The Silver Touch

by Rosalind Laker

  *

  Hester accepted Mary Esdaile’s invitation to call and went one Saturday afternoon when the workshop was closed, taking the three boys with her. Mary, with the baby tucked under her arm like a parcel and the two toddlers clinging to her skirts, abandoned the tea that had been set formally for her and her guest in the drawing-room and had a nursery tea laid on a table on the terrace where she and Hester could join the children and sit with them. It was a happy afternoon, enjoyed by all, particularly William who thought there was no animal in the world to compare with the horse. Mary said he could ride the pony at any time under the supervision of a groom. It was the start of William’s association with the Esdaile stables, a privilege he was to use to the full. The climax of the afternoon for all three boys was a choice from the basket of puppies.

  In the weeks that followed Hester thought often how right John had been in foreseeing constant involvement with the Esdailes. It was not only with Ann having the use of the library and William forever at the stables, but she and John were invited time and time again to supper parties and musical evenings and amateur theatricals, Richard and Letticia being included on many occasions after their betrothal had been officially announced. The events were informal in comparison with the elaborate festivities that were a major part of the Esdailes’ social life in London and made a welcome change for them both. Sometimes, if a gathering were small, the evening would end in James’s own parlour in the tavern with punch for the ladies and ale for the men, often the local fiddler coming in from the taproom to play well-loved country melodies.

  As the relationship developed between the Esdailes and the Batemans, John and James sometimes met on their own in the tavern parlour to play a game of chess or enjoy a strong political discussion over a pint of ale. There was no class barrier between them, for John had the natural ease of the well-bred in any company, rich or poor, and although he never thought about his antecedents they were probably a match in every way for the D’Estailes. In any case, he and James were both in trade, and although James was now in a higher world of banking he made no secret of having retained his financial interests in military accoutrements, which had continued to be a profitable business since England was rarely free of war in one foreign field or another.

  Hester’s acquaintanceship with Mary remained as from the first meeting. There was pleasure in each other’s company, a mutual liking and respect, but an invisible barrier prevented a true friendship evolving, not of Hester’s making but of Mary’s. Hester could guess that its origins lay in Mary’s awareness of James’s open affection for her, but since she herself knew that no harm would ever come of it, she simply regretted that she and Mary would never know each other better. Yet nothing seemed to please the Esdailes more than to be invited in their turn to 107, Bunhill Row where there was always good food, games of cards and plenty of lively conversation.

  Ann was only occasionally persuaded to attend these social affairs. Instead she went by day to the mansion’s library and met Matthew whenever he was free from work. For her it was a time of immense satisfaction. With unlimited access to splendid literature and a companionship such as she had never known before, she felt she was being fed mentally and spiritually for the first time in her life. No one could have wished for a better friend than Matthew had proved himself to be, whether on walks or in the library or on balmy evenings when they would sit under a tree somewhere and talk for hours. Her family knew she was seeing him, although it was doubtful whether they guessed how frequently for they were used to her going off on her own. She was much like her mother in needing a little solitude sometimes and in her case it was usually to read in a quiet corner. Her two younger brothers teased her about having a beau until her scarlet embarrassment and tear-filled eyes finally quietened William who cuffed Jonathan into sulky silence.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ann.’ William was ever quick to own up to his faults. ‘Letticia never used to cry when we teased her.’

  She pushed aside his tumbling dark hair and took him by the ears to bring him forward and plant a kiss on his forehead in forgiveness. ‘I know you meant no harm. It’s just that he’s not a beau as all Letticia’s young men were before she met Richard. Matthew is my friend, nothing more.’

  Magical words. Matthew, my friend. She had come to realize that until meeting him she had always been lonely in the midst of a large and loving family. Now every morning when she woke it was with a sense of fulfilment and the joyous anticipation of seeing him again. It never occurred to her that she was slipping slowly and irrevocably into love, for she had been long conditioned by Letticia’s emotional outpourings into thinking it all began with fiery glances and a tumult of the heart and various other extravagant signs that bore no recognizable connection with anything she felt for Matthew.

  The long summer was drawing to its close on the softly scented evening when she strolled with him across the fields until they came to a five-barred gate. Side by side they stood leaning on it, looking towards the fading sunset.

  ‘I’ll write to you if you like.’

  He glanced sideways at her. She had her forearms along the top rail, her hands overlapping and her chin resting on them. ‘What would you write about?’

  ‘The way all the paths we’ve explored change with the seasons. The latest book I’ve read and what I think about it. Whether the thrush nests again next year in the tree where you drove the cat away. Oh, everything.’

  ‘Would you write that you miss me?’ He saw her look down.

  ‘I shall miss you. That doesn’t need to be said.’

  He liked her. She was agreeable company and had whiled away hours for him that would have been tedious spent alone. If it had been possible he would have sought more from her but she was curiously innocent, seeming to think it accidental if he clasped her waist hard as he helped her down from a stile or his thigh rested against her skirts when they sat side by side. Even if he had persisted, her natural modesty would have defeated him, indicated in her case by her hems that were always kept in place and by the brooch she wore that hid the little valley between her breasts from his view. Maybe that was why she attracted him more than she would have done otherwise, there being nothing more tempting than fruit that was out of reach. As if finally to challenge that barrier after many long weeks, he put out his hand and cupped her smooth, brushed head before bringing it to rest on the soft coils pinned above the back of her neck. The nape looked pale and vulnerable.

  ‘I don’t know how I shall fill my life when I’m away from you, Ann.’ It was a phrase he had used before for other ears and this time it proved to be more effective than it had done in the past, for it was totally believed. She turned towards him, concerned and anxious to reassure.

  ‘We’ll always be friends, Matthew. For the rest of our lives.’

  He took hold of her shoulders, looking searchingly into her face. ‘Do you mean that? It would matter so much to me.’

  ‘Of course I do! Don’t be sad.’

  ‘Dear, sweet little Ann.’ He enfolded her gently and, not daring to push his luck, kissed her tenderly and chastely. She trembled like a captive bird in his embrace, but she was melting and pliant, her eyes closed, and one fluttering hand came to rest against the side of his face. Encouraged, he deepened his kiss, tightening his clasp as she reared to jerk free, alarmed perhaps as much by the hardening pressure of his body against hers as by the seeking intimacy of his mouth. With desire high in him, he wanted to prolong this sensual encounter, hoping to break through her reserve at last to an ultimate conclusion.

  ‘I love you, Ann,’ he gasped as he lifted his mouth from hers. It was the one excuse acceptable to women when one went too far too soon. ‘I’ve loved you since the evening you first came into the library. You’re all I want.’ The lies came glibly off his tongue spurred by the torment of lust. ‘Let me show you how much you mean to me —’

  She arched her back against his encircling arms to rest her hands against his shoulders and look into his burni
ng face, her own soft and flower-like with the blossoming of long-held love, her eyes shimmering with emotion. ‘I love you too, Matthew. I have felt all along that you and I are so alike. You have been lonely, too. Now neither of us will ever have to be on our own again.’

  ‘Never!’ He barely listened to what she was saying, intent only on her softness in his arms, the evening scent in her hair and on her skin. They kissed again, he ready to bear her down on to the grass, but when she drew her lips from his she startled him by her gush of words.

  ‘Let’s go and tell my parents now!’ she exclaimed radiantly.

  Confused, his whole body keyed for her, he blinked as if he were deaf and had not caught what she had said. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Our marriage. Oh, I want it to be soon, Matthew.’ She twirled from his arms and caught hold of his hand joyously. ‘Let’s run all the way.’

  His first thought was that she was out of her head. Then panic gripped him. He had a sudden vision of her father and James Esdaile bearing down on him to know what he had been about and what promises he had made. Her family’s attitude didn’t matter to him, but his employer’s opinion did. He had done good work in the library and been praised for it, for Esdaile appreciated a job well done. A recommendation from such an important man in the city could weigh the balance for him in the application he had made for a post in the archives of a national museum being presently formed. If Esdaile should hear that he had been footling around with the affections of a friend’s daughter that would be the end of everything for him.

  ‘Wait!’ He drew her back to him by their joined hand-clasp and put an arm about her again, simply to ensure she did not go darting off on her mad errand, for all desire had ebbed from him. ‘You’re only sixteen, Ann. Your parents aren’t going to agree to a speedy wedding when they don’t yet know me. We’ll have to be patient. In the meantime we can write to each other as you said.’

  Her head dropped into the hollow of his shoulder and her voice was torn. ‘I can’t face a single day without you now that our love has come into the open between us.’

  ‘I feel the same, but you know what I’ve said is true.’

  She did not need the urgency in his voice to convince her. Her father, who had accepted Joss’s decision to marry Alice without protest, knowing his son’s steady temperament, had been strict about a lengthy betrothal for Letticia, wanting to be sure her heart was not overruling her head. As for herself, he would be even more protective, holding her extreme youth against her and the fact that Matthew was the first man to have shown an interest in her. An interest? Matthew loved her! Nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of their being together. She raised her face to his again and spoke imploringly.

  ‘Let me come with you when you leave. We can be married somewhere away from here and then nobody will be able to part us.’

  He was momentarily at a loss for words. Quickly he enfolded her against him, looking over her head as he considered what he should say. ‘You know I have only five or six days’ work left. Would you be ready to leave home by then?’

  ‘I would go now with only the clothes I stand up in if that was what you wished.’

  His conscience smote him. He did not want to hurt her but the solution she had offered was one that he could turn to his advantage. ‘There would have to be the utmost secrecy.’

  She answered fervently: ‘Nobody will suspect. I promise.’

  He held her back from him and regarded her with the fond liking that he had come to feel for her over many weeks and which had returned now that the threat of losing Esdaile’s reference had been removed. ‘Then let us make plans.’

  They plotted every detail. When they parted by an oak tree near her home she flung her arms around his neck and under his kisses of parting, which were to be the last until the evening of their elopement, hers lost their previous innocence in a sudden burgeoning of passion. It was as if at last a chord had been touched in her. When he released her his face was taut and serious at this unexpected response in her and he snatched her back into his arms once more for a final kiss before he let her go from him. Then he watched her as she ran the few yards to her home.

  In the porch she paused to look back at him where he stood spectre-like in his light coat in the deepening evening shadows. She did not wave in case of being observed, for already their plan of secrecy was in motion. Instead she directed towards him a look of love that she was sure must travel through the air to him like a tangible caress.

  During the next few days she collected together the clothes and few personal items she would be taking with her and packed them in a piece of hand-baggage which she hid at the back of a cupboard. She wrote a letter of explanation to her parents, ready to leave on her pillow where it would be discovered long after she had left the house. On the evening of her elopement her parents would be at the mansion and Letticia had been invited with Richard to a ball in the city, chaperoned by his sister, and would stay at her home afterwards. Even the boys would be out of the house, having had a craze that summer to sleep out of doors in makeshift tents. With the servants in the kitchen, there would be nobody to see her leave.

  The day of her elopement dawned. Everybody else went about their arrangements and as the evening approached she felt curiously like a spectator watching a panorama of family life revolve around her as if she was already detached from it. When only her parents were left in the house she went into the hall to watch them set off for their evening with the Esdailes. It was one of the last they would have this year for the Esdailes were shortly to move back into London until next summer. As her mother came downstairs Ann was struck as she sometimes was by the beauty of the woman whose looks she had not inherited. This evening Hester was wearing a gown of iris-blue Spitalfield silk. It was not new, but she always had a pristine look about her whether in her working cottons or in her best attire, as if everything on her was fresh out of its folds.

  ‘Are you all right, Ann?’ she asked with a little frown of concern.

  Ann felt her colour rise on a sense of guilt. ‘Yes. Why ever do you ask?’

  Hester gave a little shrug. ‘I don’t know. I’ve had the impression you haven’t been quite yourself for the last few days.’

  It gave Ann the excuse to come forward and hug her mother, something that would have been impossible otherwise. ‘Stop worrying about me. Go and enjoy yourself.’

  To her relief her father consulted his fob-watch. ‘It’s time we were going, Hester, if we’re not to be late.’

  Hester nodded and settled a shawl about her shoulders. She hoped that this evening James would keep his glances more for the other guests than for her. John always noticed. ‘Good night then, Ann, my dear. You’ll be asleep when we get back, I expect. We’ll try not to disturb you.’

  As soon as the door closed after them Ann ran upstairs to her bedchamber and watched from the window until they passed under the lamp that illumined the gates of the mansion. Now she was safe!

  Half an hour later, in her outdoor cloak and carrying a valise, she slipped out of the house and hurried to the meeting-place well past the mansion and her brother’s home in the direction of the city. She was early, but that was what she intended. There was a convenient seat on the fallen trunk of an old tree and she sat down to wait and listen for the gig Matthew would have hired on the quite legitimate pretext of having to transport his box of belongings to lodgings in London. Somewhere in the trees an owl hooted. From the direction of the tavern there came the odd burst of noise when the door of the entrance was opened and shut as people came and went. Her heart was beating a happy tattoo.

  Two hours later she was frantic. Various vehicles had passed by but Matthew had not appeared. Something totally untoward must have arisen to put their elopement in jeopardy and there was no way he could get a message to her. As the minutes continued to tick by without any sign of him she could endure it no longer. Time was fast running out and she had to know what was happening. Suppose he ha
d been taken ill? Although the hour was late she would call at the mansion on the pretext of borrowing a book.

  When she reached the mansion she hid her valise in the bushes and hurried to the entrance. She was admitted by a manservant who knew she would be bound for the library. From the direction of the drawing-room there came a buzz of voices interspersed by laughter. ‘Is Mr Grant still at his work?’ she dropped casually.

  ‘No, Miss Bateman. He has gone.’

  ‘Gone? How long since?’ Five minutes? Ten? She was ready to fly back out of the door, unable to conceive how she could have missed him.

  ‘He left yesterday morning — shortly after dawn I was told.’

  She set her face for the library and hoped her legs would carry her there. He would have left a letter for her on the library table telling her where to find him in the city. She had always heard that shock could make the teeth chatter and it was happening to her. Once inside the library she rushed to the central table. It was bare of everything but a lighted candle. As if she had been let out of Bedlam, she pulled open the table drawers as if crazed and rummaged in the cupboards which held only the red leather-bound volume of his cataloguing.

  Slowly she sank down on to her knees on the floor and pressed her stricken face against the side of the table, her eyes shut tight on the realization of his lies, her mouth hanging open while wave after wave of anguish crashed through her. She had known as soon as she heard he was gone that there would be no letter, but the slight possibility had kept her from bursting into screams of pain from her breaking heart — there in the hall where she would have brought everyone running, her parents included. Gradually she became aware of awful sounds of another kind rising from her chest and realized that dry sobs were choking her throat. Dear God, she must not be heard. She put shaking hands over her mouth and struggled to suppress the noise. No one must know! How well Matthew had read her character as she had never learned to divine his. Even now he must be as certain as if she had told him herself that she would never divulge the humiliation of this night to anyone, least of all to her own family, for the burning coals of their sympathy would be an intrusion into her most private self that might drive her insane.