Linda Lee, Incorporated: A Novel

"You forget, what I don't, Bel," Lucinda said slowly, "that it was you who made the mode of life with which I was content impossible for me. If this life I've taken up here is in some sense a makeshift, it's all I've got to take the place of all I had. And now you'd rob me even of it! And one thing more you forget: If I should give in to your wishes and leave Hollywood today, I would only be doing what you say you want to prevent, confessing by flight that my only real interest in my picture work was my greater interest in Lynn Summerlad. For that reason alone – and not, as you believe, to spite you – I've got to and I'm going to go on to the end of this present production at least. After that … I don't know…"

Discountenanced, "I hadn't thought of that," Bel owned squarely. "You may be right…"

"I am; but even if I weren't, it wouldn't be any use your trying to force me to forego my chance at a career in pictures just to get rid of you. Believe me, Bel, it's no good. Give it up, give up this producing blind – I know it's only a blind – and go back where you belong. And leave me to do my best with what I have – with what you've left of my happiness. And remember you have my faithful promise to set you free as soon as the courts will grant me a divorce."

"That's your last word, Linda?"

"My last word to you, Bel – I hope."

He hesitated, the muscles of his face working beneath its day-old stubble; and for a moment, reading truly or mistakenly the look in his eyes, from which all anger had died out, Lucinda was in deadly fear lest he were on the verge of making one last appeal in another key, one which she was, in that time of emotions, ill-prepared to deal with.

Then flinging out his hand in the salute of the vanquished, Bel bowed and, whirling on a heel, left her – left Lucinda for once at a loss, intuition inextricably hobbled by a mat of doubts.

XLIII

For how long she was never quite sure Lucinda remained rooted in that moment, unseeing gaze steadfast to that door whose closing had been synchronous with the opening of another upon her understanding, to let in light, a revelation blinding and arrestive, upon the mirk of her distraction – that failure of self-confidence and determination which had come with realization, for the first time in her history, of inability to read her own heart and mind and guide her steps by such self-knowledge.

Thus posed she was found when Fanny, weary of knocking and getting no response, without more ceremony drifted in, a vision fair of impudent innocence in dainty organdie, the ravages of "oversleeping" perceptible in dim blue stains beneath eyes the more alluring for such underscoring; and with a start and a cry of solicitude perhaps a thought theatrical, convincing enough for all that, dropped parasol and handbag and ran to strain Lucinda tenderly to her bosom of an adolescent.

"You poor, dear darling!" she cooed – "no wonder you sounded so troubled over the telephone – and so sad! I couldn't imagine … Why didn't you tell me?"

"How did you hear?" Lucinda evaded, gently extricating herself to disguise distaste for the sickly-sweet fragrance of Fanny's breath. "Who told you?"

"The papers, dearest: haven't you seen them?" Lucinda fell back a step, clasping her hands in sharp dismay: she had never once thought of the newspapers. "Screaming headlines on every page: one would think Lynn, poor dear! was the President of the United States lying at point of death from an assassin's bullet… But what a frightful experience for you!"

"It was a shock," Lucinda assented in a murmur. Without conscious volition she found herself moving away to a window, as if to hide her emotion. "When I heard…" In private amazement she heard her voice break; and touching a handkerchief to her lips, said no more.

"Heard! but you were there, weren't you, when it happened?"

Still acting as if in deference to an authority outside herself, Lucinda, without withdrawing her gaze from the street – now basking in the calm gold of the belated sun – deliberately shook her head.

"When I found you and Harry weren't coming," she said – "I mean, when Lynn told me what you had telephoned, I came away. I thought it best, everything considered."

"Oh, how fortunate!"

But there was in that exclamation an undertone of disbelief clear enough to untrusting ears. And of a sudden Lucinda, while continuing to view with astonishment her duplicity, all unpremeditated as it had been, no more regretted it.

"Fortunate?" she breathed. "I don't know … perhaps…"

Now too thoroughly enmeshed in tissue of involuntary falsehoods to extricate herself without confession, she collected her wits to deal with Fanny's breathlessly vollied questions; and found curious gratification in matching the texture of fact with strand after strand of fabrication, till at length the stuff of lies was woven in with and not to be distinguished from that of the truth. Mixed with which feeling was a sort of dull and angry wonder at herself, that she should be doing something so foreign to her every instinct, lying with such shameless artistry to the one true friend she had saved from the shipwreck of her old life – and this at the behest of the man who alone had been responsible for that disaster.

She had no more than reached home (she told Fanny) after refusing to stop at the bungalow for dinner alone with Summerlad, when Bel telephoned to tell her what had happened. Suspicious of Nelly's temper for days, Bel, upon her failure to keep a dinner engagement with him, had traced her to Beverly Hills, arriving just too late, if in time to be shot in the arm by Nelly when he tried to prevent her escape.

Determined to see Summerlad – not as yet comprehending the whole truth concerning his relationship to Nelly – Lucinda had instructed her chauffeur to leave her car at the side door of the Hollywood; meaning to drive secretly to Beverly Hills. But this she couldn't do till Bel kept his promise to call and give her all details. It was while they were talking that the car had disappeared. Bel had promptly reported the theft to the police, and that morning had called to tell Lucinda how sharp work had trailed it north along the Coastal Highway to the scene of Nelly's death… Accident or suicide, who could say?..

At the same time Bel had begged her to make sure of Fanny's silence in respect of the aborted dinner party. It was unnecessary that Lucinda's name should be dragged into the case in any way, if it were she could hardly hope to come through with her incognita intact. She felt that she owed Bel that much consideration; it wasn't his fault she was still his wife. Not that she herself had any wish to court publicity in connection with the affair…

"But of course, darling! you know you can depend on me."

"I know; but I had to be sure. You see, you told Mr. Nolan last night I was due at the bungalow for dinner."

"But Cindy!" Fanny's wide eyes were a child's for candour – "that was before I knew there was any reason … Mr. Nolan called up about nine, said he wanted to talk to Harry; and when I told him Harry was away on business (that was a lie – tell you presently) he guessed that Harry had come here to see you, and said he'd try to get in touch with him here. So I told him I believed you were dining out with Lynn; we'd all been invited, but Harry found he couldn't make it, at the last moment, so we begged off. That's how it happened."

"I fancied it was something like that," Lucinda commented, unsuspiciously enough but in a thoughtful tone open to misconstruction by an inquiet conscience.

"But surely you don't doubt my word, Cindy!"

"Why should I, dear?" Lucinda asked, smiling; and pausing in her restless, aimless circling of the room she dropped an affectionate hand on Fanny's shoulder. "What a silly notion!"

Fanny cuddled the hand to her cheek. "Forgive me, dear: I don't know why I said that. I suppose it's because I'm as much upset about my own affairs as you are about yours, Cindy – most of all about this shocking business, of course, and so sorry for you, dear – "

"Don't be sorry for me." Lucinda's fingers tightened on Fanny's. "Be glad I've learned a good lesson and had a fortunate escape. I ought to be glad the hurt's no worse…"

"Poor darling! you were fearfully fond of Lynn, weren't you?"

"Was I? I've been wondering. In love with Lynn, or just in love with Love: which? I'm afraid the shock of it all is too new for me to be sure as yet, but… Oh, I'm sorry for Lynn, of course! but only as one would be for any acquaintance who was in pain and at death's door. But in the light of what I know now, of how Lynn lied to me, and how shamefully he treated that poor creature he married, it seems impossible I could ever have been in love, actually in love with such a man… In love with being loved, yes, I'm afraid I shall never get better of that weakness; and so absurdly conscious that Lynn Summerlad, the great lover, had chosen me, I never stopped to consider him in comparison with other men. But I don't think I was in love with Lynn… Or am I sincere? is what I'm saying just sophistry to salve my poor, sore vanity?"

She laughed consciously, then in swift variation of mood added a pensive, wistful note: "Fanny: Bel loves me…"

The countenance turned up to hers was quick with mirth: Fanny started to speak, gurgled rapturously, and broke down in laughter so infectious that Lucinda could not but respond, if ruefully.

"You great goose! if that's news to you, it's news to no one else."

"It is to me." Lucinda sobered. "Daresay I might have guessed if I'd been a wiser woman, but I wasn't, not till just now, when Bel was going away, after a wretched little squabble. Then something, I'm sure I don't know what…"

"I could have told you long ago, sweetest; in fact, I was only awaiting the right moment. I've been sounding Bel out, you may have noticed. There isn't anything one can teach him about flirting, Cindy, all the same there's only one woman in the world Bel can see."

"I'm sure of that," Lucinda agreed … "just now."

"Cindy!" Fanny insisted, tugging at her hand – "tell me something – "

"Very well, dear. No: I shan't give Bel another chance. I'm not in love with him at all, and I dare not run the risk of falling in love with him again, I daren't risk going mad with happiness, as I should if what once was could be again … and then having to live through all the misery of breaking with him another time."

"But surely – if he promised faithfully – "

"The promises men make to win us, Fanny, are not the sort that they know how to keep. It's always what they can't have they want most. Give them all they ask today, and tonight they'll lie awake longing for the things they've forsworn. The only woman who could hold Bel to his good behaviour would be one who could keep him guessing. I'm not that woman, I can't pretend, with me it's all or nothing – always!"

"Poor lamb!" Fanny drew her down to sit on the arm of the chair and nestled her frivolous, fair head upon Lucinda's bosom. "You have such desperate troubles, I'm ashamed to tell you my own…"

"Your own, Fanny?"

"We're both in the same boat, Cindy," Fanny lamented – "two lorn women this very day as ever was! Harry has left me … flat!"

"Fanny!" Lucinda caught the girl's face between tender hands and looked incredulously into its swimming eyes. "You're not joking?"

"Divvle the joke's in me the day," Fanny declared between gulps, dabbling her tears with a handkerchief. "I didn't want to tell you, when you had so much else to worry you, but I'm afraid you've got to know. Because, you see, you're mixed up in it, too."

"I! what do you mean?"

"Well, Harry and I haven't been happy together for ever so long. Love with us you know, was rather a flash in the pan. Last night we had a scene, I mean another scene – forget the serial number. When I went home I found him trying to drink himself to death. He was half out of his head, and wouldn't tell me why. But I had a suspicion and wormed it out of him finally: he's been speculating with the company's money, your money, Cindy; and, now, with Zinn taking over the production, his shortage is sure to be found out. I couldn't make him say how much it was, but there's no question, it will run into a good sum. Well: I promised to intercede with you, and managed to quiet him down and get him to bed. Next thing I knew he was in the bathroom, trying to cut his throat. Then I hid his razors and let him go back to his whiskey, hoping he'd drink himself asleep. And presently he did. At least, he seemed to. So I went to bed – about three this morning, that was – worn out. When you called up, Cindy, I fibbed to you: I'd been awake about half an hour, howling like a lost child because I knew that Harry had deserted me at last."

"But how did you know – ? Did he leave a note?"

"No, dear – that's how I knew. He didn't leave me a note or much of anything else except my clothes; everything that was portable and easy to turn into money he'd taken, all my jewels, everything. So you see, dear" – the face of an unworldly child quivered with a pitifully sad smile – "I'm not only an embezzler's wife, I'm a pauper – and a friendless pauper unless you keep on being my friend!"

The woebegone voice died away in sobs, and with a broken cry of compassion Lucinda gathered that unhappy little body into her arms.

XLIV

The finding of Nelly's body crushed beneath the wreckage of a motor-car on the beach some fifty miles north of Los Angeles, gave the story of the Summerlad shooting an extended lease of twenty-four hours only on front-page space in the newspapers. In none of these was the ownership of the car called in question; in which circumstance Lucinda thought to detect the influential hand of "Mr. Bellamy Druce of New York," finding further support for this surmise in the fact that even Bel's name came in for astonishingly occasional mention, considering his active part in the aftermath of the affair, and especially considering the civic zeal ordinarily displayed by the local press in playing up the presence in "the Queen City of the Sunny Southland" of personages of social or financial consequence in the East.

Then, since the death of the unhappy woman had defeated all hope of lurid court proceeding, and rendered piquant exploitation of "wild life inside the movie colony" an open invitation to actions for criminal libel as soon as Summerlad got well enough to reckon damages to his reputation, the cause célèbre went into quick eclipse. The newspapers of the third morning carried brief notices inconspicuously placed to the effect that Summerlad was reported out of danger, though his complete recovery promised to be a matter of many weeks, and that the body of his wife was being shipped East to her parents. And the affair was never mentioned more.

Lucinda spent the best part of that day (and a good part of the next two as well) in the projection-room with Zinn and Wallace Day, her new director, sitting in judgment on thirty-six reels of film, the accumulated sum of Nolan's fumbling with about two-thirds of a picture.

Not that such extravagance was anything extraordinary under prevailing methods of production. It remains to this day quite in order for a director to photograph between fifty and sixty-thousand feet of scenes on celluloid, only forty-five hundred feet of which will ever be revealed to the public. The ordinary photoplay, Lucinda learned, runs to not more than six reels, or six-thousand feet of film, approximately one-fourth of which is devoted to reading matter, leaving forty-five hundred feet or less to carry on the story in terms of pictorial action.

The more than seven miles of photography which constituted Nolan's legacy to his successor would consequently require boiling down to about one-twelfth its length to make room for the third of the picture which he had left undirected.

This monumental feat of waste had been achieved by means of photographing every scene, even the simplest, in inordinate length, over and over again, and from every conceivable angle, much of the time with three cameras in simultaneous operation, and by making provision to break up each scene with close-ups of the principal players heaving their chests and mugging intimately at audiences as yet undreaming of their treat in store.

Thus it came to pass that Lucinda, who had at first welcomed the prospect of the seclusion which the projection-room was to afford her, the freedom which those blank black walls would insure from consciousness of fleering eyes and tongues over-ready to whisper evil concerning her relations with the wounded man – Lucinda, long before a fourth part of the rough footage had been unreeled for her inspection, began to find inexpressibly tiresome the sight of her shadow-self mincing and simpering through endless repetitions of business with which she was already conversant to satiety, and with all her heart wished herself back again in the uncompromising glare of the Kliegs, where at least, though onlookers might mock and mouth lies, she would have work to do that would help her to forget.

As it was, though her eyes were constant to the screen, her attention was forever flagging, her thoughts harking back along old trails where heartaches haunted…

The lively disputes between Zinn and Day which from time to time interrupted the procession of the scenes, as those two debated ways and means to cut and eliminate and avoid retaking, contributed little to the relief of her afflicted spirit. Hourly its burden of boredom grew more nearly insufferable, toleration of it more seemingly insane.

The business as a whole seemed so stupid, so puerile, so hopelessly inconsequential.

Pictures! her very soul sickened at the sound of the word. As if motion-pictures mattered, or whether they were good or bad, inanely done or cleverly. People went to see them anyway, paid money to sit goggling at them, and incomprehensibly dispersed without tearing down the theatres which had taken such cheap advantage of their confidence!

All this bickering about "saving" a production whose asininity one esteemed beyond repair as long as one lacked the moral courage to touch a match to its interminable footage of footless photography!

If it hadn't been for that last quarrel with Bellamy, if it were not for seeming to give in to his wishes and thus giving him more encouragement to tamper with her concerns, Lucinda before the end of that first day in the projection-room would have cried off her agreement with Zinn, abandoned the production then and there, pocketed her loss without murmur, and let the looks of it go hang.

But still the secret springs of vanity were subtly at work. For her own sake, she insisted, for the sake of her pride, false pride though it might prove in the end, she couldn't draw back at this juncture, she had to go on and, if it were in her so to do, make good her claims to consideration as one who had shown at least a certain promise of value to the screen.

So though she shuddered to contemplate the weeks to come, she steeled heart and soul to see her picture through to the very end.

Young Mr. Day on improved acquaintance appeared to be an amiable and modest person with a fair grasp of the rudiments of his calling; and presently surprised Lucinda by proving himself the "clever kid" that Zinn had asserted he was; immolating himself with the three-dozen reels in the cutting-room for forty-eight hours, at the end of which period he emerged with an eight-reel edition of Nolan's unfinished opus which, when still further abbreviated and publicly shown, ultimately drove its author half-mad with chagrin.

Upon Zinn, however, the effect of this accomplishment was to dispel altogether the gloom in which he had been plunged ever since the attempted assassination of his most profitable star had halted for an indefinite term a costly production within a few days of its completion.

Even Lucinda plucked up heart, began to cherish regenerated hopes…

To the weariness of those days wasted in waiting for camera-work to begin again, the visit of Harford Willis came as a welcome interlude, notwithstanding the effort required to show him an undiscouraged countenance and, at the same time, the tale of losses sustained through the mismanagement and knavery of Lontaine.

On the other hand, the gentleman of early vintage knew nothing of the Summerlad chapters; and it did Lucinda good to hear him growl and scold about anything as relatively inconsiderable as the lunacy of throwing money away – "like water!" – and then refusing to set the machinery of the law in motion to apprehend and punish Lontaine. But nothing he found to say shook her determination not to make an example of the defaulter at the expense of his wife.

"The poor child's been made miserable enough by her marriage," Lucinda declared. "And now Lontaine's deserted her she's got nobody left but her people, who were opposed to Harry from the first and were, I haven't the faintest doubt, to a considerable extent responsible for making her life with him the wretched muddle it turned out. If they'd treated Harry half-way decently, when treating him harshly couldn't change the fact that he was Fanny's husband, if they'd interested themselves to give him a chance to make a comfortable living for himself and her, it's more than likely he would never have dreamed of doing anything wrong. Now his troubles have driven him to it, I'm not going to add to Fanny's by bringing him back to the notice of her family branded a thief. Let things alone and they may make up their differences with her…"

"Such magnanimity is costing you a pretty penny," Willis suggested mildly.

"It isn't anything of the sort," Lucinda pointed out with some heat. "Putting Harry Lontaine in a penitentiary won't put back in my pocketbook one cent of the money he made away with. In fact, to do nothing about him is the only inexpensive way to deal with his affairs…

"Besides," she added with a shy, sly twinkle, "whatever this experience has cost me in money, it's taught me something I would never have learned in any other way, something I badly needed to be taught, too."

"And that is – ?" Willis prompted.

"Shan't tell you. I'm not sure I'm quite ready to admit all it's taught me, even to myself."

With this she left Willis to his vain surmises, confident that he would aim the shrewdest of them wide of the mark.

Otherwise, she found irritating the open gratification with which Willis took note of Bellamy's neighbourhood and drew an easy inference. But he had the wisdom to refrain from mentioning the possibility he foresaw of such propinquity; and Lucinda was generous enough to imitate this reticence and spare Willis the pain of hopes disabused.

He went his way at length not, everything considered, dissatisfied with the way events, as he read them, were shaping social salvation for the young woman in whom he took an interest so genially paternal.

And Lucinda took leave of him with dewy eyes … her one true friend…

Now she had nobody left but Fanny; and she was coming daily to repose less faith in Fanny's loyalty.

She was feeling very sorry for herself, and very lonely, and when most in need of friendly companionship – that is to say, when she wasn't busy at the studio – Fanny was seldom at her call. Fanny had given up the bungalow and moved to a residential hotel on the outskirts of the Wiltshire district, whose accommodations she claimed were cheaper than the Hollywood's; pointing out that she hadn't anything now but the wage she earned by playing in Lucinda's picture, which wouldn't last much longer, and that she had to acquaint herself with the uses of economy. Furthermore she knew several picture players who made the Wiltshire hotel their home, and they were nice to her, always asking her out to dinner and the movies, or somewhere. It helped her hold her head up, she said, helped her to carry on.

She employed the slang phrase in its late British sense. Lucinda wondered if the significance of its older American usage were not perhaps more applicable to this instance. The duration of Fanny's love-life with Lontaine had been too brief to keep her faithful to his memory.

Deep in Lucinda's subconsciousness an incidental recollection turned in its sleep. Somewhere, sometime, she had heard that Barry Nolan had a bungalow down Wiltshire way. Or hadn't she?

At all events, he had: the address listed opposite his name in the telephone directory proved that.