Before the Fact by Francis Iles Read Free Book Online Page B

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.”
2
    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,