Before the Fact (5 page)

“One doesn’t necessarily have to have eight bedrooms, for comfort.”

“I like plenty of rooms,” Johnnie retorted nonchalantly.

Lina stared at him, her chin on her hand.

Such complete irresponsibility dumbfounded her. She had always known that Johnnie was irresponsible, but she had never imagined that even he would go to the length of taking a house twice as large as they needed, with no funds of his own at all with which to keep it up. General McLaidlaw was making his daughter an allowance of five hundred a year since her marriage, but that was supposed to be for her own personal use; in any case, more than double that sum was needed to keep up Dellfield.

And Johnnie had taken a house with eight bedrooms just because he liked plenty of room. How like Johnnie. It just would not have occurred to him to wait for plenty of rooms until he could afford to pay for them.

“How much money did you have?” Lina asked. She and Johnnie had never discussed money before. She had taken it for granted that Johnnie, though hard up like all the Aysgarths, must have enough for them to live on, though she had expected to have to supplement her housekeeping money out of her father’s allowance. Now it seemed that he simply had no income at all.

“Oh,” Johnnie smiled, “I borrowed a thousand to marry you on, darling.”

“A thousand! Oh, well, I suppose that isn’t too bad.” Lina tried to be optimistic, though it was bad enough that Johnnie should have borrowed at all. “Considering we’ve furnished out of it and had those alterations done.”

“Those?” Johnnie repeated in surprise. “Those aren’t paid for. Nor the furniture.”

“Then what have you spent the thousand on?” Lina asked sharply.

“Why, our honeymoon, sweetheart. As a matter of fact, I thought I’d done rather well. I didn’t expect anything over by the time we got back, but there was enough to keep us for six weeks into the bargain.”

“I think,” said Lina slowly, “you must be mad.” To her Scotch mind there was something almost blasphemous in pouring out money like that – and borrowed money!

Johnnie jumped to his feet, looking just like a guilty but not very penitent schoolboy, and came over to her chair. “My little monkeyface, it was the sanest thing I ever did in my life, to marry you. I shouldn’t wonder if it wasn’t the only sane thing. You couldn’t grudge me a bit of a splash to celebrate it.”

He bent down, but Lina turned her face away. “No, Johnnie. No, I don’t want you to kiss me. I’m upset. I didn’t think even you could be so silly. No, Johnnie, don’t, please.” Johnnie had dropped on his knees beside her chair and put his arms round her.

But for once he had lost his power to charm; and when the maid came in for the coffee tray a few moments later, causing him to jump hurriedly to his feet, the thread of his persuasiveness was definitely broken.

Almost before the door was safely closed Lina had burst out, as if it had only needed the interruption to bring her resentment to full pitch.

“Well, what do you propose to do? You can’t leave things like this. We’ve got to live, I suppose.” It was almost incredible to her that Johnnie could have plunged into marriage without any income at all, or any prospect of making one.

“What about your father?” Johnnie said hopefully. “He could easily make you a bigger allowance, if he wanted to.”

“He wouldn’t want to. And I shouldn’t dream of asking him.” Lina could well imagine what General McLaidlaw’s reply would be to such a request, and pride would never have allowed her to hear it. She looked with distrustful resentment at Johnnie, all her parents’ hints and warnings sounding again in her ears. “Besides,” she added tartly, “you wouldn’t want to live on your wife’s allowance, would you? At least, I hope not.”

“No, darling, of course not,” Johnnie said quickly, though to Lina’s suspicious ears his tone was not altogether one of conviction. He scratched his curly head, looking at her with comical perplexity. “Well, I expect if the worst comes to the worst I can always borrow a spot somewhere. As a matter of fact, I’ve never touched old Middleham yet. I know,” he went on with enthusiasm. “I’ll take the car and run over to-morrow morning to Abbot Monckford. It’s only about sixty miles. Old Middleham ought to be good for a month or two’s housekeeping. Dash it, he’s a cousin; and what’s the use of a cousin if you can’t touch him occasionally? You’d better come too, and we’ll take a lunch off them.”

Lina looked at her husband with angry exasperation. “No! I don’t know what sort of a life you’ve led up to now, my lad, but you needn’t think you’re going on with it. I’m not accustomed to living in this haphazard way, and I’m not going to begin now. You’ve got to pull yourself together. There’s going to be no more borrowing.” It was the first time in her relations with him that Lina had ever taken a decision that was opposed to Johnnie’s. It marked the beginning of a new era, had either of them realized it.

Johnnie, who had never heard his wife address him in such a tone before, looked mildly astonished. “But what else is there to do?”

The new responsibility that had been forming in Lina for the last twenty minutes came suddenly to birth in another burst of irritation. In face of such fecklessness, she must have responsibility for two. For the first time she was fully conscious of being the elder of the two of them; and not merely by one year, but by all the difference between an adult and a silly, irritating boy.

“What else is there to do? I wonder you dare stand there and ask such a thing. What do other people with no money do? Hasn’t such a thing ever entered your head? You’ve got to work, my lad. W-o-r-k! That’s what there is to do.”

“Work?” Johnnie turned the word over doubtfully in the air, as if distrusting its implications. “I’d work all right, darling, if there was anything to work at. But what could I do?”

“Oh, good heavens, what does that matter? You can find something, surely. Don’t tell me you’re no use to anybody. Though I must say you haven’t shown signs of being much use at anything so far, except borrowing.”

“All right, all right,” Johnnie said sulkily. “I’ve said I’ll work, if there’s anything to work at. There’s no need for you to speak like that.”

“There’s every need, I should think,” Lina retorted, her nervous exasperation growing. “In fact, it’s quite time somebody did speak to you like that. I suppose you know what everyone says about you? That you’re a waster.”

“And you agreed with them, I suppose?” Johnnie sneered.

“I didn’t believe them; and I married you to prove it. But what do you expect me to believe now? A man who can borrow a thousand pounds, with no prospect of repaying it, and then expect his wife’s father to keep him for the rest of his life ...” Lina was scarcely less astonished than Johnnie to hear the words issuing from her mouth. They seemed to come out of their own accord, and all she could do was to sit and listen to them.

Johnnie’s sulky lines deepened. “Go on. You’ll be telling me next I married you for your money.”

“If I did, I should only be saying what plenty of people have said to me,” said Lina, and burst into tears.

It was their first quarrel, and it was a bad one.

An hour later it had subsided into a more or less acrimonious discussion.

What was Johnnie to do?

Johnnie, it seemed, had no views on that point, beyond a scarcely hidden reluctance to do anything at all. However, he intimated handsomely enough that if Lina could find anything suitable for him to do, he would very probably, in view of her strange ideas, go so far as to do it. Unfortunately he at once vetoed every suggestion she made, as unsuitable.

Lina wept, now with rage and now with frustration, and Johnnie stood sulkily by.

The maid brought in the tray of whisky and soda, and two generous portions were poured out, for the soothing of frayed nerves.

The discussion continued, on rather more mellow lines. Lina wept again and this time was comforted. More whisky was poured out, and still the discussion went on.

What was Johnnie to do?

With characteristic ineptitude on the part of the Aysgarth parents, none of the Aysgarth boys had been trained to any profession or useful occupation whatever. Each of them had been brought up to expect as much money as he would want, and extravagance had been rather encouraged as a gentleman’s prerogative than condemned as the act nowadays of a fool. The only subject Johnnie knew really intimately was horses, their training, their ailments, and their breeding; but to Lina’s suggestion that he should breed them he pointed out that considerable capital was necessary; the same objection applied still more forcibly to the opening of a stable, and Lina herself vetoed the idea of a little gentlemanly horse-dealing as an insufficient and too spasmodic occupation. But why should not Johnnie become a vet? Why, because years of training were necessary, and one has to know about all sorts of animals besides horses; moreover, Johnnie did not wish to become a vet.

So what was Johnnie to do?

Gradually Lina found herself talking more and more peremptorily. Johnnie had got over his sulkiness and was now charmingly penitent, but Lina remained hard and practical, waving him away whenever he tried to embrace her, or else suffering his kisses in abstracted silence, her mind busy with the theme of the moment.

“Darling, don’t you love me any more because I decided to make sure of you first and see about keeping you later?” Johnnie would ask, rubbing his cheek against hers.

“What about engineering?” Lina would reply abruptly. “You know all about cars. Couldn’t you do something with that?”

And Johnnie would have to break off his conciliatory love-making to point out that except for the job of mechanic in a garage, a knowledge of cars is of little profitable use.

“Well, if I were a man,” Lina would retort, not without bitterness, “I’d sooner take a job as mechanic in a garage than live on my wife’s father.”

“Darling,” Johnnie would answer reproachfully, “you know I wouldn’t live on your father for good. I only thought he might help us over this gap. Something’s bound to turn up soon.”

Johnnie continued to reiterate this comfortable creed all the evening. There was no need to worry. Something would certainly turn up. Something always did.

It was clear to Lina that he was quite content to wait until something did. She would never be able to shame him into active search for a job. Johnnie had made what was to him the supreme concession of not refusing work if work fell into his lap, and he obviously felt extremely virtuous in consequence. Lina realized that if Johnnie was ever to shoulder his job of keeping the roof of Dellfield over their heads, it must be she and she alone who would have to find the means; and the knowledge gave her an odd feeling of superiority. Johnnie might be this and that, and the most charming man in the world, and she loved him very much indeed; but in practical matters he was simply hopeless.

They did not find that evening the answer to the problem of what Johnnie was to do.

Lina had had ideals about marriage.

In spite of the flaw that had developed in Johnnie’s perfection, the ideals remained. They were, in fact, encouraged; for, being Lina, her ideals were naturally practical ones.

A wife, Lina had felt, can do a great deal for her husband. The fact that most wives do nothing was beside the point. They should. Lina had always sworn to herself that, should she ever marry, she would never let things rest at the usual wife’s idea of wifely perfection, that of running her husband’s house efficiently for him and not withholding her arms whenever he happened to want her embraces. She would do a great deal more than that. She would actively help her husband in his work. Whatever a man’s work may be, Lina was sure that there are ways in which a woman can solidly help him.

The fact that Johnnie had no work, and did not welcome any, only made Lina’s assistance more valuable. She would now not only help him with the work when it had been obtained; she would find it for him first. A wife can do a very great deal for her husband, even against that husband’s will.

After a good deal more discussion, Johnnie’s line of work was decided upon at last: he was to look after somebody’s large estate. It was now up to Lina to find someone with a large estate who wanted it looked after, and who would pay Johnnie a sufficiently important sum of money to do so. Athirst with eagerness, Lina hurled herself into the task.

She and Johnnie had settled in a part of the country that was new to her. It was in Dorsetshire, but on the further side of the county from Abbot Monckford, nearer London. Lina knew nobody in the neighbourhood when she arrived there, but she now began to trace out such friends of her friends as lived within reasonable distance and establish relations with them. There was little difficulty in getting into touch with the important landowning families. Johnnie, who was related to half the peerage, was himself dragooned into resuscitating half-forgotten acquaintanceships and getting into touch with extremely distant but unmistakable cousins. Lina, busily sifting the likelies from the unlikelies, entertained the former to dinner.

At first she suffered agonies of shyness, as she sat at the foot of her own dinner table; and to her horror found herself adopting to cover it a hard, artificial brightness. She knew that this manner paralyzed her less self-confident guests, and their paralysis in turn infected her; but she was quite unable to shake it off. She saw Johnnie watching her from the other end of the table with a whimsically lifted eyebrow. Johnnie, of course, was a born host from the very beginning.

It took Lina several months to learn to be natural, and by that time her end had been accomplished.

A certain Captain Melbeck, a distant connection of Johnnie’s, who had recently inherited an estate of nearly twelve thousand acres including a dozen farms, and had not the faintest idea what to do about it, quite thankfully undertook to pay Johnnie five hundred a year to do it for him.

Lina, after some difficulty, succeeded in borrowing from her father enough capital to pay off Johnnie’s debts, dismissed two of her servants, and settled down to run Dellfield, as economically as possible, on a thousand a year.