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Melville rose to leave also and Rathbone put his hand out and grasped his arm, gripping it unintentionally hard. He saw Melville wince.
“You’re not going,” he said grimly, “until you tell me the truth. I don’t think you realize just what you’re facing. This could ruin you.”
Melville sat down again, turning to stare at him. Around them the crowd had moved away. There was hardly anyone left except the ushers and court officials.
“You need a lot more than talent to succeed in the arts,” Rathbone went on quietly but clearly. “You need patronage, in architecture more than almost anything else. Your plans are stillborn if they never get off the paper.” He saw the pain tighten Melville’s face but he had to go on. If he did not succeed in persuading him now it could be too late. “You have to have a wealthy patron who believes in you and is willing to spend tens of thousands of pounds to build your halls and houses and theaters. You are not big enough yet to defy society, and you will very soon find that out if you lose this case without any excuse to offer.”
Melville blushed. “You want me to try to blacken her name?” he asked angrily. “Suggest that I suddenly found out something about her so appalling I couldn’t live with it? That she was a thief? A loose woman? A drunkard? A spendthrift? A gambler? I can’t. And if I could”—his lip curled in disgust—“would that endear me to society, do you suppose? How many wealthy men would then wish to have me in their close acquaintance, to observe their wives and daughters and then tell the world their weaknesses!”
“I don’t want you to tell the world!” Rathbone answered back with equal sharpness, and still holding Melville’s wrist, ignoring the last few people leaving the room, looking at the lawyer and his client curiously. “I meant you to tell me so I can understand the battle I am supposed to be fighting. I don’t need you to tell me that blackening Zillah Lambert’s name, with or without justification, will not help you. But with the truth, I may be able to reach a settlement out of court. It wouldn’t be victory, but it would be a great deal better than any other alternative facing you now.”
“I know nothing to her detriment,” Melville insisted. “Do you think I am being noble and letting her family sue me without a word in my defense? Is that what you imagine?” There seemed to be a brittle ring of amusement in him, as if the idea were funny.
“I don’t know what to think.” Rathbone half turned as the last woman went out of the doors and the usher looked at him enquiringly. “But if there is nothing about Zillah, then I must conclude that Sacheverall is right and it is something to do with you.”
He had longed to read an answer, a vulnerability or a fear in Melville’s eyes which would give him the clue he needed, but there was nothing. Melville remained staring at him with a blank, defiant despair.
“Is there someone else you love?” Rathbone guessed. “It doesn’t excuse you, but it would at least explain—to me, if no one else.”
“There is no one else I wish to marry,” Melville replied. “I have already told you that.” He gave a little shiver. “There is no purpose in your asking me, Sir Oliver. I have nothing to tell you which can help. The only truth of the matter is that I never asked Zillah to marry me. I have no intention of ever marrying anyone.” There was a curious bleakness in his eyes as he said it, and a momentary pull at his lips. “It was arranged without consulting me and I was foolish enough not to realize that all the chatter was taken to be sufficient notification. I was blind, I fully acknowledge that; naive, if you like.” His chin came up. “I admit to carelessness of her feelings because I did not think of her as more than a friend I cared for dearly. It did not cross my mind that she felt otherwise. That was clumsy, looking back with the clarity of hindsight. I will not make that error again.”
“That’s not enough,” Rathbone said bitterly.
“That is all there is.” A self-mockery filled Melville’s eyes. “I could say I had suddenly discovered madness in my family, if you like, but since it is not true, it would be impossible to prove. They’d be fools to believe me. Any young man could say that to escape an engagement if no proof were required.”
“Except that it would disqualify him from all future engagements as well,” Rathbone pointed out. “And possibly other things. It is not a tragedy one would wish upon anyone.”
The irony vanished from Melville’s face, leaving only pain behind. “No, of course it isn’t. I did not mean to make light of the affliction of madness. It is just that this whole situation invites the thought of farce. I am sorry.”
“It won’t feel like farce when the jury finds against you and awards costs and damages,” Rathbone replied, watching Melville’s expression.
“I know,” Melville answered in little above a whisper, looking away. “But there is nothing I can do except employ the best lawyer there is and trust in his skill.”
Rathbone grunted. He had done his utmost, and it was insufficient. He let go of Melville’s arm and stood up. The ushers were waiting. “You know where to find me if you should change your mind or think of anything at all which may be useful.”
Melville rose also. “Yes, of course. Thank you for your patience, Sir Oliver.”
Rathbone sighed.
At first Rathbone decided to go home and have a long, quiet evening turning the case over in his mind to see if he could discov
er something which had so far eluded him. But the prospect was unpromising, and he had been in his study only half an hour, unable to relax, when he abandoned the whole idea and told his manservant that he was going out and did not know when he would be back.
He took a hansom all the way to Primrose Hill, where his father lived, and arrived just as the shadows were lengthening and the sun was going down in a limpid sky.
Henry Rathbone was at the far end of the long lawn staring at the apple trees whose gnarled branches were thick with blossom buds. He was a taller man than his son, and leaner, a little stooped with constant study. Before his retirement he had been a mathematician and sometime inventor. Now he dabbled in all sorts of things for pleasure and to keep his mind occupied. He found life far too interesting to waste a day of it, and all manner of people engaged his attention. His own parents had been of humble stock; in fact, his maternal grandfather had been a blacksmith and wheelwright. He made no pretensions to superiority, except that when he judged a man to have sufficient intelligence to know better, he suffered fools with great impatience.
“Good evening, Father,” Rathbone called as he stepped through the French doors across the paved terrace and onto the grass.
Henry turned with surprise.
“Hello, Oliver! Come down and look at this. Do you know the honeysuckle in this hedge flowered right on until Christmas, and it’s coming well into leaf again already. And the orchard is full of primroses. How are you?” He regarded his son more closely. The evening light was very clear and perhaps more revealing than the harsher sun would have been. “What is wrong?”
Oliver reached him and stopped. He put his hands in his pockets and surveyed the hedge with the aforementioned honeysuckle twined through it, and the bare branches of the orchard beyond. His father frequently read him rather too easily.
“Difficult case,” he answered. “Shouldn’t really have taken it on in the first instance. Too late now.”
Henry started to walk back towards the house. The sun was barely above the trees and any moment it would disappear. There was a golden haze in the air and it was appreciably colder than even a few minutes before. A cloud of starlings wheeled above a distant stand of poplars, still bare, although in the next garden a willow trailed weeping branches like streamers of pale chiffon. The breeze was so slight it did not even stir them.
