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Henry took a pipe out of his pocket but did not bother even to pretend to light it. He seemed to like just to hold it by the bowl, waving it to emphasize a point as he spoke.
“Well, are you going to tell me about it?” he asked. He gestured towards a clump of wood anemones. “Self-seeded,” he observed. “Can’t think how they got there. Really want them in the orchard. What sort of case?”
“Breach of promise,” Oliver replied.
Henry looked at him sharply, his face full of surprise, but he made no comment.
Oliver explained anyway. “At first I refused. Then the same evening I went to a ball, and I was so aware of the matrons parading their daughters, vying with one another for any available unmarried man, I felt like a quarry before the pack myself. I could imagine how one might be cornered, unable to extricate oneself with any grace or dignity, or the poor girl either.”
Henry merely nodded, putting the pipe stem in his mouth for a moment and closing his teeth on it.
“Too much is expected of marriage,” Oliver went on as they came to the end of the grass and stepped across the terrace to the door. He held it open while Henry went inside, then followed him in and closed it.
“Draw the curtains, will you?” Henry requested, going over to the fire and taking away the guard, then placing several more coals on it and watching it flame up satisfactorily.
Oliver walked over towards the warmth and sat down, making himself comfortable. There was always something relaxing about this room, a familiarity, books and odd pieces of furniture he remembered all his life.
“I’m not decrying it, of course,” he went on. “But one shouldn’t expect someone else to fill all the expectations in our lives, answer all the loneliness or the dreams, provide us with a social status, a roof over our heads, daily bread, clothes for our backs, and a purpose for living as well, not to mention laughter and hope and love, someone to justify our aspirations and decide our moral judgments.”
“Good gracious!” Henry was smiling but there was a shadow of anxiety in his eyes. “Where did you gather this impression?”
Oliver retracted immediately. “Well, all right, I am exaggerating. But the way these girls spoke, they hoped everything from marriage. I can understand why Melville panicked. No one could fill such a measure.”
“And did he also believe that was expected of him?” Henry enquired.
“Yes.” Oliver recalled it vividly, seeing Zillah in his mind. “I met his betrothed. Her face was shining, her eyes full of dreams. One would have thought she was about to enter heaven itself.”
“Perhaps,” Henry conceded. “But being in love can be quite consuming at times, and quite absurd in the cold light of others’ eyes. I think you are stating a fear of commitment which is not uncommon, but nevertheless neither is it admirable. Society cannot exist if we do not keep the promises we have made, that one above most others.” He regarded him gently, but not without a very clear perception. “Are you certain it is not your rather fastidious nature, and unwillingness to forgo your own independence, which you are projecting onto this young man?”
“I’m not unwilling to commit myself!” Oliver defended, thinking with sharp regret of the evening not long before when he had very nearly asked Hester Latterly to marry him. He would have, had he not been aware that she would refuse him and it would leave them hesitant with each other. A friendship they both valued would be changed and perhaps not recapturable with the trust and the ease it had had before. At times he was relieved she had forestalled him. He did value his privacy, his complete personal freedom, the fact that he could do as he pleased without reference to anyone, without hurt or offense. At other times he felt a loneliness without her. He thought of her more often than he intended to, and found her not there, not where he could assume she could listen to him, believe in him. There were times when he deeply missed her presence to share an idea, a thing of beauty, something that made him laugh.
Henry merely nodded. Did he know? Or guess? Hester was extraordinarily fond of him. Oliver had even wondered sometimes if part of his own attraction for her was the regard she had for Henry, the wider sense of belonging she would have as part of his family. That was something William Monk could not give her! He had lost his memory in a carriage accident just after the end of the Crimean War, and everything in his life before that was fragments pieced together from observation and deduction, albeit far more complete now than even a year ago. Still, there was no one in Monk’s background like Henry Rathbone.
Could that be it? Was it not Zillah who was unacceptable but someone else in her family? Barton Lambert? Delphine? No, that was unlikely in the extreme. Barton Lambert had been Melville’s friend far more than most men could expect of a father-in-law. And Delphine was proud of her daughter, ambitious, possibly overprotective, but then was that not usual, and what one expected, even admired, in a mother? If she disliked Melville now, she certainly had ample cause.
“There seems to be no defense,” he said aloud.
“What does he say?” Henry asked, taking the pipe out of his mouth and knocking the bowl sharply against the fireplace. He looked enquiringly at Oliver as he cleaned out the pipe and refilled it with tobacco. He seldom actually smoked it, but fiddling with it seemed to give him satisfaction.
“That’s it,” Oliver replied with exasperation. “Nothing! Simply that he did not ask her in the first place and he cannot bear the thought of marrying anyone at all. He states emphatically that he knows nothing to her discredit, and has no impediment to marriage himself, and trusts in me to defend him as well as may be done.”
“Then surely there is something he is not telling you,” Henry observed, putting the pipe between his teeth again but still not bothering to light it.
“I know that,” Oliver agreed. “But I have no idea what it is. Every moment in court I dread Sacheverall facing him with it. I imagine he is going to produce it, like a conjurer, and any hope I have will evaporate.”
“Is that Wystan Sacheverall?” Henry asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Yes. Why?”
Henry shrugged. “Knew his father. Always thought him very ambitious socially, something of an opportunist. Big man with fair hair and large ears.”
Oliver smiled. “Definitely his son,” he agreed. “But he is a very competent man. I shall not make the error of underrating him simply because he has a clownish face. I think he is extremely serious beneath it.”
“Then you had better find out for yourself what your client will not tell you,” Henry stated. “Have you told Hester about this situation? A ferninine point of view might help.”
“I hadn’t thought of it,” Oliver admitted. She had been in his mind on many occasions, but not as a possible source of help. “Actually, I have not been in touch with her for a few weeks. She will almost certainly be with a new patient.”
“Then you can ask Lady Callandra Daviot,” Henry pointed out. “She will know where Hester is.”
