Before the Fact Page 9

  “No, of course not.”

  There was no need to say any more.

  Lina was thankful for Janet’s understanding, and her tact.

  She gave her arm a little grateful nip with her fingers and Janet smiled her comprehension of it.

  Lina smiled back. She felt it was a wonderful thing to have a friend so completely in tune that everything really important could be said without words.

  4

  It was less than a week later that Lina missed her diamond ring: the ring Johnnie had given her when he had won his big bet that same spring.

  Almost the same scenes were enacted as two years ago. Lina’s room was turned out, the house ransacked, the servants questioned and cross-questioned, without result. And now there was no Ella to suspect. The grenadier was far too stupid to be dishonest.

  Lina was extremely upset.

  The ring had been much more than a valuable diamond to her. It had been a constant symbol of Johnnie’s generosity and thought for her. It had reminded her always, whenever she had allowed herself to get irritated with him, that on that great occasion it was she who had been in the front of his mind, and that his first impulsive way of giving expression to his exuberance had been to overwhelm her with presents. It had symbolized Johnnie’s love for her.

  And it had gone.

  Johnnie, of course, was most sympathetic. He reminded her, as he had done before, that at any rate the ring was insured for its full value, so that it could be replaced identically. Lina agreed, and wept secretly, since for all her practicality she was a whole-hearted sentimentalist; and no substitute ring could mean the same to her as the very one that Johnnie himself had chosen and bought and handled and dropped, like a bit of crystallized love, into her lap. She almost wished, insanely, that it had never been insured at all, so that it could never be replaced.

  The cook, under Lina’s evident suspicion, gave notice and walked out of the house.

  And then Lina made another startling discovery. Her ring was not the only thing that was missing.

  When at last she was alert to the fact it was astonishing that she should never have noticed the absence of so many objects. The rooms now appeared almost denuded. Two Wedgwood figures from the drawing room, a pair of old brass candlesticks from the dining-room mantelpiece, a whole Sèvres dessert service from the store cupboard, a dozen other small things of value from various places: all had vanished. It was clear that there had been a thief in the house.

  Johnnie was no less taken aback than Lina. He did not, however, think there could have been a thief in the house. It was his theory that someone must have got in from outside, someone who knew the value of such things, and taken what he wanted. Johnnie was most indignant at the idea. He was sure that the defaulting cook was somehow to blame: probably she had left the house empty one afternoon and the back door open.

  He was, however, quite opposed to Lina’s intention of calling in the police. Strongly opposed to it.

  He explained that it was impossible to say when the articles had been taken, it was not even possible to furnish a full list of them, there would be endless trouble, and the police would do nothing. Why bother?

  He insisted so strongly that it would be only a waste of everyone’s time to call in the police that a horrid fear at last began to form in Lina’s mind.

  She paid a visit to Bournemouth, and to Mr. Marshall’s curiosity shop.

  To Mr. Marshall himself, by whom she asked to be served, she said: “I was wondering whether you have a nice old dessert service at a reasonable figure.”

  Mr. Marshall beamed. “Why, just as it happens, madam, I have. It only came in a matter of three weeks ago. Sèvres – a real beauty. Shall I show it you?”

  “Please,” said Lina.

  Two minutes later she was looking at her own dessert service.

  But the price was not reasonable. It was staggering. Mr. Marshall assured her, however, that even at that figure the service was a bargain. “And that doesn’t give me any too much profit on what I had to pay for it, madam,” he added.

  Lina bought instead a pair of old brass candlesticks.

  5

  She put them on the dinner table that night in addition to the silver ones: one in front of herself and one in front of Johnnie.

  When they had reached the dessert Johnnie smiled across the table at her. “Still feeling hipped about the ring, monkeyface? Poor old thing. Never mind: we’ll get you a better one some day, when our ship comes home.”

  “Johnnie,” Lina said abruptly, “have you noticed these candlesticks? I bought them to-day at Marshall’s curiosity shop, in Bournemouth. Do you like them?”

  Johnnie looked from her to the candlesticks and back again. He did not answer. The smile faded from his face, and he watched her.

  “Mr. Marshall showed me a Sèvres dessert service too,” Lina said slowly, dropping her words out one by one as if timing them between the thuds of her heart. “But it was too expensive.”

  Still Johnnie did not answer.

  “Johnnie, how much did you get for my ring?”

  Johnnie began to fiddle with a crumb of bread on the table.

  He looked up at her. “It wasn’t exactly your ring, darling, was it? I mean, not exactly.”

  “Wasn’t it? I thought you gave it me.”

  “Yes, I know. But ...” Johnnie jumped up suddenly, went round the table, and put his arms round Lina where she sat. “Monkeyface, I’ve had a hell of a time just lately.”

  Lina sat rigid in his embrace. “You’ve been betting again?”

  Johnnie, his cheek against her hair, nodded his head.

  “And lost?”

  “Yes, a bit. During the last few weeks. But—”

  “And had to steal things out of the house to pay up?”

  “Oh, draw it mild, darling. One can’t steal one’s own things.”

  “They weren’t yours. They were mine.”

  “Yes, but what’s yours is mine, and what’s mine’s yours. You can’t say they were more than half yours. Darling, I simply love the scent of your hair. It’s—”

  “Oh, damn the scent of my hair!” Lina suddenly threw off Johnnie’s encircling arms and jumped up. “You needn’t think you’re going to get away with it like that, my lad. You’ve stolen a lot of things of mine, and I want to know what you’re going to do about it.”

  Johnnie thrust his hands in his pockets and glowered at her. “Damn it, you’ll be calling me a thief soon,” he said sullenly.

  “I do call you a thief!”

  They held each other’s angry eyes for a moment.

  “And I,” said Johnnie loudly, “call you a damned hard, stingy bitch – in bed or at board about as much use to a man as a cold in the head.”

  A torrent of rage obliterated all Lina’s dignity. She snatched a book out of the bookcase and threw it with all her strength at Johnnie’s head. But even as she had snatched it, she had instinctively chosen something that would not really hurt if it hit him.

  It went at least two feet wide.

  Johnnie caught it rather cleverly and stared at her. Then he burst into a shout of laughter, and handed the book back to her.

  “Of all the rotten shots! Try again.”

  Lina ran out of the room, up the stairs, and into her bedroom. She locked the door, threw herself on the bed, and burst into tears.

  Whatever Johnnie had done, whatever Johnnie ever might do, when she threw books at him she did not want them handed back to her.

  She wanted to be shaken till the teeth rattled in her head.

  6

  “But, darling, I tell you it’s the goods. There’s a fortune in it. This has only been a run of bad luck. It can’t fail in the end.”

  Johnnie was explaining his racing system to Lina. She had never seen him so excited over anything before.

  “Surely you can see it must win in the end,” he pleaded.

  “You’ve been trying this system how long?” Lina asked wearily.

&nb
sp; “About six months. Look here, monkeyface, you must realize—”

  “Ever since we came back from France?”

  “Pretty well. It came out trumps at first, but—”

  “Although you’d promised me you wouldn’t bet any more?”

  “Oh, well.” Johnnie smiled away the seriousness of such a promise.

  “And although you’ve always said since, whenever I asked you, that you weren’t betting?”

  “Look here, do you know why most wives deceive their husbands? Because their husbands try to ride ’em on too tight a rein. And then all the little wives say: ‘Well, my dear, he did ask for it, didn’t he?’” Johnnie’s squeaky imitation of the erring but impenitent wife was most amusing. “Haven’t you rather asked for it too, monkeyface?”

  Lina did not smile. “But you’re simply not fit to be trusted.”

  “That’s what all the husbands say.”

  “When I make a promise I keep it,” Lina said impatiently, “and I expect other people to keep theirs.”

  “Have another spot of whisky,” said Johnnie.

  He refilled her glass.

  Lina sighed.

  They had been over all this ground before. Johnnie seemed really to think that he had been quite justified in breaking his promises to her. He quite sincerely believed too that the untruths he had told her were not lies at all. “I’m not a liar,” Johnnie had said indignantly; as if the fact of it being Johnnie who uttered the lie made it not a lie at all. In the same way Lina had been quite unable to make him understand that his filching of her belongings had been nothing more nor less than plain thieving. Johnnie was not a thief, therefore Johnnie could not thieve. It had perhaps, Johnnie admitted virtuously, been not quite playing the game; but thieving.... The idea just amused him. Johnnie was not a thief.

  Jumping into the gap in the conversation, Johnnie began once more to expatiate on his system.

  Lina did not listen. She was wondering what to do. If Johnnie were not cured of this fever he would leave them sooner or later, and probably sooner, without a possession to their names.

  “So you see, one must have a certain amount of capital. That’s been my trouble. You can’t double up like that without something to fall back on; but if you do, you’re absolutely bound to come out on top before long. So you see what a pity it would be to have to chuck it now. Look here, monkeyface, what about your father? Couldn’t you touch him for a spot, just so that I shan’t have to spoil everything when my luck’s beginning to turn?”

  “No, I couldn’t.”

  “I don’t see why not. We never have touched him yet. Why not?”

  “What? Oh, because I won’t.”

  “It’s devilish short-sighted of you,” Johnnie grumbled. “I might win a packet any day now. Like I did before. It’s a damned nuisance to be held up just for a spot of cash for the next day or two. Oh, well, I suppose it can’t last forever. How old is he?”

  “Father?” said Lina absently. “I don’t know. About sixty-five, I suppose.”

  “Damn well time he popped it, then,” said Johnnie, but under his breath. He added aloud: “Seriously, monkeyface, I wish you would touch him for a hundred or two. He could afford it easily enough.”

  “Doesn’t all this betting take up a great deal of your time?” Lina asked abruptly. “You can’t be doing much work nowadays.”

  “Doesn’t interfere with that,” Johnnie said easily. “Just one wire a day, that’s all. Look here, darling, do listen. I don’t believe you’ve got the hang of this system at all. You don’t realize how absolutely safe it is, in the long run.” He began to explain it all over again.

  Lina had to forgive him before they went to bed. He was so much in earnest, and so gullible, and so young.

  There was their usual grand reconciliation scene, with Johnnie alternating between pouring out more whisky and kissing her, and Lina crying and laughing at the same time. But she did not try to get another promise out of Johnnie. She knew he would give it, glibly; and it would mean just nothing at all. She had got to find some more effective means of stopping Johnnie in his lunacy.

  She decided, after she had lain awake three hours with Johnnie sleeping beside her, to speak to Captain Melbeck.

  7

  Although she had adopted it, because she had no choice, Lina heartily resented the responsibility which Johnnie, by his infantility, had passed over to her. She did not want to be responsible, for anything or anyone; she did not want to be responsible even for herself. She hated responsibility with its nagging unrest.

  It was not at all fair.

  A husband should be responsible for a wife. When she married, Lina had taken it for granted that she would be led, and she had been very ready to follow. Now she had to do the leading herself; and not merely leading, but driving. It was the impulse to shift at any rate some of the responsibility onto male shoulders, which after all should naturally bear it, that determined her to consult Captain Melbeck about Johnnie. In any case, he was some kind of a connection, so that there should be a family as well as an employer’s interest.

  She rang Captain Melbeck up the next day and asked him to lunch.

  Captain Melbeck seemed oddly reluctant to come to lunch. He stammered excuses for every day that Lina suggested. But Lina, who could be as determined as anyone when she had bolstered herself up to the necessary pitch, broke through his defenses.

  “It’s very important,” she said desperately. “I want to talk to you about Johnnie. If you won’t come to lunch I suppose I shall have to come over to you, but it’s awkward, because I haven’t the car and I don’t want Johnnie to know. Can’t you possibly put off your engagement tomorrow and come to lunch? Or tea?”

  “Johnnie won’t be there?” Captain Melbeck said cautiously.

  “No, no. I said he wouldn’t. I want to talk about him to you.”

  Captain Melbeck promised to come to lunch the next day.

  He came, a big, burly man with a cropped moustache, and eyed Lina with apprehension over his cocktail. Lina wondered, with some annoyance, why people were so often nervous of her, and what they would think if they knew just how nervous she was of them.

  “It’s very good of you to come,” she said, with the forced brightness which still imposed itself on her when she was not at ease. “I’m so worried about what’s going to happen to Johnnie.”

  “Oh, well,” mumbled Captain Melbeck, “I told him I wouldn’t prosecute, of course.”

  “What?” said Lina, startled.

  “I told him I wouldn’t prosecute,” Captain Melbeck repeated uncomfortably. “He’s paid some of it back already, too.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” Lina asked sharply.

  “Why about – don’t you know?”

  “Don’t I know what?”

  “Oh, hell,” groaned Captain Melbeck. “I seem to have put my foot in it.”

  He did his best to leave things at that, but of course Lina got them out of him during lunch.

  The long and short of it was that an unexpected audit of the estate accounts had revealed that Johnnie had been helping himself during the last few months to cash amounting to nearly two thousand pounds. Captain Melbeck had had to discharge him more than six weeks ago.

  “Six weeks!” echoed Lina, aghast. “But he’s never said a word to me. He pretended he was still with you.”

  “Rotten business altogether,” muttered her guest, and gloomily swallowed some hock the wrong way.

  After he had gone Lina sat for two hours in her drawing room, too numbed even to weep, trying to face at last the fact that her husband was a liar, a thief, and an embezzler, and completely lacking in any sense of right or wrong.

  8

  Johnnie had lost his job, and Lina was too dispirited to try to find him another. With what Captain Melbeck knew, and with what Captain Melbeck would almost certainly hint to any other possible employer, the task in any case looked almost hopeless. They were reduced to Lina’s own five hundre
d a year.

  However, this state of affairs did not last for more than a few weeks.

  Timing the event with singular neatness so far as his elder daughter and her husband were concerned, General McLaidlaw died that same Christmas, while Johnnie and Lina were staying in the house, rather suddenly, of arterio-sclerosis, and Lina came into an income of two thousand five hundred a year.

  CHAPTER VII

  Sitting in her kimono in front of her dressing table, Lina was doing her face. In the daytime she used nothing but a little powder on her nose, but for the evening lip stick, and sometimes the rouge pad too, were called in.

  The door between the bedroom and Johnnie’s dressing room was open.

  “Is that you, darling?” Sounds had reached her alert ears of someone coming upstairs.

  “Who else do you expect in your husband’s dressing room?” Johnnie’s voice answered cheerily. “Young Caddis-worm?”

  “You’ll have to hurry.”

  “Plenty of time. I wanted to go over the vines again.”

  There was not really plenty of time, but though Johnnie always came up late to dress, he was never late down.

  Lina took off her wrapper and walked over to the doorway in her step-ins. It was what she had been waiting for.

  There was no need for her to do so now, but Lina still made all her own underclothes. She enjoyed fine sewing. She had put on this evening for the first time a new set that had just been finished, and which Lina privately thought was rather successful.

  She leaned in the doorway, a hand on either jamb. “Did Ethel put out a shirt for you?”

  “Yes.” Johnnie, fitting studs into the shirt, looked up at her with a smile. “Hullo! Those the new knick-knicks? I say!”

  “Nice?” said Lina, spreading out the little peach skirt.

  “The best ever,” said Johnnie, with complete conviction. “Turn round and let’s see them properly. Yes, you’ve hit the mark this time, and no mistake. You look as wicked as a French farce. Clever little devil, aren’t you? Come and be kissed in ’em.”