Before the Fact (9 page)

Lina’s drawing room gave her a great deal of pleasure. It was a long, high, rather narrow room, with three tall windows that came down to broad sills within a foot of the floor and through which one could step straight out onto the lawn that ran up to the walls of the house.

Lina had furnished it sparsely. There was a polished board floor, with a few good rugs, a piano (on which Lina did not play so much as she should), a couch, a few easy chairs, and a couple of occasional tables; the end opposite the fireplace was covered entirely by bookshelves. There were no unnecessary ornaments or fripperies; Lina’s taste was severe to the pitch of strictness.

The only possibly inutilitarian objects in the room were four Hepplewhite chairs, which Lina’s mother had given her from home and which were really too good to be sat in; but their painted backs had provided the keynote on which Lina had based her whole colour-scheme; just as she had built up that of the dining room from the tints of a big Pieter Snyders still life that hung over the mantelpiece.

She came back one afternoon in late January from a shopping expedition into distant Bournemouth, to find Johnnie unexpectedly consuming a late tea by the fire. Almost as she entered the room she was conscious vaguely of a feeling of something lacking, but the indefinite sensation was lost in her surprise at seeing Johnnie.

She came forward, pulling off her gloves, to give him the kiss without which he would never let her enter a room in which he was. “You’re back early to-day, darling.”

“Yes,” said Johnnie. “Had a good day?”

“Fairly. I couldn’t get quite what I wanted, but—”

“Hullo, you’ve got a new hat. I say, that’s a peach, isn’t it?”

“Do you like it?” said Lina, pleased.

“It’s the prettiest you’ve had for years. Clever little monkeyface, aren’t you?” He caught her hand and pulled her down on his knee.

“Darling, I want my tea,” Lina protested with a laugh, and thought how wonderful it was that after more than three years of marriage Johnnie should still want to sit her on his knee.

“Have your tea here,” pronounced Johnnie.

Lina manipulated the teapot, her back to the room. Johnnie held her quite tightly round the waist.

“Darling, I must get up. I want to take my coat off.”

This time Johnnie let her go. She rose, took off her coat, and laid it over the back of a chair. Again the curious sense of emptiness invaded her. She looked round the room.

“Johnnie! Where are the Hepplewhite chairs?”

Johnnie jumped up from his chair and put his arms round her, holding her against his chest. “Sweetheart, I’ve got an awfully good bit of news for you. Listen. You remember that American I told you about? Well, he—”

“What American? You never told me about any American.” Lina was perturbed already. Johnnie looked oddly guilty, in spite of his smile. And the way he was holding her made her suspicious. Johnnie always embraced her when he had to admit to something he should not have done.

She looked up at him without returning his smile.

“Why, that American who came back with me a week or two ago, when you were out. The one who was so interested in those chairs. Didn’t I tell you? I thought I had. I meant to. Well, he came over this afternoon, and—”

“Weren’t you at Bradstowe this afternoon?”

“No, I came back after lunch; there was nothing to do. But listen, darling. This fellow, this American – you wouldn’t believe how keen he was on those chairs. He offered me a deuce of a lot for them: more than they were valued at, for the insurance. Of course,” said Johnnie virtuously, “I told him I couldn’t think of selling them. So what did he do? Damn it, monkeyface, he pretty nearly doubled his offer. It would have been madness not to take it.”

“Johnnie – you
didn’t
sell them?”

“Darling, I tell you: it would have been madness not to, at the price he offered.”

“Let me go. No, Johnnie, let me go.” Lina pushed with her hands against Johnnie’s chest, so that he had to release her.

“Look here, monkeyface, you’re not cross, surely? Honestly, darling, it would have been—”

“But you couldn’t sell them. They weren’t yours to sell. They were mine.”

“Oh, hang it all, sweetheart, I know that, technically, they were yours. But – well, I mean—”

“They
are
mine,” Lina said violently. “And I don’t want to sell them. I don’t care what your American offered. I won’t sell them. Where are they?”

“Why, he took them away. In his car.”

“Then you’ll have to get them back.”

“But, dearest, do be reasonable. I don’t know where he’s gone. I don’t know anything about him.”

“I don’t care,” said Lina, breathing quickly. “You’ll have to find out, that’s all. I won’t sell those chairs, so you’ve got to get them back.”

Johnnie tried to take her in his arms again. “Darling!”

“No, I mean it. No, don’t, Johnnie. I’m very angry with you. You had no right to sell them without asking me.

Johnnie looked extremely crestfallen. “I only thought I was doing you a good turn.”

“Yes, I know all about that. Don’t do me any good turns like that in future. Well, I suppose you’d better give me the money. I’ll keep it to give back to him when you’ve got the chairs again.”

“I haven’t got it,” Johnnie said quickly. “He’s going to send the cheque on.”

Lina stared at him. “What? You don’t know where he’s gone or anything about him, and yet you trusted him to send the cheque on?”

“Oh, he’s all right. Absolutely all right. I mean, he’s a friend of Melbeck’s. And in any case, we could always get him through the American embassy. He just hadn’t got his cheque book on him. Hang it, darling, one must trust people occasionally. He’ll send it on all right.”

“He’d better.”

“Monkeyface!”

“Well?”

“Not really cross with me, are you?”

“Yes, Johnnie, I am. Really.” But Johnnie was looking so penitent that Lina had to let her expression relax.

Johnnie was on to it at once, and caught her to him. “My darling, you’re not. Not any more. I’m terribly sorry. I thought you’d be so pleased.”

He looked so disappointed that Lina had to forgive him altogether.

“But mind you,” she said, under his kisses, “I hold you responsible for getting them back, Johnnie.”

“I’ll get them back,” Johnnie promised with fervour, “if I have to chase him over to America for them.”

But Johnnie did not get them back.

The American, it seemed, had simply vanished. Nor did he send the cheque. Johnnie was most upset about it, but what could one do?

“Go to the police,” said Lina, some three weeks later. “We ought to have gone before. I’ll ring up the Dorchester police station to-day and report it.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t do that,” Johnnie said.

“Why ever not?”

Johnnie’s reasons were vague but emphatic. Lina gathered that somehow it would offend Captain Melbeck extremely, and perhaps even imperil Johnnie’s job, if she rang up the Dorchester police.

“Nonsense!” she said briskly. “The man was obviously a thief. Captain Melbeck must have been taken in by him as well as you.” But her mind did not contain quite so much decision as her words. The last thing she wanted to do was to imperil Johnnie’s job.

Johnnie, however, did not know that. “Look here, Lina,” he said slowly, and Lina knew that something important was coming from the use of her name, which he hardly ever employed. “Look here, you mustn’t ring up the police.”

“But I intend to. Why mustn’t I?”

“Well, look here,” Johnnie said, with a desperate air, “he did give me the cheque.”

“He did? Then why did you tell me he didn’t?”

“Because I’d spent it.”

“You’d spent it? Well, really, Johnnie! What on?”

“I had to pay some debts,” Johnnie said with reluctance.

“What debts? I didn’t know you had any debts. What debts?”

“Oh, well, if you must know, racing debts. Look here, I know I oughtn’t to have done it, but the truth is that I was in a pretty tight corner. And then that American’s offer came like a godsend. I simply had to take it. I’m awfully sorry, monkeyface.”

Lina knew that she ought to be angry, but Johnnie was looking so ashamed of himself that the wind was taken out of her sails.

“Have you done any racing since then?”

“No. Not a bet.”

“If I forgive you, will you promise not to make any more bets?”

“Not a one. Once bitten, twice shy.”

“Never again? It’s a promise, Johnnie?”

“I swear it. Monkeyface,” said Johnnie fervently, “you’re the dearest, sweetest, most wonderful woman ...”

Lina knew it was worth the cheque.

Just a fortnight later she was in Bournemouth again. Johnnie had not wanted her to go, but there were some things which could only be got there.

She passed Marshall’s antique shop, in South Street. In the window was an undoubted Hepplewhite chair. Lina recognized the picture on it.

She stood for quite five minutes staring at it before she went inside the shop.

Mr. Marshall himself came forward and answered her questions.

“Oh, yes, madam, it’s a Hepplewhite. Yes, I’ve got four of them. The other three are through here, if you’d care to see them.”

Lina followed him and stared for a few moments at the other three, wondering how to get the information she wanted.

“You have their pedigree, I suppose?” she said slowly at last. “Yes, yes; no doubt they’re quite genuine; but do you know where they came from?”

Mr. Marshall rubbed his white-stubbled chin. “I could give you the information of course, madam, if you bought them. I do know where they came from. In fact, I negotiated the sale myself from the owner in whose family they’ve been since they were made by Hepplewhite himself. I can assure you their pedigree’s quite in order.”

“I should like to know the name,” Lina said tonelessly.

Mr. Marshall hesitated, and then gave way in an access of confidence. “Well, quite between ourselves, madam, it was a member of the Aysgarth family. You know the name, of course?”

“Yes,” said Lina, “I know the name. Thank you. I’ll let you know if I want them.”

She walked out of the shop.

Lina never said a word to Johnnie about the incident.

In any case, she had his promise.

Janet Caldwell stiffened. “Surely that isn’t Johnnie already?”

Lina wondered: Why does she dislike him so? How absurd she is.

Undoubtedly it was Johnnie.

His voice, raised to its merriest tones, came flooding through the drawing-room door as he rallied the grenadier-like parlourmaid, Ella’s less prepossessing and more permanent successor.

Involuntarily Lina’s face lightened. Janet had been rather heavy this afternoon. Johnnie’s arrival was like a warm wind, driving thin academic ghosts away through keyholes and window fastenings.

He came impetuously into the room.

“Hullo, monkeyface! Hullo, Janet! Hullo, Janet! Hullo, monkeyface! Two pretty women and one pretty man; so who the deuce cares who also ran? Hullo, monkeyface, my sweetheart.” He kissed Lina. “Hullo, Janet, my precious.” He dabbed a kiss on Janet’s unexpecting cheek.

“Johnnie,” said Lina, laughing, “what is the matter with you? And why are you home so early?”

“It’s a red-letter day,” said Johnnie, at the door again.

“Ethel! Ethel! Ethel, look here, I only see two cups, two plates, and hang it all, only two saucers on the tea tray. Now, why is that, Ethel? Here I am, thirsting for tea, and you simply deny it me. You don’t even provide a saucer for me, in case I’d like to lap. Is that necessary, Ethel? Is it wise, Ethel? Is it even kind?”

The grenadier giggled. “I didn’t expect you’d be back, sir.”

“But I am back! Good heavens, didn’t you recognize me in the hall? Here I am, simply asking you to get me a cup, and you stand there arguing. Run along, Ethel, and bring me that cup at once.”

Still giggling, Ethel departed.

“Johnnie darling, have you gone quite mad?”

“Not quite, Mrs. Aysgarth, my love. It was just the shock of seeing Janet here. Janet, did I really and truly kiss you just now, or was it a dream?”

“You did kiss me,” said Janet, with a polite smile. “I’m sure I don’t know why.”

Johnnie dropped on one knee and struck a theatrical attitude with outstretched arm. “Because I love you. Because I adore you. Miss Caldwell, forgive my bold words, but the time has come when I can no longer conceal my respectful passion. For long have I nourished, like a viper in my bosom, the hope that one day I might—I’ll tell you the rest another day.” Johnnie rose with dignity and dusted his knee as Ethel entered with his cup.

Ethel departed, among inadequately stifled noises.

“Johnnie,
will
you tell me what’s the matter with you?”

Johnnie put his hand into his coat pocket, pulled out an object, and dropped it into Lina’s lap. “Have a nice necklace, darling? Have a diamond ring? Have a brooch? No, I think we’ll give that to Janet, to stop her getting jealous of you. There’s a fur coat for you in the car. There are some other things as well, but I can’t quite remember what; I bought anything they put in front of me; but I think hats figured. I thought you’d rather choose some frocks for yourself. You can send the hats back if you don’t like them. I was still sober enough to remember to insist on that.”

“Are you drunk, Johnnie?” Lina demanded, staring with incredulous eyes at the jewelry in her lap.

“Pretty well,” Johnnie admitted. “Don’t look at it in that distrustful way, my poppet. It’s a real diamond. I called in at Bournemouth on my way back. It’s guaranteed genuine by the mayor and corporation.” Bradstowe was a good deal nearer to Bournemouth than Upcottery was.

“But ...?”

Johnnie beamed at her. “You didn’t perhaps know that the Grand National was run to-day? Well, I just happen to have backed the winner. At forty to one, my little monkeyface. Forty to one! What do you think about that?”

“Johnnie!” Lina was scarcely less excited herself. “How much have you won?”

“Hold tight, and I’ll tell you. Four thousand of the best – and not one penny less.”