Paula Marshall - An Unconventional Heiress

It was her free spirit, which Mrs Hackett could not crush, that Sarah found admirable, with the result that she had ended up being the laundress herself in order to ensure that Mrs Hackett’s complaints could not be seen to be justified and Nellie’s removal determined on. She found it impossible to try to explain this to Lucy, particularly since she found herself out of sympathy with the rest of the colonial ladies whom she had met. Their preoccupation with precedence, which she had thought to be peculiar to Mrs Middleton, turned out to be common to them all. Being a member of the highest society in England, she found little to choose between all those beneath her in rank.

So she changed the subject of Nellie and Mrs Hackett and commented on Sydney’s fixation with precedence and propriety instead.

‘You see, Sarah,’ said Lucy while she was rearranging the flowers in Sarah’s hair, ‘you’re so grand yourself that you don’t understand the differences that lie between a clerk in the Government offices and one of the shopkeepers. What’s worse, you’re so sure of yourself that you can afford to talk to Tom Dilhorne and Will French, even though they’re Emancipists—and do the wash, as well. You don’t fear that you’re lowering yourself, as Mama does. And it’s no good saying Pish and Tush to me, either, that’s the truth.’

‘I like it when you scold me,’ said Sarah. ‘It’s like being scolded by a kitten. No one else, apart from John, ever reprimands me.’ Which wasn’t strictly true, because Tom Dilhorne had said something similar to her the other day.

‘Oh, you may laugh,’ replied Lucy, ‘but you know that you wouldn’t marry any of them. Only one of your own kind.’

She stopped and looked thoughtfully at Sarah. ‘I don’t know, though. There’s a wildness about you sometimes. Look at the way you spoke to Dr Kerr in Hyde Park.’

‘Oh, Dr Kerr.’ Sarah shrugged. ‘Let us not speak of Dr Kerr. Forgive me, Lucy, for saying this, but you amaze me sometimes—you look as though you haven’t an idea in your head—and then…’ and she shrugged again.

‘I know—that’s what Mama and the men think, that I’m stupid. It’s better that way, Sarah. You don’t annoy them—and you can always get what you want if they believe that you’re just a dear little kitten.’

Sarah nodded. ‘I know who is going to make a good marriage, thinking like that, Lucy. That is, if you don’t meet someone devastatingly handsome, and quite worthless, and fall head over heels in love with him. I don’t advise you to do that.’

Her tone was so bitter that Lucy looked at her curiously—but said nothing.

‘Come on, my love,’ Sarah said at last, slipping her hand round Lucy’s waist. ‘Downstairs with you so that we can try to find these paragons whom we ought to marry.’

They met Pat Ramsey in the little hall. Lucy moved away, probably to try to find Frank Wright, leaving Sarah to entertain Pat again.

‘Your servant, Miss Langley. No Emancipists here to amuse you tonight, hey?’

Sarah was annoyed to discover that her friendship with Tom was the subject of gossip, but she refused to betray her feelings.

‘I’m sure, Captain Ramsey, that Mrs Menzies’s guest list is composed of only the best in Sydney society.’

He roasted her gently. ‘Ah, but what is the best, Miss Langley? The latest on dit, from Colonel O’Connell, no less, is that the Governor is thinking of making magistrates of some of the Emancipists. Imagine Dilhorne and Kerr as magistrates, what could be more respectable than that? O’Connell is nearly having apoplexy at the very thought. Now you, I suppose, would approve of at least one of my two names, if not the other.’

Sarah refused to be drawn. ‘Tedious stuff, Captain Ramsey—and why should you suppose any such thing? For all you know, I might be willing to support one of the aborigines as a magistrate. It might be what the colony deserves.’

Pat gave a shout of laughter that penetrated into the Menzies’s drawing room and turned heads there. ‘Oh, Miss Langley, you quiz me cruelly. You make me realise that Sydney’s gain is London’s loss. Come, take my arm—my stay tonight will be longer than usual for your sake alone, I promise you.’

She took his arm, but her smile for him was cold. ‘For my sake, Captain Ramsey? Pray do not put yourself out for my sake.’

He bowed to her again before they entered to make their salutations to the Major and his wife. ‘If not for you, Miss Langley, then for no one.’

Sarah forbore to tell him how much such idle badinage bored her. She had heard sufficient of it from Charles to sicken her of it forever, but she supposed that it was the usual way in which men spoke to women, and she must endure it or earn the title of a shrew.

The assembled guests chattered and gossiped for a short time before the main event of the evening—which was a short concert—began, and Sarah found herself being compelled to listen to a great deal of the kind of fustian which Pat had been serving up to her. Not only that, much of the gossip was again about the Emancipists and their goings-on. It seemed that one of Sydney’s select gentlemen’s clubs—if not the most select—had actually asked Tom Dilhorne to become a member. Worse than that, he had actually accepted their invitation. It became the evening’s major topic of conversation.

‘I don’t believe it’, ‘It can’t be true’ and ‘Whatever next!’ were only a few of the comments that flew round the room. ‘They’ve only invited him because they want to get a finger in his financial pies,’ said one knowledgeable old fellow who worked at Government House.

‘Ah, but you haven’t heard the best part of the story—which also happens to be true,’ said Frank Wright. ‘You remember Fred Waring?’

Heads nodded. Yes, everyone remembered Fred Waring, the drunken remittance man of good family who had been sacked from his poor post as a Government clerk for drunkenness and incompetence.

‘It seems that when Fred turned up and found Dilhorne present by invitation of the committee he made a great scene and said that if Dilhorne, who was nothing but a rascally Emancipist, had been admitted as a member, he would resign and leave immediately. The chairman told him that it was his choice since Dilhorne was staying, so Waring walked out.’

‘There’s not a decent house in Sydney that will receive him,’ Sarah heard one stout matron say. ‘And now he’s not even got the club to attend. Is his daughter here tonight?’

Frank Wright looked around. ‘I don’t think so. Only the Middletons receive her these days and not very often, I believe.’

‘Do you know his daughter?’ Sarah whispered to Lucy who was, as usual, being squired by Frank.

‘Who? Oh, you mean little Hester Waring. Not that she’s so very little, but she’s a poor shy creature, about my age, quite plain. They say that Fred ill treats her. Mama and Papa came across them, by chance, the other night when they were returning home after visiting Colonel O’Connell. He was quite drunk. Hester was trying to help him along and he was cursing her. Now Mama says that she won’t have her in the house, either. She could be setting a bad example for me to follow. Oh, look, Mama is signalling to me that the concert is about to begin and I am the first performer.’

Poor Hester Waring, indeed, thought Sarah, and then forgot her. Lucy was opening the evening’s bill of fare by singing two old Scots ballads, after which Captain Parker was to delight the audience with some folk songs.

‘He has a pleasant baritone voice,’ Lucy had told Sarah. The next turn was to be Sarah’s: she was to play a short piano piece and then sing some of the songs that had been all the fashion when she had left London.