Linda Lee, Incorporated: A Novel

They made up to her saucily or shyly, according to the style they believed became them best, with assurance or with humility, with ostensible indifference, and some in open desperation. But on one point they were all agreed: they wanted work. Lucinda spoke about two or three of them to Lontaine, who laughed and advised her to recommend them to Barry Nolan's assistant, when that far day dawned on which the question of casting subordinate rôles would be in order. She spoke to Lynn Summerlad, and was rewarded with a worried frown, the first sign of care she had ever detected in him, together with some well-chosen thoughts on the dangers of contracting haphazard hotel acquaintanceships. Lucinda explained that she hadn't sought them, they had been practically forced upon her; she could see no merit in being rude and "upstage." Summerlad retorted darkly that one never could tell; the motion-picture colony harboured any number of queer birds; it wouldn't do for her of all women to pick up with a wrong one.

"First thing you know, they'll be trying to borrow money from you."

Lucinda was silent for want of a conscience that would sanction an indignant rejoinder.

"I was afraid of this when you moved into the hotel. But then I told myself not to be a fool, you weren't the sort to encourage total strangers."

With malice, Lucinda enquired absurdly: "Are you reproaching me with relaxing from the conventions of my former milieu, Mr. Summerlad?"

"You know very well what I mean, Linda."

"You think, perhaps, I'm growing to be a shade too free and easy?"

"If you must know, I do."

"But this is, after all, Hollywood."

"No excuse for doing as the Hollywoodenheads do."

"Then, I take it, you think it might be more discreet of me to stop going about with you alone."

Since the same roof no longer sheltered them, the Lontaines had ceased invariably to include Lucinda in their plans and gaddings, as when social courtesies were extended them by people whom Lontaine met in the way of business and to whom Lucinda was not known at all. So she was enjoying some little time to herself, when Summerlad's attentions permitted; and when they didn't, felt free to follow her inclination and dispense with chaperonage on occasion, irrespective of the looks of the thing. (If anything could be held to have any particular "looks" where principles of laissez-faire and assiduous attention to one's own concerns were so generally vogue.) Linda Lee, furthermore, could do as she pleased when her pleasure must have been taboo to Mrs. Bellamy Druce.

"O Lord!" Summerlad groaned. "I might've known better than to start an argument with a woman."

"I don't relish being reproached by you for lack of decorum."

"Decorum! I'm only anxious you shan't get in with the wrong sort, be victimized or worse."

"Touching thoughtfulness on my behalf… But Lynn: what do you mean by 'worse'?"

"Not sure I know, myself. I don't want anything to happen to worry you."

"What could?"

"Oh, I don't know. If I did, I could take measures to prevent its happening. But not so long as you insist on living here. A hotel's no place for a woman alone. People all the time coming and going… Who knows who and what they are? You might be recognized."

"So that's what's on your mind?"

"I don't like to think of any outside influences working on you just now."

"Just now?"

"Distracting your attention from really important matters, like me and what you're going to do about me. I'm so desperately in love with you, Linda."

Lucinda said nothing for a little. She had been expecting this for days. Now that it came it found her, of course, unprepared. Nothing to complain of in that; a declaration of love always finds a woman unprepared, no matter how long she may have been preparing for it. The primitive instinct of flight from the male is deathless, though it manifest only as in that one brief moment of panic that Lucinda knew.

She was glad of the darkness of that section of the hotel veranda where they had been sitting for a quarter of an hour after returning from dîner à deux in the city. It had seemed early to part, as people interested in each other reckon the age of an evening together – not much after ten – and since no one was visible on the veranda, Lucinda had suggested that Summerlad stop and chat a while. Now she wished she hadn't.

Not that it made much difference. This had been bound to come before long. One knew the signs in a man who had held his peace about as long as he could. Five weeks since that night when, in the Beverly Hills bungalow, she had concluded that Summerlad's interest in her was neither impersonal nor of a transitory nature…

An amazingly long time for him to wait, had she but known, a tribute to the sincerity of the passion she had inspired, to the respect in which he held her whose training had not been such as to encourage much respect for women in general. Almost anybody in Hollywood would have told her that Lynn Summerlad was "a fast worker." That no one had done so was probably due in most part to an impression that to carry such information were work of supererogation…

The worst of it was, she was glad.

How strange (and what proof of her heart's unique intricacy!) that she should be affected by such paradoxical displeasure in the pleasure it gave her to hear Lynn profess a passion of which she had been so long and well aware; as if it grated upon some slumbering sense of what was fitting; as if any reason today existed why Lynn shouldn't be in love with her and, for the matter of that, she with him (only, of course, she wasn't) or why he need hesitate to speak and she be loath to listen…

"Well, Linda?"

She put away her pensiveness, smiling softly in the darkness that enfolded them, smiling to see Summerlad bending forward in his chair, whose arm just failed to touch the arm of hers, anxiously searching her face for a clue to her mind, but with the anxiety of impatience more than the anxiety of doubt. He wanted to have her in his arms. A pleasant place to be, perhaps; but she wasn't ready yet, she was not yet sure…

"Well, my friend!" she said in amused indulgence – "so it seems you love me."

"How long have you known it?"

"Quite as long as you have loved me."

"And you – ?"

"I don't know yet."

He ventured too confidently: "I don't want to hurry you – "

"You couldn't, Lynn. And – you won't be wise if you count on me."

"You don't mind my loving you, Linda?"

"No. I think it makes me happy."

"Then I'm going to count on you – unless you want me to think you're merely amusing yourself."

"But you don't think that. So be patient."

"I'm not at all sure patience and love are even related."

"Then I'm afraid the only kind of love you know is not the kind that lasts."

"If so, I'm glad I've known none that lasted; that leaves me free to be truly in love with you."

"That's rather clever of you, Lynn, almost too clever."

"I've got to be clever, I guess, to make you love me."

"Lynn, I'm afraid you're artful. Yes – and much too experienced! You'd better go now before you talk me into something that isn't real and… If you do love me, you aren't wanting anything else."

"You'd really like to get rid of me?"

"For tonight, yes. I need to be alone to think – about you."

"Fair enough – if that's a promise."

"It's a promise."

Lucinda stood up, a maneuvre that lifted Summerlad unwillingly out of his chair. He took her hand and sketched an intention of using it to draw her to him. But she laughed quietly, shaking her head.

"Good night, my dear."

"I've never tried to kiss you, Linda…"

"And won't, I know, till I want you to."

"Confound you! That's what I get for giving you an opening to put me on my honour."

"It's more than you'd have got – or deserved – if you hadn't."

His lips barely failed to find her hand; Lucinda had drawn away in the nick of time.

"Don't go before you've answered my question, Lynn."

"Question?"

"What I'm to do about these unlucky young women?"

"Hoped you'd forgotten them."

"I can't."

"You've got too soft a heart, I'm afraid, Linda. I don't see why you always let it rule your head – except about me."

"Perhaps it's a good sign, though."

"I'm sure I don't know how to advise you. Obviously you can't turn Linda Lee Inc. into a refuge for misguided females."

"There's one girl in especial I'm worried about, Lynn. She seems so ill and wretched. And even so, she's pretty. I'm sure a little happiness would make her radiant. Why can't we find or make a chance for her somewhere?"

"Once you start that sort of thing, the whole pack will be on your back, they won't give you a minute's peace. But if you insist… What's her type?"

"Olive brune; about my height; and the loveliest, most tragic eyes…"

"Any experience?"

"Yes. She told me she'd been working in the East, but her health broke down and the doctors advised California. She'd been out here before, I gathered, but not in pictures. At least – I'm not sure – that's what I understood. She only got in last night, and they put her at my table in the dining-room, so we met at luncheon today."

"Lost no time boning you for a job – "

"She didn't suggest anything of the sort. I don't believe she's heard yet about my having my own company. All she said was, she hoped she wouldn't have too much trouble finding work, she needed it so desperately."

"Well, since you make a point of it, I'll see what I can do – speak to Zinn about her. What's her name?"

"Miss Marquis – Nelly Marquis, I think she said."

Summerlad had just then opened his cigarette case. After a thoughtful pause he shut it with a snap, neglecting to help himself to a cigarette, and replaced it in his pocket. Then becoming sensible of the query in Lucinda's attitude, he asked in a dull voice: "What name did you say?"

"Nelly Marquis. Why? Do you know her?"

"I know a good deal about her. Rather a bad lot, I'm afraid. Look here, Linda: I wish you'd drop her."

"Don't be stupid, Lynn."

"I'm not. I mean it. I can't very well tell you what I know, but I do wish you'd take my word for it and cut this woman out. She's really not the sort you can afford to get mixed up with."

"You're sure, Lynn? You really want me to understand she is – what you're trying to avoid saying?"

"Yes – and worse. I'm in earnest, Linda. I think you might trust me. After all, I ought to know my way about Hollywood, I've lived in it long enough."

"Of course I trust you, Lynn. I'm sorry though. I felt so sorry for her, she didn't seem one of the usual sort."

"She isn't." Summerlad gave a curt, meaning laugh. "But you said you wanted to get rid of me, and I think I'd better go before the old curiosity gets in its fine work and you ask me questions I wouldn't want to answer."

He possessed himself of Lucinda's hands again and kissed them ardently, while she looked on with lenient eyes, more than half in love already. Why, then, must she persist in hanging fire with him? Was it merely crude, primordial instinct prompting her to withstand the male till his will prevailed? Or was there something wanting in the man, some lack divined by a sense in her subtle, anonymous, and inarticulate?

Infinitely perplexed, Lucinda lingered on where Summerlad had left her, near the far end of the veranda, where it rounded the rotund corner of the hotel. Here there was always shade by day, thanks to a screen of subtropical foliage, by night a deeper gloom than elsewhere on the veranda, and at all times a better show of privacy.

The engine roared as Summerlad's car swung down the drive, then changed its tune to a thick drone as it took the boulevard, heading away for Beverly Hills. Still Lucinda rested as she was, absently observing the play of street lights on leaves whose stir was all but imperceptible in the softly flowing air.

Impossible to understand herself, to read her own heart, make up her mind…

A thin trickle of sound violated the mid-evening hush, a broken and gusty beating of stifled sobs that for a time she heard without attention, then of a sudden identified.

Windows of guest-rooms looked out on the veranda, but Lucinda had made sure these were closed and lightless before permitting Summerlad's wooing to become ardent. The semi-round room on the corner, however, had French windows let in at an angle which she could not see. After a moment she moved quietly to investigate, and discovered that one of these was open, that the sobbing had its source in a shapeless heap upon the floor in the darkness beyond.

Entering and kneeling, Lucinda touched gently the shoulder of the stricken woman. "Please!" she begged. "Can I do anything?"

In a convulsive tremor the woman choked off her sobs and lifted her face to stare vacantly. Enough light seeped in from the street to reveal the features of Nelly Marquis.

Her voice broke huskily on the hush: "Who are you?"

"Miss Lee – Linda Lee. Can't I do something – ?"

With startling fury the girl struck aside Lucinda's hands and at the same time flung herself back and away.

"No!" she cried thickly. "No, no, no! Not you! Go away – please go!"

"I only wanted to help you, if I could," Lucinda explained, getting to her feet. "If you're unhappy – I'm so sorry – "

The movement must have been misinterpreted, for the girl sprang up like a threatened animal.

"I don't want your help!" she stormed throatily. "I don't want anything to do with you – only to be left alone!" She flung herself at Lucinda as if to thrust her out by force. "Go! go! go!" she screamed. Then the window slammed.

"Poor thing!" Lucinda told herself – "she must have heard…"

XXIV

There was at this time little room in Lucinda's inner life for other people's troubles, she was much too agreeably engrossed in doting on this radiant new avatar of Linda Lee, victress in a form of duel of which Summerlad was reputed a master who had never known defeat. Rumours current of his success with women had found her credulous and lenient; mortal vanity saw to that. It feeds on strange foods, vanity, it waxes fat on inconsistencies. Think as well as you will of yourself, you shall not find unacceptable the belief that one well loved by many has been laid low by love of you alone… And indeed a great part of that indecision at which Lucinda in those days played so daintily was due to the knowledge, unformulated in her consciousness but none the less exercising constant influence on her moods, that she was less in love with Lynn than in love with being loved by Lynn Summerlad the idolized.

In many ways admirable, a fine animal who kept himself always exquisitely fit, intelligent enough to share or seem to share her every taste and prejudice, Lynn had laid a spell upon her mind no less than on her senses. The minor faults of which she had earlier been aware, the little things he sometimes did or said that jarred, he had amended. Or she was no longer competent to perceive them…

So she put away all care on account of the strange woman whose unhappiness had excited her quick compassion, and let fancy have its fling at the dissipation of thinking how blessed was her lot, how supremely distinguished as fortune's favorite she was who had everything, youth, beauty, health and riches, and to whom all things good were granted, love, friends, admiration and envy of the general, and – never to be misprized – a life, in its present phase, of vicissitudes highly diverting.

And if she knew seasons when memories twinged like an old wound slow to mend beneath its scar, she found a certain casuistry to console regrets and compound with conscience, holding herself spiritually, as in material circumstances, a free agent, free to listen to any man, if she would, and if she would to love him. The phantom fiction of a legal bond, all that was left of her married life, she could do away at will, at little cost in inconvenience…

That morning, as every morning now, she woke with a smile responsive to the smiling promise of the day; and when she had lazily girded on her armour against fault-finding eyes, called for her car and sallied forth to while away yet another day of idleness.

Her rooms were so situate, at the end of one wing of the hotel and on the lower floor, that to reach the main entrance she had to pass the corner-room now occupied by Nelly Marquis; and malicious luck would have it that the two should meet.

The Marquis girl had been out and was returning with a small packet gripped in a shabbily gloved hand. A well-made woman with a graceful carriage, her face held elements of beauty of a wild, sweet sort, but dimmed and wasted by despondency and impaired health. Today the dark rings under her eyes were deeper, the eyes themselves more desperate than when their look had first appealed to Lucinda's sympathies. And seeing her so, Lucinda with a solicitous cry – "Why, Miss Marquis!" – paused and extended an impulsive hand.

The girl swerved away from the hand, shrinking to the wall, her scant natural colour ebbing till the rouge was livid on cheeks and lips, while her eyes grew hard and hot.

"Well!" she said sullenly – "what do you want?"

Confounded by this proof of a hostility as pertinacious as it was perverse, Lucinda faltered: "But – you are ill – "

"Well: and if I am, what's that to you?" The words uttered in a level tone nevertheless seemed to force explosively past the tremulous, waxen lips. "Oh, don't worry your head about me; think about yourself. Don't forget you can be contaminated by a creature like me, don't forget" – she accomplished a singularly true reproduction of Summerlad's tone – "I'm 'really not the sort you can afford to get mixed up with'!"

"I'm so sorry you heard, Miss Marquis. Of course neither of us had any idea you were – "

"Eavesdropping! why don't you say it? I'm not ashamed."

"But are you fair to me? I meant you no harm, I didn't say – what you resent – you know."

The girl gave a grimace of pure hate. "No," she snarled – "you didn't say anything unkind, you were too busy posing as Lady Bountiful to pass uncharitable remarks! But he – he said enough – enough for me. Oh, I'm not saying he didn't tell the truth! I'm 'a bad lot,' all right – a rotten bad lot, if you want to know – and I'll be worse before I'm better. So you watch out and keep away from me – d'you hear? I want and warn you to keep away from me. I don't want your pity or your charity or any of your holier-than-thou butting in – all I want's just to be let alone. Any time I change my mind, I'll send you an engraved notice… I trust I make myself clear, Miss Lee!"

"Yes, thank you," said Lucinda coolly – "quite" – and went her way.

Insolence so patently hysterical could neither hurt nor harden her heart. She consigned the affront to the limbo of the insignificant, and had put all thought of it away when, fifteen minutes later, her car brought her to the Lontaine bungalow.

Here Lucinda had to rout Fanny out of bed and make her dress, against her protestations that she'd been on a party the night before, with Harry and some people, so needed rest and kind words more than exercise and open air.

The reflection cast a shadow as transitory as a flying cloud's upon the bright tranquillity of Lucinda's temper, that Fanny, by her own frank account, had been going in for parties rather heavily of late, and it wasn't doing her any good. Not that she showed ill effects more than in a feverish look that really enhanced her blonde prettiness. But with Fanny's insatiable appetite for the sort of thing that she called fun…

After all, that was Fanny's concern, and Harry's. One had confidence in their ultimate good sense, in their knowing where to draw the line, when to call a halt.

From the Lontaine bungalow the two proceeded to the Zinn Studios, having nothing better to do and thinking to pick up Harry there and run him down to the Alexandria for luncheon. But the shabbily furnished little office assigned to Linda Lee Inc. was empty, the blue-and-white car was missing from the yard, and nobody had any information concerning Lontaine's whereabouts or probable return.

This was nothing unusual, Lontaine was always on the wing, blowing to and fro between Los Angeles and the studio; but his absence left the young women at loose ends until Fanny suggested that they look up Lynn, find out what he was doing, and make him stop it.

Summerlad's company was busy doing nothing at all on one of the enclosed stages, contentedly lounging in and about a bizarre ball-room set and waiting for something to happen; the occupation which, Lucinda by this time had come to know, earns the motion-picture actor about ninety per cent. of his wages; the other ten being paid him for actual acting. Neither Lynn nor Joseph Jacques, his director, was in evidence, but the cameraman said the two of them had retired to the director's office for a conference.

To the office Lucinda and Fanny accordingly repaired and – their knock being answered by a morose growl – there discovered Summerlad, in elaborate evening clothes, tilted back in a desk-chair, a thoughtful scowl on his handsome, painted face, with Jacques, a mild-mannered, slender young cinema sultan in riding-breeches and boots, sitting on the desk itself and moodily drumming its side with his heels. These got upon their feet in such confusion that Fanny was moved wickedly to enquire whether Lucinda or herself had been the subject of their confabulations. "And," she further stipulated, sternly, "what you were saying about whichever of us. I never saw two people look more guilty of scandal."

"It wasn't scandal," Jacques insisted with an air of too transparent virtue. "We had been talking about Miss Lee, though."

"Wondering if you'd care to be an angel to us, Linda."

"Look out, Linda," Fanny warned, "when a man begs a woman to be an angel to him, he's generally working her up to do something she oughtn't."

"What is it?" Lucinda enquired, laughing at Summerlad's dashed expression.

"I'm not sure you ought to, at that," he replied – "in your position, that is. But it'd be sure angelic of you."

"Help us out of the worst sort of a hole, Miss Lee," Jacques added. "I wish you would."

"But what is it?"

"Oh, nothing at all!" Summerlad assured her with a laugh that decried the very idea – "all we want you to do is forget you're a star, or going to be, and play a little part with me in this picture we're doing now."

"But how can I? I'd love to – you know that, Lynn – but we've no way of knowing when Mr. Nolan will be ready."

"That's just it, Miss Lee. It isn't any part at all, so to speak, we'll only need you three or four days; what Mr. Summerlad's afraid of is, you'll think it beneath your dignity."

"Is it such an undignified part?"

"Well, you'd have to play second fiddle to Alice Drake."

Miss Drake was Summerlad's leading woman pro tem. Lucinda made a laughing face.

"Is that all? Going on the fuss you make, I thought you'd at least want me to play a Sennett Bathing Beauty. I see no reason in the world why I should balk at playing second to as good an actress as Miss Drake."

"Well, not only that, but the part isn't big enough for you, Linda – only a bit, you know, so little it's scarcely worth mentioning."

"Then who will know or care who acts in it? I'd perfectly love to do it for you, if you think I can."

"Knew she would!" Jacques crowed. "What'd I tell you? A thoroughbred's a thoroughbred every time!"

"You are a brick, Linda, and no mistake. You've no idea what a load you've taken off our minds. You see, this part, while nothing to speak of in itself, is awfully important to the picture in one way; it absolutely demands somebody who's got everything you've got."

"If we stick in anybody that hasn't," Jacques interpolated, "the whole works will postolutely go ker-flooey."

"We did the best we could," Summerlad pursued, "had Gloria Glory engaged; but this morning, when she was to report for work, she sent round word she had ptomaine poisoning and was being taken to a hospital."

"Gloria Glory?" Fanny put in. "Why, I saw her down at Sunset last night. And the only thing the matter with her then was not ptomaine poisoning."

"Too much party," Jacques interpreted. "I had the hunch, all right. Gloria sure do crook a mean elbow when she gets it unlimbered."