his place of business in Sydney where the sight of little Mrs Dilhorne on her husband’s arm had become commonplace. Hester never complained about her straitened life: the stoicism which she had learned during her poverty still sustained her.
Tom turned his inventiveness to devising games and pastimes which made no physical demands on her. They played cards, he showed her magic tricks and explained how they depended on misdirection. At night she would read to him. He continued to consult her on business matters, even when she could not go out with him.
‘However big you grow, Mrs Dilhorne,’ Tom said firmly to her one evening, ‘I am not having you dwindle into a wife.’ He was quoting to her from the Congreve play which she had read to him the previous evening.
‘You are my partner now and must learn the business. You may look after your child, but it must not be your whole life, for the day will come when the child has grown up and, think on, what will you do then?’
Only Tom, thought Hester, amused, could contemplate his wife, not yet due to give birth, and energetically decide what he, she and it would be doing twenty years hence.
Recently his teaching of her about his business had become more urgent. Once she had overheard him say to Joseph Smith, who had remonstrated with him for burdening his breeding wife with such matters, ‘By God, man, if aught should happen to me I don’t want her to be like those ignorant fools of widows who become the prey of the unscrupulous.’
Was it the prospect of an early death which was troubling him, and if so, why? Almost, as Hester watched him sitting opposite to her, mending his harness, for his hands were as skilful as his brain, she was tempted to ask him what was troubling him so. What stopped her was the thought that he would certainly tell her all in good time, for he had always done so before.
Her silence had him looking up at her.
‘Tired, Mrs Dilhorne?’
Hester shook her head. ‘Not more so than usual.’
Tom’s intuition did not fail him. He was sure that she had detected a change in his manner since Jack had become a threat, but he was not ready to burden her with his knowledge.
Instead he murmured, ‘Time for some more Gibbon, perhaps?’
Hester smiled a yes and picked up the heavy book which lay on the table by her elbow. She had begun to read to him The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and he had found that Gibbon’s cynicism matched his own. They had become engrossed in the world of the Antonines where other men and women, like Tom and her, had lived on frontiers so that still others could live in comfort.
Even though Tom had been expecting another attack, it surprised him when it came. Only his finely tuned instincts saved him. He had called late at Will French’s that night and was hurrying home to Hester, whom he was less and less inclined to leave alone even though he had posted an armed servant, Miller, in the hall of Villa Dilhorne to act as watchdog during his absence.
It was dark in the unpaved streets which led away from the centre of Sydney, and by night he always walked warily. It was only at the last moment that he became aware of his attackers. He never knew how many there were—possibly two or three—and it was only by great good fortune that he turned away from a blow with a cosh which might have proved fatal had he been completely under it.
Half-stunned, but with an instinctive and snarling determination to survive, he lashed out like the street-fighter he had once been, and used some of the queer tricks which he had learned from a Japanese who had settled in Sydney.
With the edge of his stiff right hand he struck the holder of the cosh in the throat so hard that he fell voiceless and unconscious to the ground. Then, his senses reeling, he put the point of his boot into the second man’s groin to such effect that he gave a high-pitched scream and dropped, clutching himself, to the ground.
Tom barely conscious, fell backward against the wall of the house behind him and began to slide down it until he reached a sitting position on the ground. The third man, if three men there were, had taken to his heels on hearing the noise of some late-night revellers from Madame Phoebe’s approaching them. The 73rd’s finest were lurching back to the Barracks, flown with wine and singing lustily.
One of the officers saw Tom, dazed and stunned, propped up against the wall.
‘By God, it’s Dilhorne,’ exclaimed young Parker. ‘Is he drunk, do you think?’
‘That’d be a wonder,’ returned Pat Ramsey, bending down and meeting Tom’s dulled, but still sardonic gaze.
‘Not drunk, attacked,’ croaked Tom. ‘Help me up, Ramsey, there’s a good fellow.’
‘Good God, there’s another of them here,’ said Major Menzies, putting a disdainful toe on the ruffian whose larynx Tom had damaged.
‘Should be two, at least,’ mumbled Tom, swaying in Pat Ramsey’s grip.
‘Two!’ ejaculated Pat. ‘Where’s t’ other?’
Young Osborne found the second and Menzies examined him as well.
‘He’s nearly killed the pair of them,’ drawled Menzies, rising. ‘There’s one here who’ll be slow to talk again, and by the look of it his friend will be lucky if he ever pleasures another girl. What did you hit ’em with, Dilhorne? A brick?’
Parker had found the cosh and Pat had raised Tom into a sitting position on a low wall.
‘They damaged his head and his left shoulder,’ he reported. ‘Here, Osborne, hold him up for me, will you. I want to see exactly what Dilhorne did to ’em.’
While one of the junior officers went for the watch, Pat examined Tom’s victims before returning to ask, ‘Just to satisfy my curiosity, Dilhorne, what exactly did you hit them with?’
Tom looked blearily at Pat. He was slightly concussed, one eye was closing, and bruises were beginning to appear on his face. He muttered, ‘Hand—nigh broke it, and foot—’ And he indicated the point of his polished military-style boot.
Osborne said helpfully, ‘Let’s get him to Madame Phoebe’s.’
‘No!’ exclaimed Tom, his voice momentarily norm
al. ‘Home. Hester will worry. Carriage round corner, I’ll drive.’
‘She’d worry if you drove home in this condition, my friend,’ Pat said briskly, thinking that here was a splendid chance to see the inside of Villa Dilhorne. ‘Parker and I will take you.’
‘I’ll come, too,’ offered Osborne eagerly.
‘No, lad, no room,’ said Pat. ‘But we’ll tell you what was what, later.’
Privately his respect for Dilhorne, already high, had increased after seeing what he had done, half-conscious, to his enemies. That stupid ass, Jack Cameron, could count himself lucky that Dilhorne had spared him.
It was gone two in the morning before they arrived at Villa Dilhorne. Tom had given Pat his keys. He had the doors open before Miller, pistol in hand, reached them, a worried Hester, carrying a candle, close behind him. The two officers helped Tom, still suffering from pain and shock, into the hall.
Hester said sharply, ‘Tom, what’s wrong?’ Her eyes on Stephen Parker and Pat were accusing.
Tom lifted his head.
‘Hurt, not drunk,’ he managed to say. ‘I promised you, remember?’
The effort of speech had him putting his entire weight on Ramsey. ‘I was attacked. Good friends brought me home.’
Parker’s fascinated eyes were on Hester. Her body, thickened by pregnancy, was concealed by a pink silk Chinese robe decorated with cream and yellow irises. It was loosely belted by a pale mauve sash. Her face was translucent as a result of her growing frailty, but it was delicately beautiful, and full of concern.
Once her first fright was over, she put down the candle and briskly started to organise matters. Miller was sent for further help. Pat Ramsey and Parker were asked to take Tom to his room. Both men were only too willing to find out what his bedroom was like now that they had seen the dazzling splendours of the room below.
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