Free Before the Fact by Francis Iles Page B

with whom she could become really intimate; and their intimacy had shot up in the extremely rapid growth which women are so often able to induce in a friendship between themselves.
    And it had lasted.
    A great deal of tea had been drunk, and an immense amount of talk poured out, in Lina’s long, airy drawing room while Johnnie wrestled with his farm accounts twenty miles away.
    On an afternoon in early November the two were sitting in front of the log fire, waiting for tea to be brought in. The conversation had been desultory, until Janet pulled it up with a jerk.
    “Lina,” she said, in her gentle, almost complaining voice, “why don’t you have a baby?”
    “You may well ask,” Lina answered, with a little laugh. “I assure you, it isn’t my fault.”
    “Johnnie’s?”
    “Nor Johnnie’s. Nature’s.”
    “Do you want one?”
    “I suppose so.” Lina was a little embarrassed. It was the first time she and Janet, in spite of their intimacy, had discussed such a personal matter. They prided themselves in differing in this respect from others of their sex, whose avid eagerness to pry into the secret lives of their friends, or, with a kind of psychological exhibitionism, reveal their own, disgusted both of them. “I suppose so. But Johnnie’s such a child himself that perhaps I don’t miss another as much as I might.”
    Janet leaned back in her chair, her broad, white hands clasped over one knee. “If ever I married, it would only be to have children.”
    “It’s quite nice to have a husband in any case,” Lina observed mildly.
    “Yes?” said Janet.
    Janet did not like Johnnie.
    She was, so far as Lina knew, about the only woman who had never succumbed to Johnnie’s charm. Of course, Janet never said she did not like Johnnie, and she obviously tried not to hint it; but it was quite evident. Janet never stayed more than a perfunctory few minutes if Johnnie came back before she had gone, and it needed quite a lot of persuasion to get her to dinner. Lina thought it all rather unnecessary, as Johnnie was always quite charming to Janet and did not return her dislike in the least; though he did mimic her quiet voice and deliberate movements rather funnily when she was not there.
    It had never entered Lina’s head that Janet might be jealous of Johnnie.
    “And a house of one’s own,” she added now, thinking of Abbot Monckford. “I can quite understand a girl marrying a man she didn’t care two pins about, just to get a home of her own.”
    “But you didn’t?”
    “Me? Oh, no. In fact, I was rather frightened of it. Before I was married the idea of housekeeping was a positive nightmare. I felt I couldn’t
bear
it.”
    “And now I suppose you’re about the most efficient housekeeper on this side of Dorsetshire,” Janet said, as if stating a simple fact. “I’m quite sure I’ve never had better dinners in any private house than I’ve had here.”
    “It’s an easy secret,” Lina laughed. “I’ve told you hundreds of times. Keep a good cook – and know how to cook just a bit better yourself. That’s all.”
    “Quite easy,” Janet smiled, as the tea arrived. Janet could not cook at all and would not let Lina teach her.
    They talked on trivial subjects while the maid was in the room.
    When she had gone Janet sat for some minutes staring at a crumpet on the plate on her lap, before beginning to nibble it absently.
    “What I couldn’t stand about marriage,” she said at last, “would be the intimacy. I should hate a man to see me half-dressed.”
    “One gets used to it. And when the man tells one that one looks quite nice ... Janet,
are
you thinking of getting married?”
    “Oh, heavens, no. It just interests me. It’s funny we’ve never talked about the personal side of marriage before. – Does Johnnie tell you that?”
    “Johnnie’s the perfect husband: he always notices what I’ve got on. As a matter of fact, he’s quite interested in women’s clothes. And he’s got very good