Hester Waring's Marriage (7 page)

If anyone had told her that, deep down, she was becoming sexually attracted to Tom Dilhorne of all people, she would have denied it with her last breath. Even the revelation that Captain Parker's attraction had dimmed had not revealed the truth to her. Nor did her shortened breath and the feeling of excitement which swept over her when he approached her after the meal had ended and the company was relaxing over a little, a very little, strong drink.

Hester immediately became prey to the most unnatural feelings. It was almost as though she were wearing no
clothes at all! A strange odd fluttering started in the base of her stomach. Nothing in her short life had prepared her for such sensations, and she feared that she was sickening for a fever, she was so aware of her whole body—and, what was worse, of his.

Everything about him seemed so bright and clear, his sandy-blond hair with its slight wave, his deep blue eyes, the strange twist of his mouth which betrayed the sardonic humour with which he so often spoke to her, the breadth of his shoulders, the depth of his chest, the length of his legs, his height—he had to bend slightly to speak to her.

Oh, she must not be so forward with him, so unladylike, she must not. Finding it difficult to breathe in his presence on top of her shameless feelings about herself and him, made her manner to him as blunt and spiritless as he had ever known it. She was back to the hunted Miss Waring of the interview.

So sour had yesterday's strange joy turned that when he asked her most kindly, ‘Are you enjoying yourself, Miss Waring?' she heard herself replying discourteously,

‘Very much, but no thanks to you, I fear. Had you had your way, I would not have been appointed in the first place.'

Tom's face tightened. He had been long aware that she thought this, but strangely, for the cold, uncaring man he usually was, it hurt him to hear her say it. He bowed and this time his gravity was real, not mock, as Hester, growing increasingly sensitive to his moods immediately, and contritely, grasped.

‘Nevertheless,' he replied, his manner to her as kind as hers to him had been harsh, ‘it is Christmas, after all, Miss Waring, and any reservations I may have felt about your appointment have disappeared before your splendid performance.'

Hester turned away from him so that he should not see her eyes filling with tears at his forbearance. She reproached herself inwardly and bitterly for her churlishness. She also saw that Jardine, who had heard the interchange, was looking at them both curiously.

Tom took his peacocks miserably away and sourly regretted putting them on. Jardine leaned forward in his usual deferential manner: he was always courteous to everyone, and Hester's shame grew when he said gravely, ‘Miss Waring, a word with you.'

‘Indeed, Mr Jardine.' She looked away from him. She had never been more aware of her plain appearance and her dowdy dress.

‘Miss Waring, I can understand why you feel as you do about Mr Dilhorne. All Sydney knew of your father's dislike of him. But, I assure you, you misjudge him. Far from attempting to prevent your appointment, the opposite is true. Were it not for his intervention, the Board would never have offered you the post at all. He spoke most feelingly on your behalf.'

Jardine thought that Hester was going to faint on the spot. Her face went an unpleasant yellowish-grey and she swayed on her feet. Tom, who was talking to Godfrey Burrell, but had kept an eye on her, saw what was happening and moved quickly to her side.

‘Miss Waring, what is wrong? What has caused this, Jardine?'

Jardine had no intention of telling him the truth. Let him find out from the girl.

‘I think that Miss Waring may be feeling the heat.'

‘Then we must get her out of here, man.'

He lifted the half-conscious Hester as though she weighed even less than she did, and carried her into an
ante-room, away from curious eyes, and set her gently on a chair. ‘Water, Jardine. Immediately.'

Jardine, all his suspicions about Tom and his interest in Hester finally confirmed, sped off to find water.

‘I am not really fainting, Mr Dilhorne,' Hester faltered in little more than a whisper. ‘I am only feeling weak and ashamed.'

‘Hush, Miss Waring,' he said, in a voice which Hester had never heard from anyone in all her short life, so full of concern for her that her eyes filled at the sound. ‘You may not feel faint, but you look very ill.'

‘That is because I have eaten too much, and I have behaved dreadfully.'

‘I cannot believe that, Miss Waring.'

‘Oh, but you must, Mr Dilhorne. I have behaved very badly to you today and you know it. What I said to you about preventing my appointment was unforgivable. Mr Jardine has told me what you did for me that day. Do not be cross with him for doing so. He was quite right. He could not let me go on insulting you when you had been so kind.'

They looked at one another in silence. Tom, for once, was bereft of words.

‘I like your waistcoat,' Hester said unexpectedly.

‘Do not reproach yourself,' he told her gently. ‘Under all the circumstances, it was natural that you should think what you did.'

‘Not at all,' she replied. ‘I was quite wrong to leap to such dreadful conclusions. You have always been so kind to me on your visits, bringing me the books, and the sweets for the children, but I didn't like to think so. We had peacocks at home,' she finished inconsequentially.

He saw that she was wretched and tired beyond belief,
lying back in her chair, wearing her ugly dress, her face ashen.

‘When Jardine comes back with the water, and you have drunk a little, I shall drive you home,' he said. ‘You are exhausted and need to rest.'

Hester's eyes closed. ‘How do you know that I am feeling tired? I think that I should like to sleep for ever, only it's an odd time of day to want to.'

Tom could have told her that it was the unaccustomed food and drink which she had taken and the shock of Jardine's news which had reduced her to this state coming as it did at the end of months of suffering. But he said nothing, only helped her to drink the water, for even that seemed to be beyond her.

When she had finished and lay back again, her lips livid, he scooped her out of the chair, carried her to his gig and drove her home before the astonished eyes of School Board and teachers alike.

Another fine piece of gossip about Tom Dilhorne, was the general cry!

 

Just before the Christmas Party, Hester had visited Jem Larkin and asked him if she could leave her payment beyond the December Quarter Day when it fell due. Larkin had leered at her and told her that it was fair enough so far as he was concerned, if she were prepared to pay the extra interest for going beyond the due date.

Hester had swallowed hard, but had agreed. She needed a little ready money to buy kind Mrs Cooke a Christmas fairing and some comfits and sugar plums for the children at school.

Shortly after that, Tom had arrived at the schoolroom with a bag of sweets and a plum cake for herself and the children. He had insisted that she take some of the plum
cake home for herself, and she had found it difficult to refuse.

Lying in bed on the evening of the party, she remembered with some pain all the similar little kindnesses she and the children had received from him in the weeks leading up to her dreadful snub. The day, for example, when she had met him in the street. He had told her that she looked tired and had insisted on driving her home.

It was as though all the poison about him that her father had poured into her for so many years had prevented her from realising how kind he had been to her, and how different he was from the ogre which almost everyone said he was. Well, he might be an ogre in his business dealings, but in his dealings with her, no such thing.

She writhed at the memory of her behaviour to him at the party, but at the same time she could not help remembering the warm feeling which she had experienced when he had carried her up to her room, calling on a surprised Mrs Cooke to come and help her. Cradled in his arms, she had felt not fear and hate but a sense of comfort and security.

Mrs Cooke's face had been one giant question mark, and after Tom had gone and she had helped Hester to undress, she came upstairs with the queerest expression on it. She was carrying a glass of hot toddy in her hand, and some delicious sweet biscuits on a small plate. All of which, she said, had arrived at the hands of Tom Dilhorne's man, with his best compliments, and she and Miss Waring were to share them together.

‘He's a card, is Tom,' said Mrs Cooke. ‘Mary Mahoney said that you never knew where you were with him. But I don't mind drinking his fine liquor and eating his good food.'

Hester could not but agree, and she and Mrs Cooke,
sitting on her bed, divided the food and drink between them and chatted together. Mrs Cooke was slyly trying to find out why Tom should be driving Hester home and plying her with goodies.

Hester could not have told her. She had slept a little before the toddy arrived, had woken up feeling refreshed and was only too happy to sit with Mrs Cooke, getting slightly drunk—Tom had sent word to Mrs Cooke to give Hester as much drink as she could take, and to deny that it was alcoholic. Mrs Cooke was also given
carte blanche
to drink glass for glass.

Finally the two of them fell asleep together, Mrs Cooke in her shawl on top of the bed and Hester in it, both waiting to greet Christmas morning with slightly thick heads.

 

Hester gave Mrs Cooke her Christmas present and Mrs Cooke gave Hester her Christmas dinner, thus making two good meals in a row for Hester. They were busy mopping up the gravy when Tom's boy arrived again with a letter for Hester from Tom, a bottle of port and a large plum pudding for them both, as well as Mr Dilhorne's compliments of the season.

Hester opened her letter in front of a Mrs Cooke bursting with curiosity. The superscription on the cover was in an elegant classic script, and Hester wondered for a moment if Tom's clerk had written it, so unlike was it from anything which she had expected. But the letter inside was in the same hand and was undoubtedly from him.

In it he hoped that she was feeling better, begged her to accept the bottle of port and the pudding as a Christmas gift, and hoped to see her well and back in the schoolroom by the New Year.

She puzzled over his beautiful handwriting: it was to be some time before she discovered where and how he had
acquired it. She also fended off as best she could Mrs Cooke's questions. She had no more idea than her landlady why Tom should suddenly favour her with his attentions.

A diet of more good food, the plum pudding and the port found her on her highest ropes and telling the gratified Mrs Cooke about Tom's peacock waistcoat, black pearl and elegant fob watch.

‘Fancy!' was Mrs Cooke's most frequent exclamation. ‘I remember him running around Sydney when he first came here, a cheeky long-legged lad as I recall. Who'd have thought to see him dressed so fine and speak so grand?'

Hester fixed a slightly drunken eye on Mrs Cooke: the port had done its work.

‘Fine isn't the word,' she announced, slightly belligerently. ‘You'd have thought he'd worn clothes like that all his life.' She smiled at a sudden reminiscence. ‘We had peacocks at home when I was a girl. Noisy things. They used to screech. Mama didn't like them. But then there wasn't much Mama liked. Apart from Rowland,' she added.

Mrs Cooke had to stop herself from agreeing heartily with Miss Waring who now sank dreamily back in her chair, waving her glass, and looking around Mrs Cooke's neat parlour while she demanded that they both join in a toast to Mr Dilhorne and his boy for the gift of the port and the plum pudding.

After the meal and the drink both women subsided into a pleasant doze, Hester on Mrs Cooke's hard sofa and Mrs Cooke in her big armchair. Later they soothed their thick heads with some excellent tea—bought from Tom's Emporium—and the rest of the bottle of port which happily rounded off Hester's best Christmas for years.

For some reason just before she staggered up to bed,
Hester found herself buttonholing Mrs Cooke owlishly, and informing her that she thoroughly approved of Mr Dilhorne. ‘He looked a very tulip of fashion,' she added, recalling a dim memory of her brother Rowland's slang, long ago.

Mrs Cooke was happy to agree with her. She would have agreed to anything, and watched Hester reel upstairs feeling full of a vague benevolence towards Hester, Tom, his boy, and life in general. Both women enjoyed an excellent night's sleep.

 

Christmas over, it was back to hard pounding again for Hester. Larkin had given her until the fifth of January to pay the interest still outstanding, and so, after morning school, she gathered it together, put it into her reticule and set off for his little counting-house. She was glumly aware that the money which she was about to hand over would have fed and clothed her adequately for the rest of the quarter. As it was, life would be harder than ever because of the extra interest to be paid for being late.

Larkin's clerk looked rudely at her and pointed mannerlessly with his quill to Larkin's room when she asked to see him. She was used by now to insolence from underlings who found it amusing to taunt a poor, plain girl, and walked in to find Larkin writing in a big ledger.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Larkin,' she said, opening her reticule and beginning to count the coins out on his desk, ‘I have brought you what I owe you.'

Larkin looked at her strangely, and said, ‘No need, no need, Miss Waring.'

He had no idea whether she was aware that her father's debts had been paid by Tom Dilhorne, but he never told anyone anything which might give them an advantage over him.

‘No need, Mr Larkin? How can that be?' Hester's face was a picture of bewilderment. He had dunned her father and then herself so mercilessly that she could not believe that he had succumbed to a late access of Christmas spirit.