Before the Fact (18 page)

(And Johnnie had called her a wet fish!)

Not that she loved Johnnie any more.

She hated Johnnie now – hated him bitterly and angrily and revengefully. He might have been her child once, but he had been a monster-child who had turned matricide. No, Johnnie would not stand in the way of her taking Ronald as a lover if she decided to do so in the end. She would not do so yet, of course. Ronald, who had such a delightfully high opinion of her, must never think that she was to be won too easily. It had been drilled into Lina from her early ’teens that no man thinks anything of a woman whom he can win easily. Somehow she had paid no attention to that admirable precept before she became engaged to Johnnie. And look at the result!

She lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling and worrying over whether she would ever take Ronald for a lover, or not.

Her thoughts turned to Janet, who had had the same problem to decide and had decided it.

She felt no bitterness against Janet. The bitterness that might have been felt against Janet had all been transferred to swell Johnnie’s total. Janet must have suffered a lot before she decided, and more still afterwards. Lina could only be sorry for her.

Unlike most women, Janet was not a natural hypocrite. That was why Lina had liked her from the first. She must have found the hypocrite’s rôle very horrible. But she had been helpless. One is helpless, when one loves. Lina knew that. Janet must have hated Johnnie for making her a traitress, even while she loved him. Poor Janet: she must have suffered. She could not have made Johnnie a very satisfactory mistress.

But Johnnie ...

He had set out to get her, of course. Probably he had been working to do so for years. Janet really had disliked him once, and Johnnie could not have borne that, from a woman. It had been a challenge, which he had felt bound to accept. Johnnie, the charmer: Johnnie, the irresistible. Johnnie, the blackguard.

Yes, Johnnie was the villain of Janet’s piece.

Lina began to cry.

She always cried now when she thought of Freda (common little upstart Freda, how she must have laughed!), of Mary Barnard, whom she had hardly noticed, of Olive Redmire, of the village girls – of her own servants! She felt somehow that she had been a pander for Johnnie’s horrible amours, by her own blind belief in him. She felt morally fouled, as well as physically.

She forced her thoughts back to Ronald. Should she become his mistress or should she not?

There was no possible need to decide that large question at any rate for the next two or three months, but Lina invariably worried over her problems in advance.

She decided this one in two or three minutes. She would become Ronald’s mistress. That would be getting her own back on Johnnie with a vengeance. She exulted in the idea of getting her own back on Johnnie.

For Johnnie had not
minded.

That was what upset Lina almost more than anything. Johnnie had thought those preposterous things about Martin Caddis – and he had not minded. Love must indeed be dead when a husband just does not
mind
the idea of his wife in somebody else’s arms. But then Johnnie had never loved her. She had not been pretty enough for him. How she had wasted her time!

But she would make up for it now.

She was pretty enough, it seemed, for Ronald. She would give Ronald everything. Everything she could.
Everything.

Lina, who had never before had an erotic vision in her life, plunged headlong into a series which a month ago would have left her appalled.

She saw herself with Ronald, and gloried in it. She
wanted
to be shameless. She wanted to do outrageous things – incredible, impossible, inconceivable things. And still more she wanted Johnnie to know that she had done them.

Ronald faded out. Lina was walking the streets, haunting bars, blatantly accosting men. Every woman wonders sometimes how she would shape as a prostitute. Lina had wondered, very vaguely, herself. Now she saw herself as one, in full detail: an extraordinarily successful one: a queen of prostitutes. What would Johnnie think about that? Would he mind then?

She turned over onto her other side. She never would and never could be a prostitute. Prostitutes are born, not made. Why waste time on an unproductive theme?

Ronald was recalled. Lina might never be a prostitute, but she would be a marvellous mistress. She could be. She wanted to be. She would be.

She wondered with interest whether Ronald had any abnormalities.

According to Johnnie, all men had some bias towards abnormality, greater or less. Johnnie had tried occasionally to hint to her of his own, but Lina would never let him.

“The normal’s good enough for me,” she always said.

She knew very little about the subject. It did not repel her; it simply did not interest her. She had read one book of Kraft-Ebbing’s, and it had all seemed very childish and silly. A great deal of it she had not been able to understand at all, including the Latin bits. Certainly it had not encouraged her to let Johnnie open his mind on the matter.

She wondered suddenly if that was why she had lost him.

With her usual fairness she had to admit that she might have done more for Johnnie. At least she could have provided a sympathetic ear. And of course she had always known that men do go to other women for what they cannot get, or do not like to ask for, from their wives. Joyce had told her all about that, years ago. Joyce had said, very emphatically, that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it depends entirely on the wife whether she keeps her husband or not.

Lina noted with new interest that Joyce had certainly kept Cecil.

Well, she would not make that mistake again, if that had been her mistake. She almost hoped that Ronald had a few abnormalities, so as to give her the opportunity of not making the mistake. She didn’t care. Ronald at least should never call her prim.

She tried to remember what she had read in Kraft-Ebbing.

Yes, she would do far more for Ronald than she would ever have done for Johnnie. Far more! And somehow –
somehow
Johnnie should learn just what she could do for another man.

That was quite settled.

Lina went to sleep.

The next day Ronald announced that he was going to marry her.

Early the next morning (a good deal too early, thought Lina, dragged out of bed to speak to him on the telephone) he rang up to ask her out to lunch. Lina refused, a little waspishly on account of her warm bed. He asked her to dine with him. She refused.

“Don’t be so absurd, Ronald. I can’t see you every day. Besides, we’re going out this evening.”

“You are going to see me every day,” said Ronald.

Finally Lina promised to have tea with him in his studio, to see his pictures. Ronald lived in a service flat in Westminster, but he rented a studio in Chelsea. His sitters preferred to be painted in Chelsea.

Lina got there punctually at four-thirty. She had had to hang about for a quarter of an hour on the embankment in order to do so.

A little anticipatory thrill ran through her as she knocked on the door inscribed with Ronald’s name.

A bigger one followed it when Ronald opened the door to her. For Ronald wasted no time. He took her straight into his arms, and kissed her as if he had been living for that minute all day.

“My darling!”

He held her away and looked at her.

“You enchanting creature! You’ve done it!” He had noticed the feather instantly. “It makes all the difference. I told you you’d look adorable, and you do.”

“What nonsense,” Lina said happily.

Ronald helped her off with her coat. He wanted her to take her hat off too, but Lina felt a curious reluctance. It seemed somehow more final.

The kettle was almost boiling, and Lina made the tea. They used a corner of the model throne for a table.

Lina walked about the studio, a bun in one hand, looking at Ronald’s pictures. She was relieved to find that the modern influence in them was slight. Ronald did not paint his sitters with red noses, by way of a crude suggestion that they drank too many cocktails, or with no tops to their heads and enormous thighs. But he was not photographic either. No photograph could have done his women such justice.

Lina was impressed. Without doubt Ronald was clever. And he worked.

It was Joyce who had said, very significantly: “And he works.”

“I’m going to paint you as soon as I can work off the commissions I’ve got on hand,” Ronald told her. “Just like you are now.”

“In this frock?” She was wearing a frock of green jersey with a white collar and very long white cuffs. The feather had been chosen to match it.

“Yes. I shall call it ‘The Green Feather.’ But I’m afraid it will blast my reputation forever.”

“Then you’d better not paint me. Why should it?”

“Because I live on silly women who like to inform the world, through my portraits of them, just how fatuous or vicious they are. I seem to have a knack of showing it in their faces.”

“Well,” Lina smiled, “I don’t think I’m vicious, but I often think I’m very silly, so that will be all right.”

“If I painted you, Lina,” Ronald said seriously, “it would be to show the world that there’s one woman in it who’s everything a woman could be. In fact,” he added with a laugh, “if I go on knowing you much longer, Lina Aysgarth, I’m afraid you’ll rob me of my livelihood.”

“I shall? How?”

Ronald laughed again. “Well, let’s put it, by destroying my lack of faith in women.”

“Lina, I’ll tell you one thing. I’m going to marry you.” Ronald bent over her as she sat on a pouffe cushion between his knees, and kissed her hair.

Lina caught her breath. “Ronald – you frighten me when you say things like that.”

“Frighten you? Why, my darling?”

“I don’t know. You’re so impetuous. What
do
you know about me?”

“I know you’re the only woman I ever could marry. No, don’t shake your head. It’s part of my job to be a quick judge of character. I made up my mind at that party, as soon as I knew you were going to be free, that I’d marry you.”

“Ronald! Did you really?” It rather took one’s breath away to have one’s future settled so decidedly without apparently any say in the matter at all, but undeniably it was exciting.

“Yes. You like me, don’t you?”

Lina gave the knee she was holding a little hug. “Should I be doing this if I didn’t? I can assure you, this sort of thing is quite out of my line.”

“I know it is, you darling. That’s why I want to marry you. You’re so ... well, there’s no other word for it,
clean.
Most women have such unpleasant minds, you know.”

“Do they?” said Lina doubtfully. It sounded rather a sweeping statement. “You have got a poor opinion of women, Ronald, haven’t you?”

“Very.”

“And yet it’s so silly to generalize about them.”

“I’ve got plenty of experience to speak from, my dearest. Anyhow, I can quite honestly tell you this: you’re the first woman I’ve met who hasn’t either bored or irritated me, or whom I’ve even wanted to see a second time.”

“I don’t think you can have met the right sort, Ronald. There really are plenty of nice women, you know.”

Ronald held her to him. “There’s one; and that’s all that matters to me. And I’m going to marry her.”

“Are you, though?” Lina laughed. “You haven’t asked her yet, you know.”

“Will you marry me, Lina?”

“No. I don’t know you. I couldn’t marry a man I didn’t know. The registrar would have to introduce us, and think how awkward that would be. No, Ronald, seriously, it’s absurd to talk like that now. Wait till we’ve known each other a few months, and then we’ll see. But it was sweet of you to want to.”

“Sweet of
me
! Listen, my darling. I know you’re not in love with me—”

“No, I’m certainly not. But I do like you a lot, Ronald.”

“You darling! No, of course you’re not. You’re still in love with that husband of yours; but—”

“I’m not that either,” Lina said indignantly.

“I think you are. Anyhow, you certainly haven’t got over the shock yet. But you’re going to fall in love with me, so you may as well get used to the idea at once.”

“I don’t think I shall ever fall in love again,” Lina said mournfully. “I might love you one day, Ronald. I believe I could. But not fall in love with you.”

“You’re going to do both,” Ronald said firmly. “It’s not fair that I should have to go through all this, and you escape scot-free. No, no, my lovely, you’re going to do your share.”

Lina looked up at him. “But you can’t be in love with me. You can’t possibly. Not so soon.”

“Whether I can or not, I very certainly am,” Ronald laughed. “I haven’t thought about anything else but you for a single minute since I first saw you. Yes, my Lina, it was love at first sight all right, and a bad case too. And me, of all people! My goodness, I haven’t been in love since I was seventeen, and swore I never would be. Swore it, I did. But then, of course, I didn’t know you existed.”

“You must be full of repressions, Ronald. You’ve been driven in very much on yourself, haven’t you?”

“I suppose I have. But I liked it. I considered myself self-sufficient. I’ve always made a point of never having to rely on anyone for any single thing. And look at me now! If you say you can’t meet me for lunch, the whole world turns black. You devil-woman!”

“Ronald, you mustn’t rely on me like that,” Lina said, really distressed. “You mustn’t really, dear. Don’t expect too much of me. I’m so afraid of letting you down.”

“You’re going to pull me up, my sweet,” Ronald told her.

Not in her most visionary moments had Lina ever imagined so tempestuous a wooing.

As Joyce had said, Ronald had an enthusiastic nature.

At first Lina had hardly believed it, but it really did seem that he had fallen insanely in love with her from that very first evening. He insisted on seeing her every day, and for no small part of every day too, putting off appointments recklessly to be with her; and every morning, no matter how late they had parted the night before, there was a rapturous letter from him on her breakfast tray. Lina found it unbelievably exciting to be wooed like this.