Before the Fact (3 page)

Johnnie Aysgarth said nothing. He just stood there and grinned at her. But his grin was eloquent. Every line of his face told Lina that she was going to join the party, and that he knew she was going to join the party, and she was going to join the party simply because he wished her to do so.

Lina tried to speak calmly. “In any case, I couldn’t go to church in this frock.” Against her will she caught Johnnie’s eye. It was openly derisive. Lina’s flush deepened. Certainly the implication contained in her banality, that her Creator could bear to be worshipped by Miss McLaidlaw only in her best frock, hardly did credit to one who out of twenty-four persons had been the only one worth talking to.

“Then change,” said the middle Miss Fraser crisply.

“And buck up about it,” added her younger sister.

Mrs. Fraser sank into the deck chair.

Lina went upstairs in a fury. She knew quite well who was responsible for this preposterous invasion. The “girls” absolutely insisted, did they? Exceedingly likely! And what right had anyone to “insist”? It was insufferable.

Besides, everyone would see her there, sitting next to Johnnie Aysgarth. Probably he would try to hold her hand during the sermon, or something equally impossible. And everyone would know why she was there, and there would be talk, and people would say the most ridiculous things.

But what made her most angry of all, as she tore off her frock, was the fact that she simply had not had the strength of mind to refuse.

“My dear, where are you going?” asked her mother with simple wonder, encountered on the stairs five minutes later.

Lina held out her prayer book as if it had been a snake. “To church,” she said bitterly.

“What, all alone?”

“No, with the Frasers.”

“The Frasers? But I thought you didn’t like them?”

“I loathe them,” replied Lina with conviction.

“Well, thank you, dearest, at any rate. It was quite time one of us went,” said her parent.

Life in the country has its obligations.

Lina walked the half mile along the dusty road between Johnnie and Mrs. Fraser in angry silence. She refused to be appeased even by the precocity of the hedges, and allowed her neighbours to exchange comments on them over her head. Johnnie hardly spoke to her at all.

At the church door she felt his hand on her arm. She tried to shake it off, but it held her too fast. She found herself being detained while the Frasers filed inside. Then, to her unspeakable indignation, she was turned about and marched back along the path, Johnnie’s hand tightly gripping her elbow, right under the eyes of certain other late-comers.

“Mr. Aysgarth!” she gasped. “What in the world ...?”

Johnnie’s eyes twinkled at her, just like those of a schoolboy who has brought off a successful prank. “You didn’t think we were really going to church, did you? We’re going for a nice long country walk – on which you’re going to apologize for being so infernally rude to me last week.”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort!” exploded Lina. “Please let go of my arm at once.”

“You will, and I won’t. Come along, Lina.”

They went.

“Well, dear, who was at church?”

“I didn’t go after all,” Lina said, helping herself to horseradish sauce from the tray at her side. “I went for a walk.”

“With the Frasers?” asked Mrs. McLaidlaw in surprise.

“No, with Johnnie Aysgarth.” It gave her a little thrill of excitement just to speak his name so casually.

General McLaidlaw drew his bushy brows down over the bridge of his nose in an effort of memory. “Johnnie Aysgarth? That’s Tom Aysgarth’s youngest boy, isn’t it? Pity he’s turned out a rotter. Rough luck on Tom. Tom may have been a fool, but he was always as straight as a die. What’s this, eh? Horseradish? Didn’t know horseradish was in season now. Is it out of a bottle, eh?” asked the General suspiciously.

“Of course not, dear,” replied Mrs. McLaidlaw, with placid untruth.

The General helped himself and tasted a portion. “No, this is the real stuff. Tell the difference at once. Can’t stand things out of bottles. Never taste the same.”

“Never, dear,” agreed Mrs. McLaidlaw.

“Why do you say Johnnie Aysgarth is a rotter, Father?” Lina asked, quite calmly.

“Because he is a rotter. Turned out of some club for cheating at cards, wasn’t he? Or ought to have been turned out. Something unpleasant, anyway. What’s he doing down here?”

“He’s staying at Penshaze. I shouldn’t have thought Lord Middleham would have had him there if he’d ever been turned out of a club for cheating at cards.” Lina’s heart was beating so fast that she could hardly swallow.

“Well, it might have been a woman. Something ugly, I’m sure. Good heavens,” grumbled General McLaidlaw, “can’t expect me to remember every detail about everybody, can you? Anyhow, it was something to do with a woman. Co-respondent, or something. Or ought to have been co-respondent, or something. It may have been hushed up, but—”

“
Méfie-toi,
” said Lina, with a militant sparkle in her eye, “
les oreilles domestiques t’écoutent.
”

“Ah! Hum!” said the General and subsided. He always subsided when his daughter addressed him in French. Lina had been at school in Paris, and the General had not.

Lina did her best to go on with her lunch just as if this was as ordinary a Sunday as all the Sundays of her life before.

Johnnie Aysgarth had explained everything.

Lina saw now that she had misjudged him, quite heartlessly. The details were perhaps not quite so clear still, but Johnnie had made it perfectly plain. She had misjudged him.

He had clung to her so closely on the day of the picnic because never in his life before had he met a girl who had attracted him so much at first sight!

That had been very interesting to hear. And it was not blarney. Lina, skeptical, very skeptical at first, had gradually become sure that it was not blarney. Then he had avoided her afterwards because he was so afraid he had offended her. He had been afraid – yes, afraid of her. Really afraid. She had alarmed him. She was so poised, so confident, so sure of herself and her ability to handle men. She! Lina had simply had to laugh.

Johnnie had apologized; he had explained, he had begged for forgiveness. And Lina had forgiven him. For what, had been rather glossed over; but nevertheless, with some ceremony, Johnnie had been forgiven.

After that the morning had become almost impossibly delightful.

Lina was to meet him again that afternoon. He was to bring his car, and they were going for a long run, with tea at some charming little inn, wherever they found a charming little inn. There would of course be no difficulty in finding a charming little inn. It was that sort of day.

At half-past two Johnnie rang through to say that he was terribly,
terribly
sorry, but his cousins had arranged something or other for the afternoon and it would be quite impossible for him to take Lina out.

She went upstairs, feeling that life held nothing more for her.

She did not see Johnnie again for a fortnight. By the end of that time she would have gone to meet him along a mile of public road on her knees.

Actually, they became engaged about two months later.

So far as Lina was concerned, it was not a happy engagement.

At first she was almost unbalanced with happiness. That she, Lina McLaidlaw, Letter-box McLaidlaw, could have fascinated a man so experienced, so witty, so good-looking, so accomplished, so everything a man ought to be, as Johnnie Aysgarth seemed quite incredible. But she had fascinated him. He adored her. He told her so repeatedly, with a mischievous smile at her incredulity. And his kisses carried conviction. Never had Lina dreamed that kisses could be so convincing. Johnnie kissed her till her jaw ached quite painfully. She was enraptured.

All her life Lina had felt the need of someone on a pedestal in front of her, to whom she could look up as infallible. Hitherto her father had occupied this position, with a brief deposition in favour of the head mistress of her first school. Now Johnnie was firmly installed, on a bigger, brighter, and better pedestal than had ever been in use before.

Everything Johnnie did was right.

To Lina’s horrified joy, he treated her not at all respectfully; hardly even politely. She was clearly very much of a woman to him. It was Lina’s first experience of being a woman. Johnnie, she knew, was the first man who had found her exciting; and prim though she was, almost to prudishness, it had always disturbed her vanity and something deeper than her vanity, that other women, far less intelligent than herself and sometimes downright plain, should to her knowledge have received advances of a kind that she had never encountered. Now she was having them thrust upon her; and though there was layer upon layer of primness to be broken through before she could relish them, so that delight and repulsion were continually at war in her mind, she knew she would be very upset if they were to cease. Besides, if Johnnie made them, they were right. So that though she repulsed the more obvious of them, she did so laughingly and lightly, for all that she was, sometimes, very shocked indeed. She felt that Johnnie would despise her for being shocked.

But they did cease, spasmodically.

After the first fortnight or so Lina was sure that Johnnie’s ardour was cooling. He left the neighbourhood, he hardly wrote a line to her when he was away, and when he came back, as he did every now and then for two or three days at a time, he was seldom so hair-raisingly bold with her as he had been.

Lina wept nightly into her pillow and tried to find the reason. Had she been too cold with him? Had she been idiot enough not to have hidden that she was shocked, and put him off? Had she been too outspoken in their last little quarrel? She so often said things on impulse that she would have given her right hand afterwards to recall. Had she allowed that nervous irritation of hers to fly out with even less cause than usual? It did, so often. Or had she – hopeless thought! – simply ceased to attract him?

She wondered desperately whether it would not be better, the next time he really seemed to want her, to “give herself to him” (she used the cant phrase in her thought) once and for all, marriage or no marriage. She wanted to, really. But it had been impressed on both the Miss McLaidlaws, with all a mother’s earnestness, that once a man has “got what he wants” he wants nothing more; and Lina could not bear to think that Johnnie should want nothing more of her than that – so it seemed better not to risk it.

Both General and Mrs. McLaidlaw seemed to think that Johnnie wanted a good deal more of her.

That was another trouble. The General voiced it with soldierly conciseness; Mrs. McLaidlaw was more inclined to hint it in solicitous questions. But her purport was just as plain as her husband’s: both Lina’s parents had conceived the preposterous fear that what Johnnie wanted really was not so much Lina herself as the fifty thousand pounds which would come to Lina, as under their grandmother’s will another equal sum would come to Joyce, on the death of their father. Lina became almost speechless with anger against her parents; but not so speechless that she was unable to say things which no daughter should even think.

Undeterred, the General gave it as his flat, and undemanded, opinion that all the Aysgarth stock was rotten, that Johnnie was as rotten as the rest, if not a bit rottener, and whether he was after her money or not, if Lina could not do better for herself than marry an Aysgarth, then she should preferably take the veil or whatever it is that women do take when they take anything.

Lina stood up to her father and brushed angrily aside her mother’s insinuating questions, but they made her very miserable. Not, of course, that there could be anything in them. Whatever Johnnie had been, and by his own boast he had been a bit of a rip, which Lina vaguely deplored and yet felt a little proud of – whatever Johnnie might have been, he was not that sort. Lina knew that. She
knew
it. And yet –
why
was he often so cold and uninterested with her nowadays?

And then she would be sure that Johnnie was beginning to see through her at last. She was not what he had thought her. She was dull, for a man so used to the most accomplished and fascinating women; dull, prim, silly, provincial. Johnnie was beginning to see through her.

Then she would cry. And having cried, she would set her teeth and say, out loud: “Well, anyhow, I’m not going to let any other woman get him. Never!” Then she would cry again.

Then, two days later, Johnnie would kiss her so hard, and make love to her so entrancingly, and teasingly try to do such terrifyingly improper things to her, that she would forget for half-a-dozen hours all her trouble.

The upshot was, of course, that Lina adored him so madly that not all the generals in the world, drawn up in a solid, glittering phalanx between herself and the altar, could have prevented Lina from getting to Johnnie there. Lina admitted humbly to herself that she did not know men; it did not occur to her quite how well Johnnie might know women.

The spectre of housekeeping brooded over her. Lina, who invariably worried over her troubles in advance, was convinced that she would never make an efficient housekeeper. She would make Johnnie uncomfortable; she would forget the blacking; she would omit to order the cream for the strawberries; there would never be enough of anything in the house. She vowed passionately that she would
always
look through Johnnie’s shirts when they came back from the laundry. Never should a stentorian bellow echo through her house that there was a blank button missing from some blank garment. But she knew there would be.

Then she would fall to brooding again over Johnnie’s new coldness, and ask herself for the millionth time whether he really did love her still after all or was just being chivalrous after giving his promise, and if so, whether any measures were not better tried, however desperate, and whether when a girl has lost that she really has lost all.

Lina was a great trial to her family and her friends during her engagement. She was a great trial to herself too.