The Silver Touch

by Rosalind Laker

  *

  As she had foreseen, there was no swift path to the progress she wanted to make. Goldsmiths continued to treat her workshop as a place for outwork and her new status went unnoticed. At least orders had never been withdrawn after John’s death and she had Joss to thank for that, for due to the personal contacts he had made in the trade during his collecting and delivering of orders, he was as well liked as his father had been and the standard of his work appreciated. She had some trade discs made, bearing her name and trade and address. These were a current novelty and on being handed round brought attention to the trader concerned. Hers resulted in some independent orders in which she dealt directly with the customers and the pieces produced from her own designs bore her touch of H.B. for the first time. Encouraged, she produced a sideline of small articles for ready sale and this outlet proved profitable, although the bulk of her income continued to come from outwork.

  Then a benefactress of St Luke’s Church wished to present a pair of candlesticks in memory of her late husband. The vicar, knowing Hester well, suggested that the commission be put to the Bateman workshop. Hester was invited to call at the lady’s house with designs and one was selected. Although the design was Hester’s own and the finished candlesticks would bear her hallmark, she let Joss make them, for ecclesiastical work continued to please him best.

  Afterwards the same lady ordered a chocolate-pot for a wedding gift, which Hester made herself, and it led in turn to a gradual build up of commissions that could be fitted in with the outwork, for both she and Joss worked long hours whenever it was necessary. Jonathan, who had been a help to them, had gone to Richard’s workshop, the third of her sons to take up an apprenticeship with her son-in-law. Hester looked forward to the day when Peter would join them, convinced there would be good prospects by the time his apprenticeship was done. Busy as she was, it seemed no time at all before that day came and with it his marriage.

  By now her business was on a steady footing. She had seen James quite a number of times since the day when a seal had been put on what had been, and always would be, between them. In addition to his original loan, she had received another when her neighbours moved from Number 108 and she bought the premises for a new and improved workshop. James had accepted the invitation to Peter and Elizabeth’s wedding, but Mary would not be coming. It seemed as though nothing could tempt her away from her country environs and outdoor pursuits.

  All the family gathered for the wedding day, including William, who had the looks of a buccaneer and a jauntiness about him that drew the glances of all the girls and some of the young married women as he acted as usher in St Luke’s Church directing the arriving guests. One girl in particular caught his eye. She was about seventeen, small breasted and slender as a wand with a fey will-o’-the-wisp air about her. She had moon-fair hair and dark eyes slanting and mysterious under winged brows, her mouth soft and moist and rosy. She cast him a shimmering look under the brim of her leghorn hat, before following on up the aisle. He nudged Joss in the ribs.

  ‘Who’s that? That girl in the green dress.’

  Joss glanced after her. ‘That’s Sarah Thorne, niece of Mr and Mrs Thorne.’

  ‘She’s new here, isn’t she?’

  ‘She moved here with them about two years ago. With no children of their own they took on guardianship of her when she was orphaned quite young.’ He saw how his brother was continuing to stare in the girl’s direction as she took her place in a pew with a staid-looking pair. ‘Stay well away from her, Will. Those people are strict Dissenters and have only set foot in this church today because they are related to the Beavers. I know from what Elizabeth has told us that Sarah is allowed no outings except religious services, and if you start playing the fool with her at the wedding breakfast they’ll whisk her home at once.’

  ‘There’s no need to worry. I’ll not spoil her day.’ Far from it, he added silently to himself. In fact, he could probably supply her with a little extra fun!

  Hester, believing that nothing could go wrong on this day so long awaited by both Peter and Elizabeth, considered it to be one of the happiest occasions she had known. She loved Elizabeth as her own child and could not have wished for any other bride on her son’s arm when the ceremony was over and they came down the aisle together, Elizabeth in cream lace with a garland of rosebuds on her golden head, Peter in dark blue velvet, joy in their faces.

  William did not attempt to sit near Sarah at the wedding breakfast which was held in the Beavers’ home. Instead he chose a place opposite and some distance from her where he could look hard at her unobserved by the Thornes, who were seated on the same side of the table as himself. His stratagem worked. She glanced, blushed, went white and glanced at him again. The Thornes had seated her between two elderly people and failed to see that when she smiled or laughed it was for the benefit of someone else at the far end of the table. When he judged the time right, William bribed Jonathan, who would never do anything for nothing, to pass a note to her. Then he slipped away to the orchard at the back of the Beavers’ house.

  She came, as he knew she would, darting between the trees and looking about for him as she hurried along. When he stepped into her path and pulled her into the shelter of a bush, she gave a startled yelp that he silenced with his hand over her mouth.

  ‘Beware!’ he teased. ‘You’ll have those two gorgons after you.’

  She laughed deliciously as his hand fell away, her eyes wild and dilated with excitement. ‘This is wicked! I shouldn’t be here. What was it you wanted to see me about that you declared urgent in your note?’

  ‘I wanted to know when I could see you again. Do you ever go to a Dissenters meeting in London where you could slip away?’

  ‘That’s quite impossible!’ she exclaimed. ‘Dissenters meetings are never held without a watch kept on the doors, because often fanatics of the established Church of England try to break up our gatherings just as Catholic services are invaded at times.’ She shook her head vigorously. ‘I could never get out unnoticed.’

  ‘What about here then? Somewhere near your home? You live in the lane that runs from the stable entrance of the Esdaile place, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  His eyes twinkled conspiratorially. ‘I happen to know a secret way into the stable yard which I used to visit the horses when, after an accident, I was banned from going there by Mr Esdaile. Surely you could leave your home unnoticed in an evening hour and meet me there?’

  She gasped at the audacity of his plan, thrilled and awed by it, tempted as much by the thought of freedom for an hour or two as she was by the companionship that would go with it. Since living with her aunt and uncle she had twice suffered spells of melancholia during which she had been locked in her room, even being force-fed when unable to face eating and they had feared she would die. Just being in this orchard with someone in high good humour was worth any amount of punishment if she should be discovered. To live with daily disapproval and constant correction was a terrible burden to one who had only known loving kindness before. ‘How would you get to the mansion? You’re apprenticed in London, aren’t you?’

  ‘There are ways and means.’ He was eager. ‘What do you say?’

  She tossed up her chin provocatively. ‘I say that I’m not at all sure that I do want to see you again.’

  He played along with her, giving ridiculous reasons why she should that brought forth peals of rippling laughter. Once they scampered in a game of chase and capture in which her forfeit upon being caught was a kiss, which he took with relish.

  ‘Now,’ he said with satisfaction, his face within an inch of hers, ‘give me the hour and the date when we shall meet.’

  Her chest rose and fell breathlessly under her high-necked, unflattering gown. ‘On Saturday evening my aunt and uncle go to advanced studies on religious matters in the preacher’s house, and they are always late home.’

  He was jubilant. It was the best evening of the week for him although it would b
e odd to find himself within spitting distance of his home without being able to visit his family. ‘Next Saturday it is!’

  By the time he had told her where to find the hidden entrance into the stable yard, music had struck up on the lawn where the bride and bridegroom would be starting the dancing. She became nervous.

  ‘I must go back now or I’ll be missed.’

  ‘Until Saturday then.’ He watched her run off through the trees. When he returned to the wedding party his mother was dancing with James Esdaile, both of them in a light-hearted mood. He hoped to speak to Hester on her own later when the evening celebrations were over, for his pockets were empty and he would need money to hire a nag to get him to his tryst with Sarah and back again. He glimpsed Sarah only once before her guardians took her away. They considered dancing to be sinful and would not stay any longer. This did not lessen his enjoyment of the occasion. There were plenty of other girls to partner. When dusk fell he took another young woman into the orchard for a different purpose than before and her husband searched for her in vain.

  Peter and Elizabeth had left everyone else to the dancing by this hour and escaped hand in hand down the street to Number 86, next door to Joss and Alice’s home, which they had rented for themselves. Inside he slammed the door shut and bolted it. Then he turned to draw her to him, taking the garland from her hair and throwing the faded blooms aside as he looked down into her radiant, upturned face.

  ‘I’ve had to wait years for this moment,’ he said, marvelling that it had come at last.

  ‘I’ve waited even longer, dearest Peter. And we’ll be happy together for ever and ever!’

  Kissing her, he picked her up in his arms and carried her upstairs in a tumbled flow of lace. She was as light as a feather and he was reminded briefly of the fledglings he had rescued in the past. That night she reached the conclusion that no woman could ever have been loved with more tenderness and adoration.

  The party ended at midnight and after coming home from next door William sat on the terrace for a while. The family, as well as guests with far to travel, were being accommodated in every bedchamber under his mother’s roof as well as in the home of Joss and Alice and that of the Beavers. A light in one of the windows of the Esdaile mansion showed that James was in residence for the night, for a coach as splendid as his was a natural target for highwaymen in the darker areas of Bunhill Row after dusk.

  ‘Aren’t you tired, William?’ Hester asked, stepping out on the terrace.

  He had been waiting for her, knowing that ever since his father had had to give up doing a last round of the house at night it had been her task. ‘Not yet,’ he answered as she came towards him in a rustle of coral silk, still in her finery of the day. ‘It’s such a perfect night. Sit with me for a while. I want your company quite apart from a favour I have to ask.’

  It was only too easy to guess what he wanted and she thought how William could always sweeten any pill. But she was in a lenient mood. It was not the time after such a happy day to reprove him for failing to manage on the apprentice wage he received from Richard, although his father had existed on much less. She did not sit down, being more than ready for bed, but she inclined her head benevolently. ‘There is no need to ask me for what you have in mind. I had intended to give you a guinea before you left in any case.’

  He sighed with exaggerated relief, for her amusement and the wry twitch of her lips were not lost on him. ‘Thank you, Mother. Money melts away in London.’

  ‘So it seems,’ she remarked drily. ‘Good night to you. Sleep well.’

  On his own again he hooked his thumbs in his waistcoat, grinning to himself and stretching out his long legs in satisfaction. A guinea! That would cover transport for a long time to come. There was something about Sarah Thorne that was elusive and intangible, intriguing him, and he was always ready for a new challenge. He looked forward in high anticipation to the time he was going to spend with her. There was every chance he would still be enthralled when the present last flare of summer faded into chillier weather and he intended to make preparations for that.

  As soon as he was sure his mother had gone upstairs, he went back indoors and made his way to what had been his father’s office where Joss now kept the books. Opening a cupboard where his mother kept her designs and other items exclusive to her in the business, he took two keys from a hook, one to a padlock on the side gate that led to the herb garden in the grounds of the Esdaile mansion and another to the residence itself. Holding his breath, he listened to make sure nobody had heard the creak of the cupboard door, and then he went out into the old workshop where he soon made an imprint of both keys in melted casting wax. After this task was done and the keys returned to the cupboard, he hid the hardened wax tablets in his travelling bag and went to bed to sleep soundly.

  When Saturday evening came he arrived at the mansion long before he was due to meet Sarah in the stable yard. Knowing the district as he did, he had approached by side lanes and bridle paths in the gathering darkness. He left the nag tied up in the copse and under cover of the trees reached the side gate used nowadays only by his mother and Ann on their visits to the herb garden and the library. His newly minted key clicked open the padlock at once. He entered quickly and refastened the gate after him. The grounds were familiar enough to him, but he had not been many times in the house. He had expected to reach the entrance under the cover of overgrown bushes, but it appeared that after James Esdaile had spent a night in his old home again he had set gardeners to work once more and everything was in a state of being cleared, trimmed and redug. At least there was no chance of that gentleman taking up residence again with winter ahead, for he always spent that time of the year in London.

  Everything in the mansion was covered in dust-sheets and in the yellowish light given by his lantern it looked as if every room was inhabited by spectres. He made a lightning tour to get his bearings, the shutters over the windows preventing his lantern-glow from being seen from outside, and he only paused in the Esdailes’ own bedchamber. There he stood gaping, never having seen such a bed with its carnation-coloured silk draperies, fluted canopy and tinted ostrich feathers rising from a gilded dome almost ceiling-high. There were no dust-sheets here. His guess was that due to a muddle of servant-instructions it had not been properly closed up again after James’s sojourn on the night of the wedding. Some idiotic maid had even put clean sheets on the bed. He grinned, running a hand over the fine linen. Maybe luck was going to be with him all the way.

  Sarah was late in arriving to the point where he had begun to think she was not coming. He shone the lantern for her as soon as he heard the crackle of dry twigs as she began to crawl through an ancient duct in the thick wall that might have been there since Roman times. He bent down and grabbed her by the upper arms to pull her through and on to her feet as if she had been a fish on an angler’s line. He had expected her to be shy and terrified, but there was a curious, almost hysterical exhilaration in her.

  ‘I did it!’ she exclaimed in an exuberant whisper. ‘I got away from them. It shows they can’t keep me boxed up with their rules and regulations for ever.’

  ‘Well, that’s good.’ He felt somewhat deflated. She had not come entirely to see him but mainly — or so it seemed — to fulfil some obsessive need to prove herself against her guardians. Perhaps she had been waiting to break out in some outrageous move and he had all unwittingly presented it.

  ‘Have I torn my skirt?’ She looked down anxiously at the drab garment.

  He shone his lantern over it. ‘Not that I can see.’ He helped her to brush away the leaves and cobwebs. ‘I have a better way for you to get in next time.’

  ‘Not crawling on all fours again, I hope,’ she giggled, letting him take her hand to lead her through some undergrowth into the stable yard.

  ‘No, I’ve a key for each of us that unpadlocks the side gate. Were the gorgons late going out this evening? I had begun to think you weren’t coming.’

  ‘For once they d
idn’t go out!’ Her voice quavered on a rising note of triumph. ‘It means I was able to get here on the most difficult evening ever! It will always be easy from now on.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The preacher had cancelled the meeting for some reason. It meant I had to wait until nine o’clock before getting away because that’s the hour the whole household has to go to bed to save candles. After saying good night, I climbed out of my window on to the roof of the scullery and down to the ground by way of an old barrel that stands there.’

  He burst out laughing. ‘I used to leave our house by the same sort of route. You’re a girl after my own heart.’

  She laughed with him, sparkling-eyed and impish, but when he linked his hands at the back of her waist to hug her to him in celebration of her daring, she stiffened away from him instinctively, and he accepted that for all her boldness in meeting him she was also wary. It made him decide not to take her into the mansion until he could be sure she understood she was not exchanging one trap for another. This was a girl to have fun with of every kind and his impression was heightened of a dancing, evasive trait in her that was going to lead him on and on along a path that would be new to him.

  They spent their time that evening learning about each other. She had had a happy childhood until one of the strange fevers that frequently hit cities in summer-time took both her parents from her in a matter of days. She had had no other relatives except her late mother’s brother and his wife, who had considered it their Christian duty to crush out of her what they considered to be wayward ways brought on by too much leniency and lack of discipline. Sensitive, fragile and lonely, it was no wonder that twice she had almost pined away.

  ‘That will never happen again,’ he told her, moved by her plight. ‘You have me now.’

  ‘I have, haven’t I?’ There was wonder in her voice as if she were only just beginning to comprehend her change of circumstances. It gave him the chance to kiss her, not in laughter as when they had first kissed in the Beavers’ orchard, but softly and experimentally in a discovery of each other’s lips that was entirely romantic.