Before the Fact (6 page)

And Johnnie departed every morning, with resignation but with punctuality, on the twenty-mile run that separated him from his office on the Bradstowe estate.

Lina watched him go with affectionate pride. Johnnie, in his new rôle as world’s worker, was completely reinstated as the perfection of mankind.

“In the country,” said Lina brightly, “one doesn’t choose one’s friends; one accepts gratefully those whom providence has put there.” She laughed, a little selfconsciously, as she always did when she thought she had said something rather smart in the presence of her brother-in-law.

Cecil was stirring his coffee, and looking into the depths of the cup as if hopeful of learning the secrets of the universe in it. “I do think you are so right, Lina,” he said sadly.

“Well, whom has providence been pleased to bestow on us this afternoon?” asked Joyce, very cool and smart in a white silk frock, and absurdly young for a mother of two children.

Lina enumerated the guests who were coming to her tennis party that afternoon. “I’m afraid you’ll find them a terribly dull lot,” she apologized to Cecil.

“It isn’t other people who are ever dull,” Cecil replied dreamily. “It’s we who are dull, when we find them so.”

“Don’t hold your cup like that, darling,” adjured Joyce. “You’ll spill the coffee over your trousers.”

Cecil looked in a pained way at his coffee cup and then at his white trousers, before adjusting the angle of the former.

“You are so right, dear,” he murmured.

Lina wished that Johnnie’s work did not take him away from home for lunch. She enjoyed having Cecil and Joyce to stay, and it was wonderful to have someone with whom she could rasp brains again, but undoubtedly Johnnie did lighten the atmosphere. Cecil was charming, but he was at times a little heavy.

As soon as she reasonably could, Lina suggested that Cecil and Joyce should go out to the court and have a practice single, while she herself went upstairs to change. Cecil fell in with the suggestion at once, as he fell in with almost any suggestion that was made to him; and Joyce demurred only enough to make her acquiescence of value.

Standing by the big, low window in her bedroom, Lina watched for a few minutes Joyce’s dark, fluffy head moving rapidly over the green of the court, and Cecil’s lanky form twisting into sudden and unexpected angles on the further side of the net. It was odd that Cecil should be so good at tennis. One would not have expected it. Joyce, who had been reckoned a really excellent player at Abbot Monckford, was only just good enough to give him a game. Lina herself was hopelessly outclassed by both of them.

But Johnnie could give Cecil fifteen a game and beat him. Johnnie was almost first class.

Lina finished her dressing, put on her rubber-soled shoes, and went downstairs. It was nearly half-past three. People would be arriving at any moment.

The chairs and tables had all been taken out in the morning, for by the mercy of heaven it was a lovely day. Lina went into the kitchen to make sure that the lemonade and cider cup were ready, and then into the drawing room to collect the silver cigarette box. By the time she reached the garden Joyce and Cecil had finished their set and were sitting under the big cedar at the side of the court. She joined them, and they sat in the comfortable silence of people who know each other well enough not to have to bother to say things that are not worth saying.

Lina was a little anxious.

During the two years since she was married, Joyce had been to stay with her several times, but this was the first time that Cecil had come with her. Everybody who was coming that afternoon knew Cecil by name and reputation, and all were, or had professed to be, most anxious to meet him. But Cecil detested being lionized, and Lina hoped anxiously that no one would try to lionize him. It was a mistake, she decided now, to have asked Edith Farroway. How could she have been so silly? Edith would almost certainly say the wrong things. And if she didn’t, her sister Mary would. And if neither Edith nor Mary did, Bob Farroway could be practically relied upon to do so. What on earth had made her ask the Farroways, any of them? It had been an inane thing to do. They would make Cecil most uncomfortable. Wild ideas rushed through her mind of going to the telephone and putting the Farroways off on some ingenious pretext or other.

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.”

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.

“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.