Before the Fact Read online

  She had almost found the exactly right pretext when Ella, the parlourmaid, appeared from the house and announced the Misses and Mr. Farroway.

  “Oh, how are you?” Lina said effusively. “I am so pleased you could come.”

  2

  The tennis party was in full swing.

  But it was not being a success. Lina could feel that in every nerve, and it perplexed as well as worried her, because her parties usually were a success. She had learnt a great deal about the art of entertaining since those early and rather desperate little dinners. Johnnie had actually told her, not three months ago, that she was now one of the best hostesses he knew; and Johnnie’s standard of hostess-ship was a high one.

  On the court Cecil was partnering Winnie Treacher, a plump young woman who did her best and perspired freely but unfortunately with little effect in the effort, against Edith Farroway and Martin Caddis, an earnest young product of Eton who aspired to write novels and was so much in awe of Cecil that he seemed hardly to like to send him a really hard serve. It was an uninspiring set, and the latter pair were getting much the worse of it.

  The chairs at the side of the court were filled with a dozen or so listless onlookers, more or less torpid after tea and strawberries-and-cream, and Lina herself was engaged in a laborious conversation with Lady Fortnum, a hard, bright little woman with beady eyes and fuzzy hair, who did not play tennis, and so far as Lina knew never had played tennis, but was not in the least deterred thereby from instructing others how tennis should be played. She was the daughter of a Lancashire cotton-mill owner, and her grandfather had been an operative in one of the mills which her father was later to own. She seemed to take considerable pride in these facts.

  “Aldous Huxley?” she said sharply, in reply to an inadvertent observation of Lina’s. The conversation, in view of the company, had taken a literary turn. “No, my dear, I do not like Aldous Huxley. I really can’t understand why people make such a fuss about him. I read one of his books, and one only. I don’t mind its being indecent in the least; I hope I’m broad-minded, whatever I may be; but I simply couldn’t make head or tail of it – and I don’t believe he could either. I’m quite sure your brother-in-law will agree with me: Aldous Huxley is no good.”

  Lina murmured something noncommittal, wondering vaguely why Lady Fortnum should think it necessary to wear a diamond pendant as big as a broad bean at a tennis party.

  Her companion’s views on Mr. Aldous Huxley did not surprise her. She had long since ceased to be distressed by the calm dogmatizing upon artistic subjects which takes the place in country circles of intelligent criticism. If one did not happen to like a certain book, picture, or piece of music, one took it for granted that the book, picture, or piece of music was just bad; and the people who thought it was good were, quite simply and plainly, mistaken. It never occurred to any female critic that a book might possibly be above her own level of intelligence (the men of course read only detective stories).

  “My dear Mrs. Aysgarth – really! I mean, the Sitwells! Isn’t Osbert Sitwell the man who speaks his poetry while his sister plays a trumpet? Well, I mean ...”

  Exit Mr. Osbert Sitwell as a subject for discussion.

  Probably the critic would add: “I mean, why write about unpleasant things, when there’s so much unpleasantness in the world already? What I like is a nice, clever story, with real people in it. Gilbert Frankau, you know. Or Michael Arlen. I know some people think Michael Arlen rather highbrow, but I like him.”

  And Lina would murmur feebly something to the effect of Michael Arlen being a very popular author, which was undeniably true and committed her to nothing.

  She suddenly felt now that she could bear Lady Fortnum no longer. She rose, with a bright little excuse which she felt must sound as insincere as it was, and abandoned Lady Fortnum and her literary views to Harry Newsham, who was sitting on the other side of her.

  She hoped, maliciously, that Harry would entertain her with his favourite subject, politics.

  She looked down the line of chairs. Freda Newsham was sitting next to a middle-aged major, and both looked as bored with each other as they probably were. Evidently, thought Lina, Major Scargill was more interested in the play than in his companion: an unforgivable sin, from Freda’s point of view. Freda always expected attentions as well as attention, even at a tennis party.

  Lina exchanged a smile with Janet Caldwell, who was nobly listening to Bob Farroway’s stories of the prodigious feats performed by his elderly Morris car on the neighbouring hills. Janet had the sense not to play tennis, since she did not play well enough. Lina often envied her her courage.

  Janet liked good deeds. Lina did not.

  There were two chairs vacant, one beside Mary Farroway and one beside Joyce.

  “A somewhat sticky lot, your friends this afternoon,” commented Joyce with sisterly frankness, as Lina dropped into the chair beside her.

  Lina agreed. “And yet some of them would probably be quite amusing at one of your cocktail parties,” she added. “I think they’re rather overawed by Cecil.”

  “Cecil does have that effect. I can’t imagine why.”

  Lina could imagine it. The mildest of men, as she quite well knew, Cecil had exactly that effect upon herself. And she knew that she herself had that effect upon other people, which was odder still.

  “Perhaps it’s his beard,” she said, with a feeble giggle.

  The set came to an end, and Lina arranged another.

  The players drifted towards the chairs, Winnie Treacher alone, and Cecil, looking even more melancholy than usual, between Edith Farroway and Martin Caddis. Lina saw a literary light kindling in Mrs. Newsham’s eyes and heard Edith Farroway saying: “Of course, I often think I could write a book, if only I could spare the time.” She hurried to Cecil’s rescue.

  It seemed to her that Cecil’s melancholy was spreading. Faces grew more and more listless and occasionally yawned; even Bob Farroway’s horse-laugh ceased to ring out. Harry Newsham had given up Lady Fortnum in his turn, and was watching the play with an expression of concentrated interest. Lina, looking helplessly round, felt that of all the dismal parties she had ever attended, this was quite the worst.

  And then, suddenly, the whole atmosphere changed.

  Harry ceased watching the play and grinned; Lady Fortnum sat up with a jerk and visibly preened herself; Winnie Treacher’s dull eye brightened; Mary Farroway’s gentle smile of resignation changed to one of welcome; her sister frankly stood up and waved; the players on the court stopped the game to brandish their rackets – and Lina herself jumped up and almost ran towards the figure in white flannels who had emerged from the house and was coming towards them.

  The mere appearance of Johnnie had been enough to turn disaster into triumph.

  3

  “It will turn up, Lady Fortnum,” Lina repeated helplessly. “It’s bound to turn up. I mean, it can’t be far, can it?”

  “Bound to turn up,” Major Scargill repeated robustly. “Can’t possibly be far.”

  “Yes, it’s bound to turn up,” chorused half-a-dozen other voices, with the greatest conviction.

  “I had it when I came out from tea,” Lady Fortnum said firmly, looking at her hostess with what Lina resentfully felt to be a positively suspicious eye. “I remember quite distinctly.”

  “You had it when I was sitting next to you,” Lina said, and would have liked to add: “I remember wondering why the hell you wanted to wear it at a tennis party.”

  “Yes,” agreed Lady Fortnum. “I had it when you were sitting next to me.” No doubt she did not say it in the least pointedly, but her words sounded pointed to Lina.

  “Johnnie,” she said, a little impatiently, “are you sure you’ve looked everywhere?”

  “I’ve personally turned over every blade of grass within twenty yards,” Johnnie said, with complete cheerfulness. “Do you know what I think, Lady Fortnum? That you’ll find it when you undress.”

  “I hope so,”
Lady Fortnum agreed drily. “I don’t want to insist on its value, among friends, but I shouldn’t at all care to lose it permanently.”

  Lina reddened angrily, but Johnnie, with a quite unabashed grin, said: “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to make sure in the house here? I’ll come and see fair play.”

  Somebody guffawed, and Lady Fortnum’s highly powdered cheeks took on a slightly more violet tinge. “Thank you, but I can’t agree that that is the place where one had better look.”

  Lina said, coldly and distinctly: “I thought, Johnnie, you were going to say: Isn’t Lady Fortnum sure she wouldn’t like all of us to turn out our pockets?”

  There was a moment’s horrified silence, during which Lina, furious as she was, was yet able to wonder whether it was really she who had spoken those words which she had heard dropped into the gathering so calmly.

  Then Major Scargill, extremely red and clucking like an old hen, said the right things and smoothed down Lady Fortnum’s very ruffled feathers; and Johnnie, with a comical grimace over his shoulders to the others which somehow managed to transform that lady from the aggrieved into the aggrieving party, conducted her to her car.

  Lina, still angry, but very conscious of the responsibility on her shoulders for the finding of a diamond worth five thousand pounds, watched him hold her in conversation for a couple of minutes before she got inside it, and watched during that short time Lady Fortnum’s face change from stony suspicion, through affability, to something extremely like apology. Johnnie really was marvellous.

  The search continued with serious energy. Everyone else stayed behind to help with it. Even Freda Newsham pretended to look, and Janet Caldwell seemed almost as perturbed as Lina herself. They tumbled over each other in the intensity of their efforts; for since Lady Fortnum had not moved more than a dozen yards between the time when she was certainly wearing the pendant and the moment when she discovered its disappearance, the area of useful search was small.

  Sympathy, at first silent and then gradually more and more outspoken, was entirely with Lina and Johnnie. It was felt that anyone who arrived at a tennis party wearing a great fat diamond thoroughly deserved to go away without it. But this sentiment, reasonable though it might be, did not blind those who voiced it to the extremely delicate position in which their host and hostess found themselves. For unless Johnnie was right in saying that Lady Fortnum would find the thing when she undressed, it certainly was very difficult to see how it could have disappeared, in that very small space, altogether of its own volition.

  Martin Caddis did, in fact, try to get Lina’s suggestion taken seriously that the men should turn out their pockets; but Johnnie, obviously distressed, would not hear of it. The utmost that could be permitted was that they should examine the turn-ups of their trousers; but these yielded nothing but fluff.

  When at last Lina, with a rather high-pitched laugh, insisted an hour later in calling the search off, the diamond had not been found.

  “And now it’s gone for good,” observed Joyce, as they watched the last of the cars swing round the circular drive and out of the gates. “I wonder which of them had it.”

  “Joyce, I won’t believe it,” Lina said stoutly. “It must have got trodden into the ground. We shall find it tomorrow morning.”

  “Of course we shall, darling,” said Johnnie confidently, and put an arm round his wife’s waist. “Don’t you bother your little monkey head any more about it.”

  “Well, I wish I had your simple faith,” Joyce retorted. “I invariably believe the worst of people.”

  “My dear, you are so right,” said Cecil, sadly smoothing his beard.

  Lina gave the hand on her waist a little quick squeeze. “Well, anyhow,” she said, “let’s go in and get ready for dinner.”

  “I’ll just let down the net and collect the balls,” said Johnnie. “You can have first bath, monkeyface, if you jump to it.”

  4

  Actually the diamond was found, that same evening.

  Lina found it, in a pocket of Johnnie’s white trousers.

  Johnnie had gone down to mix the cocktails (in spite of having second bath, Johnnie was always dressed first), and Lina, when she was ready, had just looked into Johnnie’s dressing room to see that everything was in order. Johnnie’s flannels lay sprawling on the floor where he had flung them, as he always did; not even Lina had been able to induce him ever to put anything away. She picked them up mechanically, and noticed a long green smudge on one knee, where Johnnie had slipped. Obviously they could not be worn again, and Lina felt in the pockets before putting the trousers in the washing basket. In the left-hand pocket was nothing, in the right-hand one was the diamond pendant. Lina almost cried with relief.

  “Johnnie,” she burst out as soon as she got inside the drawing room, where the other three were already sipping their cocktails. “Johnnie, you really are the limit. Why didn’t you tell me you’d found that wretched diamond?”

  Johnnie, bringing her cocktail to meet her, stopped dead. “What?” he said, almost stupidly.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you found that diamond when you went back to let the net down?” Lina repeated quite crossly. “You knew how worried I was.” She took the cocktail and finished it at a gulp. Johnnie really was very exasperating sometimes.

  “What’s that?” said Joyce. “The diamond found?”

  “Yes. Johnnie found it when he went back to let the net down. It was in the pocket of his white trousers.”

  “She searches my pockets, you see,” Johnnie threw over his shoulder to Cecil. “Does yours?”

  “Why on earth didn’t you tell me?” Lina persisted.

  Johnnie looked at her with his most mischievous smile. “I thought it would give the hag a lesson if we pretended for a day or two that we couldn’t find it. Of course I didn’t tell you, monkeyface. You’d have given the show away in two minutes.” He laughed.

  “I don’t think it’s at all funny,” Lina said coldly. “Give me another cocktail, please.”

  Lina had not a very good sense of humour.

  All through dinner Johnnie was in the most uproarious spirits and teased Cecil unmercifully.

  5

  Oddly enough it was, in the end, Lina herself and not Lady Fortnum who lost a piece of valuable jewelry.

  About a week after Cecil and Joyce had gone, Lina became aware that a diamond-and-emerald ring was missing from her jewel case. It was not a ring she wore very much, for the setting was old-fashioned and cumbersome, and she had never had it reset, but the stones were good. She had worn it, she remembered, one evening towards the end of Joyce’s visit, and was almost sure she had put it back in the little suede case in which she kept her jewels and trinkets, and which always lay, unlocked, in the top left-hand drawer of her dressing table; but in the case the ring certainly was not.

  Her room, and the whole house, was searched, and searched again and again; for, apart from the ring’s value, Lina had a strong sense of possession, and the mere feeling of loss in itself distressed her. However, no sign was ever found of it.

  Johnnie was most sympathetic and pointed out with evident glee that, on his own recommendation, all Lina’s jewels had been insured for their full value, only six months or so ago; she would therefore suffer no monetary loss. He helped her make out the claim to the insurance company, and the money duly arrived.

  Johnnie was rather urgent that she should lend it to him, for some scheme of his which he assured her would be of immense profit to both of them but about whose details he was a little vague when pressed; but Lina, who could be very obstinate where her own money was concerned, distrusted such nebulousness and bought another and more modern ring.

  She remained, however, not a little uneasy about the way in which her old ring had disappeared; and since it boiled down to the fact that nobody but Ella, the house-parlourmaid, could possibly have stolen it if it had been stolen at all, she played for safety by getting rid of Ella. She was the more ready to do so, as she had not
iced that the girl had been getting a little pert with her of late, and seemed to resent the very mild and almost smiling reprimands which were all that Lina ever dealt out to her maids.

  “I can’t understand what’s happened to her,” Lina complained to Johnnie when they talked it over. “She used to be so good-natured. I suppose really she’s too pretty. She must have had her head turned by some man in the village. Whether she took my ring or not, it’s quite time she did go.”

  And Johnnie agreed that it was quite time Ella did go.

  So Ella went; and very soon was as completely forgotten as the loss of the ring for which she came to be held responsible.

  CHAPTER V

  One of the incidents in her married life which Lina always remembered afterwards was the first visit of Mr. Thwaite.

  “Mr. Thwaite,” announced Ethel, the new parlourmaid, and left it at that.

  Mr. Thwaite was very tall. His nose was large and curved, and his hair sat in little tight curls round his head.

  “Hullo,” said Mr. Thwaite loudly. “Hullo, hullo. What?” Mr. Thwaite seemed to think that he had now explained himself.