Before the Fact Read Online Free PDF Page A

Lina was formally bestowed on Johnnie Aysgarth, before God’s altar, by a resigned but still indignant General McLaidlaw.
CHAPTER II
    “Darling,” Lina said tentatively, “surely it was a 50-franc note you gave the waiter, not a 100-franc one?”
    Johnnie grinned at her as he shovelled the change away into his trouser-pocket. “It was. We put one over on him there. Don’t often catch a French waiter making that sort of mistake, do you? Let’s get on before he realizes.”
    “But – you aren’t going to keep it?”
    “Of course I’m going to keep it,” Johnnie said, in genuine surprise, and stood up.
    Lina picked up her gloves and bag and followed him. She was surprised too, and bewildered. Surely it was downright dishonest to keep the extra fifty francs without saying anything? Yet Johnnie seemed to think it only an excellent joke.
    She walked in silence beside him along the boulevard. She felt somehow hurt, as if Johnnie had cheated her instead of an obscure waiter in the Café de la Paix. Because it
was
cheating: there was no getting away from it.
    Or wasn’t it? Johnnie would not conceivably cheat consciously, so evidently he did not consider it cheating at all. And yet ...
    Her mind went back to that rather curious incident after lunch yesterday. They had sat on talking for hours, as they often did still, although the honeymoon was now in its seventh, and last, week; and one by one the waiters had disappeared, till at last they had the room to themselves as Johnnie had marked by kissing her across the table. It was twenty minutes to four when at last she went to powder her nose, and certainly Johnnie had not paid the bill then.
    When she came back Johnnie was still alone, but with his hat and gloves in his hand; he had risen at once, and they had gone downstairs. Just as they were going out a waiter had come up to Johnnie and said something. Lina was already halfway through the door, and she had not heard very distinctly, but she had thought he was asking Johnnie if he had paid; Johnnie answered something carelessly, and followed her outside, where they had stepped straight into a taxi by the curb. Lina had happened to look back just as the taxi was starting, and had seen the waiter looking through the glass door at them with a very odd expression, certainly of doubt, almost one might have said of suspicion; he had seemed to be trying to make up his mind, in the half-second at his disposal, whether to run out onto the pavement after them or not.
    It was ridiculous, of course, because Johnnie must have paid while she was powdering her nose, but the waiter’s expression had been so strange that she asked Johnnie herself in the taxi whether he had paid, and Johnnie had said, in some surprise, that of course he had. She had thought no more about it.
    She told herself that it was ridiculous to think any more about it now.
    They were walking towards the Madeleine after their
apéritif,
to lunch at Voisin’s. Johnnie was finding amusement, as he always did, in the people who passed them.
    “Darling, do look at what’s coming towards us. No, this one with the fuzzy hair. What is he, do you think? An artist, or something escaped from a home? I mean, if he wants to wear a mauve tie with a scarlet shirt I suppose that’s all right, but do you think he ought to be allowed to wear purple socks too? Shall I call a gendarme, darling? I really think we ought to give him in charge for assaulting our eyesight. Hullo, hasn’t that girl’s posterior slipped from its moorings? Shall we stop her and tell her? She’d probably be grateful. I’m sure it ought to be looped up again. You tell her, darling; it’s a woman’s job.”
    “Johnnie,” said Lina, “
please
come back to the Café de la Paix with me and give that waiter those fifty francs back. To please me.”
    Johnnie laughed and tucked her hand under his arm. “You funny little thing! Aren’t you delighted at having put one over on those thieves for a change?