An Unconventional Heiress

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.

All in all, once the gossip about the Emancipists had been disposed of, it had been one of the more pleasant evenings that Sarah had spent since setting foot in Sydney. She was flattered by the young officers, and deferred to by most of the matrons and their husbands, even if they did deplore her taste for talking to such undesirables as Tom Dilhorne and Will French. Besides, her brother was a fine figure of a man, and filthy rich, too. Who knows, given a bit of luck he might even decide to take one of their daughters for a wife before he returned home again.

Of course, Sarah soon found that this sense of well-being was too good to last long. Two days after the party she was sitting in the drawing room, readying herself to do some painting, when she heard violent screaming coming from the kitchen.

She put down her unopened portfolio and ran to discover what in the world could be the matter. Before she reached the door, Nellie flung it open.

‘Oh, Mum, it’s poor Sukie, that old bitch Hackett was downright careless with the kettle and managed to pour boiling water all down Sukie’s arm. It’s in a right mess.’

Sarah pushed past the distraught girl into the kitchen to find that she was speaking no less than the truth. Sukie, now sobbing gently, was seated in a Windsor chair while Mrs Hackett, ignoring the scarlet ruin of her forearm, and making no attempt to care for it, was berating her at the top of her voice.

‘You careless fool,’ she was roaring, ‘do you never look where you’re going? Now you won’t be fit to work for a least a week. I’ve a good mind to turn you off immediately.’

Sukie’s sobs redoubled and Nellie shrieked, ‘It weren’t her fault. ’Twas yours, you old cow.’

Sarah banged a fist on the table.

‘Be quiet, all of you. Whose fault it was is of no account, Mrs Hackett. May I also remind you that it is I who turn off servants in this house, not you. At the moment Sukie’s welfare is all that matters. Allow me to look at your arm, Sukie. No, don’t wince, I shan’t touch it.’

Mrs Hackett opened her mouth to defend herself, but Sarah banged the table again, raising her own voice this time. ‘Be silent, Mrs Hackett, while I examine Sukie’s arm.’

This served to quell the housekeeper, but her malevolent glare was now for the mistress and not the maid. Sarah took no notice of her, particularly when she discovered that Sukie’s arm was so badly scalded that she needed the assistance of a doctor.

She looked up at Nellie. ‘Is Carter at home—or did he go out with Mr John?’

‘At home, Mum—doing some carpentry in the shed at the back.’

‘Good, go and tell him what has happened and ask him to run round to Dr Kerr and see if he is able to visit us immediately. I understand that he has returned from Paramatta.’

‘Yes, Mum,’ and Nellie lumbered off to find Carter, who, she told herself fiercely, wouldn’t be best pleased to hear that the old bitch had hurt the girl he had been sparking at recently. Divested of her weird clothing and attired in one of Sarah’s old cotton dresses, Sukie had begun to blossom—until this latest mishap had occurred.

‘Make yourself useful, Mrs Hackett,’ Sarah said sharply, ‘and brew us some tea. Drinking it might help poor Sukie to feel a little better.’

She had never felt herself to be so helpless before. She had not the slightest notion of how to treat the dreadful burn, which was beginning to weep gently, so that when the kitchen door opened and Alan Kerr, followed by Carter, came in, carrying his bag, she sprang to her feet to greet him.

‘Oh, I am so happy to learn that Carter found you so quickly. Poor Sukie really does need some instant attention. There has been an accident in the kitchen, and as a result boiling water was poured over her forearm.’

Alan Kerr stared at the little scene. At Sarah, who had now seated herself at the kitchen table, her cup of tea before her, at Nellie, holding a cup for Sukie to drink from, and at Mrs Hackett, standing belligerent, arms akimbo, before the kitchen range, glaring her dislike at everyone, including him.

He put his bag down and pulled up a kitchen chair so that he was able to sit by poor Sukie and inspect her arm most carefully before deciding how to treat it. Even so, he still found time to notice that Miss Sarah Langley seemed to be in much finer fettle than usual. She finished drinking her tea before rising and coming over to watch him treat Sukie.

I refuse to stand here helpless, thought Sarah firmly. Mrs Hackett is apparently useless in an emergency, and Nellie would doubtless be little better. I’m sure that he would welcome some assistance, even from me.

‘Doctor Kerr,’ she ventured, ‘if there is anything I may do to help you, pray tell me.’

‘Indeed, I will,’ he said, without looking up. ‘I usually have a young assistant with me, but he is out tending a poor old lady who does not need medical care but whom a little nursing will benefit. If you will pick up my bag, put it on the table and open it, you will find inside it a large blue bottle, some scraps of cotton wadding, bandages, and a pair of scissors. Hand me the bottle and the cotton, and have the bandages and the scissors ready to pass to me when I ask for them.’

Sukie gave a groan on hearing the word scissors. Doctor Kerr said kindly to her while he poured something from the bottle on to the cotton. ‘Don’t be frightened, Sukie, I don’t propose to cut you with the scissors, only some of the wadding and the right length of bandage.’

He worked patiently on in silence, Sukie occasionally moaning a little. After a moment Mrs Hackett snorted. Sarah looked across at her and said, as pleasantly as she could, ‘I would be grateful, Mrs Hackett, if you would put a kettle on to boil again. I don’t think that Dr Kerr will need any hot water in his treatment of Sukie, but I’m sure that he would be grateful for a cup of tea when he has finished.’

The woman tossed her head, but did as she was bid. Alan Kerr, on hearing this little interchange, smiled to himself, remembering his conversation with Tom Dilhorne. Well, he was seeing Miss Sarah Langley in action against Mrs Hackett and it was quite plain who was the victor. Miss Langley was not going to be driven to tears by the old battle-axe. Not only that, when he said, somewhat peremptorily, ‘Bandages!’, she was prompt to hand them over, and then the scissors, after another brusque command.

Finally he had finished. Sukie’s poor arm had been carefully dressed and her pain relieved a little in consequence. Mrs Hackett needed yet another order from Sarah: this time to make the tea, and offer Dr Kerr some biscuits, which she did with an ill grace. While he waited he held Sukie’s hand and tried to comfort her.