Hester Waring's Marriage (23 page)

Tom nodded wisely. ‘But…' he said, and said no more.

Macquarie looked surprised, so Tom, for once, explained himself.

‘I've learned,' he said, ‘that when someone looks as confidentially at me as you've just done, and then offers me that kind of statement in that tone of voice, that there's always a but in it somewhere!'

‘Well, the but in it is this,' said the Governor, laughing, ‘that while I want you to be a magistrate—and I know that you'll be a good and fair one—magistrates don't usually rearrange the features of Army officers in Madame Phoebe's! I was prepared to overlook that, so my
but
refers to something else. It's this. I have gained the impression that until recently you were prepared to agree to be a magistrate, but that something has changed your mind again. Without amplifying matters further, I believe that I know and understand why that has happened.'

Tom smiled at him. ‘Lots of buts there—and I know that you understand why I wish to delay being nominated, for the moment.'

The Governor nodded before murmuring, apparently inconsequentially, ‘You've recovered from the attack on you, I see, but I gather that you're having other problems—or so gossip says.'

‘True, so you will understand that I don't want anything to compromise my freedom of action at the moment.'

‘Understood—and here's another but—but I want you to understand that when this affair has blown over satisfactorily for you, I want your word that you will agree to be a magistrate. I know that you will keep it and I am not going to allow you to wriggle your devious way out of doing as I wish. It is your Governor speaking, Mr Dilhorne, and not your friend. Otherwise I shall allow you no freedom of action while you settle your current problem as discreetly as possible.'

Tom toasted him, and gave way at last to the Governor's wishes. He could do no less. Macquarie had heard, God knew how, that Jack Cameron was behind the attacks on him and was giving him permission to settle the matter as he pleased. At the same time he was using it to blackmail
him into becoming a magistrate—something which he had privately vowed never to do.

Like it or not, respectability was going to claim him for its own!

‘Of course,' he said, and for once drank long and hard.

 

Events moved quickly after that. The week he had discussed with O'Neill passed, and in it his wagons and drays were attacked again. O'Neill, disturbed, arrived at Villa Dilhorne with the news.

‘It's bad, Master Dilhorne. One wagon load lost, on the Paramatta run, and two men injured.'

‘That's it, then,' said Tom. ‘I'm on the next as I promised. No one is to know that I shall be with you. Send word when you're ready for me.'

‘Two or three days, that's all.'

Tom rubbed his close-shaved chin reflectively. ‘Make it four or five. I look a little respectable.'

When O'Neill had gone, he returned to the living-room where Hester reclined on the settle, a book in her hand.

‘I've been thinking,' he told her. ‘I need to spend a few days in Paramatta—business takes me there, and I don't care to leave you alone. Instead, you might like to pay a visit to Alan and Sarah while I'm away. Alan told me yesterday that he wishes to examine you at leisure, and you would have him and Sarah, to say nothing of baby John, for company.'

Hester looked at him. She knew immediately that this was something to do with what she privately thought of as Tom's trouble.

‘If it will make you happy, of course I will go. I always enjoy visiting the Kerrs.'

‘Then that's settled,' he said, kissing her.

He whistled as he walked out to his gig. At least he did
not need to add a deserted and vulnerable Hester to his other worries. Things might yet work themselves out.

 

Tom arrived at Paramatta with O'Neill, three bullock drays, two horse-drawn wagons and the half-a-dozen ruffians he had promised O'Neill earlier.

He was indistinguishable from them. He had neither washed nor shaved after he had left Hester with the Kerrs and he wore the coarse clothing of his early days in Sydney. He had passed Pat Ramsey on the road out of Sydney and Pat's cursory glance had roved unseeing over him, over his scuffed boots stretched out in front of him, his clothes and face filthy, and his battered hat pushed to the back of his greasy head.

At Paramatta they unloaded what had been ordered from Sydney and stocked up with farm produce, wooden arte-facts and the lengths of the coarse cloth which the farmers' wives had woven. They waited for the evening before they set off home. Three of the ruffians were hidden under the awnings of the big drays, the other three helped with the loading, their arms concealed. Tom drove the first wagon.

He had decided on a night drive home. O'Neill was sure that they had been watched from a distance and that the highwaymen might think a night attack easier than a day one. Tom had instructed his men to hide their arms and behave in a loose, drunken fashion.

They were singing, seemingly half-drunk, when the attack came near some abandoned huts which the bush-rangers had been hiding in after following the wagons from Sydney. Half-a-dozen men suddenly appeared on horseback and ordered them to get down from, and abandon, the wagons. They fired a ball over Tom's head and were obviously determined to make a real killing this time.

‘Be damned to that,' Tom sang out. He then gave the
shrill yell which was a signal for the counter-attack from the men hidden in the drays, whereupon a short skirmish followed.

The thieves were not expecting such high-level resistance, and since Tom's party had the advantage of surprise this time, they made short work of overcoming their attackers. Their leader, an Emancipist named Kaye, a noted Sydney scapegrace, was taken on one side after being captured.

Tom left O'Neill to reorganise the wagons and drays which had been scattered in the attack and went into one of the huts, giving orders that Kaye should be brought in after about fifteen minutes. The delay was designed to unsettle him even more than the failed attack had done.

The wretched Kaye was thrust into the candle-lit room. On a rough deal table in the middle of the room he saw Tom Dilhorne, a cigarillo clamped between his teeth and a pistol in his hand. Dilhorne was no longer the respectable man who walked Sydney, but had the grimy raffish air and dilapidated clothing of the young ruffian who had arrived to take the town by storm.

Kaye did not immediately recognise him, so changed was he from the man he had become. His heart sank: he had forgotten how dangerous Dilhorne was.

Tom took the cigarillo from between his teeth and tried Kaye's nerves by making him wait while he ground it out on the table and then by gesturing at him with the pistol.

‘What do you propose that I do with you, Kaye?'

His eyes were as hard and cruel as Kaye had ever seen them.

‘Don't hand me over to the military, Master Dilhorne. I'll surely swing this time.'

‘So you would. But what makes you think that I should want to?'

He gesticulated with the pistol again. ‘A quick shot would rid me of a problem and save Sydney the cost of a trial.'

Lifting the pistol, he pointed it at Kaye and almost absent-mindedly sighted down the barrel. Kaye gave a great gulp.

‘Don't do that, Master Dilhorne. Your life for mine would be a fair exchange.' His voice quavered on the last word.

Tom did not lower the pistol, merely looked over the top of it.

‘Would it, indeed? Now what makes you say that?'

‘Put that thing down, and I'll tell you.'

Tom said agreeably, ‘You'll tell me with it up, or you won't be telling anyone anything.'

‘It might go off accidental-like.'

‘No, it wouldn't. I never do anything accidental, Kaye. Don't try my patience. I'm not quite myself tonight.'

Kaye thought that he'd never seen anyone more like himself than Tom Dilhorne sitting there, threatening to send him into eternity.

‘Right then, here it is. There's a nob wants to do for you, Dilhorne, and he wants it bad. So bad he paid Fitzpatrick's lot to do you over a few weeks back. Poor Fitz made a botch of it, and won't be telling anyone anything again. So then the nob hired me to loot your wagons to do you more hurt. He'd see you dead if he could, God's truth.'

Tom put the pistol down and looked at the miserable wretch before him. His own suspicions had been confirmed. There had been nothing accidental about the attack in the street, never mind the shot which had whistled through his hat earlier.

‘Go on,' he said. ‘This nob must have a name. Tell me,
I'm curious. What did he pay you with? The man I'm thinking of has no money.'

‘Nor he has, Master Dilhorne, but he's privy to the garrison's liquor stores these days and that's better than money.'

‘So it is,' rasped Tom, ‘but if you don't come out with his name I'll kill you where you stand.'

‘But you know his name, don't you, Master Dilhorne? It's Captain Cameron, whose pretty face you spoiled.'

Tom picked up the pistol and pointed it at Kaye—who let out a shriek of despair at the sight—and fired it at Kaye's shoulder. Kaye fell to the ground, clutching himself.

‘I told you what you wanted, Master Dilhorne. A life for a life, you agreed, and you broke your word.'

Tom threw the smoking pistol on the table as the door opened to admit O'Neill, who grinned when he saw the writhing Kaye.

‘No, I didn't break my word,' remarked Tom affably. ‘I offered you your life—I said nothing about your shoulder. O'Neill, see that he gets to Dr Kerr. As for you, Kaye, that should teach you not to interfere with me again.' He thrust his hand into his pocket, took out a guinea and handed it to O'Neill.

‘Pay the doctor with that, and give Kaye the change.'

Once O'Neill had led Kaye out, telling him that in his opinion Master Dilhorne had grown a deal too soft these days, and that he, O'Neill, would have had Kaye's guts for garters for this and the other nights' work, Tom reloaded his pistol.

His expression when he rammed the ball home would have shocked, but not surprised, Hester. So, his suppositions had been correct. Jack was running around like a mad dog trying to kill and ruin him. Now he had several levers
he might use against him. To begin with, O'Connell might like to know who was responsible for looting the Regimental stores. The question was, how could he let O'Connell know what Cameron was doing without his knowing where the information came from?

Tom laughed. Guile was sure to find a way: it always did.

 

After Tom had returned from Paramatta and had brought her home again from the Kerrs, Hester's fear that he was hiding something from her was as strong as ever. He said little about his time there other than to tell her some nonsense about renewing contracts with the locals—an explanation which she thought would scarcely have deceived a child!

Tom Dilhorne to spend a week renegotiating minor agreements which Joseph Smith could have dealt with in an afternoon! What did he take her for? She said nothing to him, though. Two could play at that game. Sooner or later she would discover what had really been going on.

When he had finished talking nonsense to her—she was lying on the settle and Tom was seated on the floor beside her while she stroked his head—she said almost idly, ‘I trust that your business at Paramatta was successful enough to warrant your journey there.'

He glanced sharply at her but her face gave nothing away and the stroking never paused. Mrs Slyboots, he thought with some amusement, giving as little away as I do.

‘Tolerable, my dear, tolerable. I have to keep O'Neill and his cohorts in a good humour—wouldn't do to think that I've lost interest in them. It's a problem with having so many irons in the fire.'

‘Oh, indeed, Mr Dilhorne.'

Was her tone slightly satiric, or was he imagining it? He debated about telling her the truth, but Alan had privately warned him how frail she was, and that she needed loving care.

Instead he rose to his feet and walked across the room to pour the one glass of brandy which he allowed himself each night.

‘Water, my dear?' he queried. Alan had recently advised against her drinking spirits—they might damage the child she was carrying.

Hester watched him standing sharp against the candlelight. Her stroking hand had lifted his sandy-blond hair around his head, and when he turned towards her, she caught her breath at the sight of him. The passion which she felt for him was all the stronger because of their enforced abstinence.

‘You look happy, Mrs Dilhorne.'

‘Oh, but I am.' She thought that he looked happy, too. The hard set of his mouth was relaxed and the humour which came so naturally to him, but was often suppressed, was given freer play these days.

He handed her the water. ‘Hold your nose while you drink it, Mrs Dilhorne. I wouldn't want its strength to overpower you. It'll be hard to readjust yourself to anything so light as wine once Master Dilhorne is born.'

‘You're so sure that it's a boy,' she said, smiling. ‘But what if it's a girl?'

‘Then I promise to love Miss Dilhorne as much as her non-existent brother.'

Hester was silent for so long that Tom asked her gently, ‘What is troubling you, Hester?'

‘That it is hard for you that, because I am so weak these days, we have not been man and wife for some time—'

He interrupted her. ‘We are never more truly man and wife than while you are carrying my child.'

‘Oh, Mr Dilhorne!' Hester was suddenly merry again. ‘I cannot imagine the day when you are unable to trick me with your clever tongue.'

He reached up to take her stroking hand and kiss it.

‘My dearest love, I know what you are trying to say.'

‘That it is hard for you, as a man, to be so denied.'