Linda Lee, Incorporated: A Novel

The appalled expression with which she contemplated this alternative, and tried to make up her mind which would be worse, to nurse her loneliness in Chicago for another two weeks, or condemn herself for three days to the promiscuous indecency of open sleeping-car conditions, enlisted the sympathies of the susceptible if none too brilliant clerk who had dashed her hopes; and promising to see what he could do, he busied himself mysteriously with a battery of telephones, and presently returned in a glow of vicarious delight, to announce that he had arranged to book Lucinda through to San Francisco via the Santa Fé system, with a section all to herself on the California Limited leaving the next night.

To Lucinda's objection that she didn't want to go to San Francisco, she wanted to go to Reno, he explained, and produced bewildering maps and time-tables to prove his contention, that she would not only travel in more comfort but would actually save time by going out immediately via the Santa Fé and returning eastward from San Francisco to Reno, a comparatively insignificant trip of some eleven hours.

To clinch the matter he offered to telegraph for a drawing-room reservation to Reno on the first train to leave San Francisco after her arrival. And Lucinda feebly humoured his anxiety to be of service to a pretty lady.

Perhaps it was just as well, after all, that she wouldn't be able to shut herself up on the train and mope alone, perhaps it would take her out of herself a bit to be thrown into indiscriminate association with fellow-travellers.

Among the first purchases she had made after calling at the Bank of Michigan were a wardrobe trunk and a fitted dressing-case. And when the trunk had been checked and trundled away by a porter, the next morning, Lucinda had a long afternoon to fill in, and accomplished this by attending a matinée.

Returning to the hotel about five, she was approaching the elevators when, midway in the foyer, she stopped stock still, even her heart and lungs momentarily refusing their office, transfixed by the sight of Bellamy standing at the registry desk, in earnest consultation with one of the clerks.

Apparently Bellamy had just learned what he wanted to know; Lucinda recognized the backward jerk of the head that was an unfailing sign of gratification in him, and saw him turn away from the desk. Galvanized, she hurled herself toward one of the elevator shafts, the gate to which was even then being closed. Luck and agility enabled her to slip through before the gate clanged and the car shot upward – the passengers eyeing Lucinda in amusement or amazement or both, the operator treating her to a dark overshoulder scowl.

But she didn't care, her recklessness had purchased her a respite, provisional and short-lived though it might prove; and when the elevator had discharged its other passengers on floors below hers, she found a richly compensating tip for the attendant.

"Sorry if I frightened you," she apologized. "There was somebody in the lobby I didn't want to see me, and I had to act quickly."

"'Sall right, ma'am," the boy grumbled, pocketing the money. "Only yeh don' wanta count on gettin' away with that sort of thing often, yeh might of got yehself killed."

"I'll be more careful," Lucinda promised humbly, as the car stopped to let her off. "And will you do something for me, please: tell the management I'd like my bill sent up to my room at once, and that, if anybody asks for me, I'm not in."

"Sure I will, ma'm."

When she entered her room the telephone was calling. She locked the door; and for as long as it continued to ring, which it did for upwards of five minutes with brief rests in discouragement, Lucinda did not move or cease to regard it in frightened fascination, as if it were a thing of malign intelligence which all her wit and ingenuity would hardly serve to frustrate. At length it gave it up as a bad job, and she sank limply into a chair near the door, and there remained stirless, trying to master demoralized nerves, trying to think, till a knock brought her to her feet in a flutter.

She had trouble finding voice enough to be heard through the door: "Who is it?"

"Your bill, ma'm."

Not Bel's voice. Still it might be a trick. When she forced herself to turn key and knob, she more than half expected to see her husband. But the bellboy was alone. Lucinda took the bill and was counting out the money, when the telephone began to trill again.

"Take those bags, please," she said, indicating the new dressing-case and the bag which she had brought from New York, "put them in a taxi at the door, and hold it till I come down. I shan't be long."

Alone, she answered the telephone.

"Hello? That you, Linda? It's I, Bel."

"Y-yes, I – I know."

"Thank God, I've found you! See here: I'm coming up, if you don't mind. All right?"

"Yes, Bellamy – it – it's all right."

Running out into the hall, she found the stairs and pelted up two flights. One of the elevators was rising. It stopped two floors below, then came on up in response to her ring. The attendant whom she had tipped so well was in charge, and there was nobody else in the car.

"Did you let somebody out at my floor?"

"Yes, ma'm, gempman."

"Take me down, please, without stopping."

The car dropped with sickening rapidity, and she stepped out into the foyer, but only to realize in consternation the flat futility of her strategem when Bel placed himself before her, blocking the way to the street.

Her heart checked and raced, she was oddly at once aghast and elated. She couldn't be sorry her ruse had failed, subconsciously she had wanted all along to see Bel, just for a minute, face to face, with her own eyes to see how he looked, how her flight had affected him, whether ill or well.

Though he seemed to be quite himself, neither under the influence of nor suffering from recent indulgence in drink, his face looked thinner, his eyes a trifle more deeply set in his head; and there was new firmness in the set of his mouth.

In this new guise, the old appeal was strong. For a space of several beats her heart misgave her…

In a matter-of-course way Bel offered a hand, and Lucinda touched it mechanically.

"Sorry, Linda, if I disappointed you, but thought I recognized your handbag being carried to the door, and waited for this car to come down on the off-chance…"

"I see," she articulated with an effort.

"Hope you're not angry…" Bel smiled as if he read her weakness, smiled with a fatal trace of over-confidence. "Had to see you, couldn't let you get away without giving me a hearing, after all the trouble I've had finding you."

"It's too late, I'm afraid – this isn't the place, either, to discuss such matters. Besides, I'm in a great hurry."

"You can give me a few minutes, surely. If you'll step into the reception-room with me for a minute – "

"Bel: I tell you it's too late."

Struggling to keep his temper, Bel caught his underlip between his teeth, while Lucinda cast witlessly about her for some way of escape. None offered. But she noticed that a young man standing nearby was observing them with keen interest, a rather brilliantly good-looking young man, brilliantly well dressed. As Lucinda's glance rested transiently on him, his face brightened with a tentative smile, and she thought he started as if he were impulsively minded to approach. If so, he reconsidered instantly. With a frown she looked back to Bel.

He made a gesture of entreaty. "You can't put me off like this, Linda, when I've come so far, gone through so much – "

"I can because I must, Bel – I will."

"No, by God! you can't and shan't!"

He caught her arm lightly as she tried to pass. She stopped, her face hardening.

"Are you going to make another scene, publicly disgrace me again even when sober?"

His hand dropped to his side. Lucinda began to walk rapidly toward the street entrance, but had taken few steps when Bellamy ranged alongside.

"Linda: you've got to listen to me! There's something I've got to tell you – "

"Then go back to New York and tell it to Harford Willis. If it's anything I want to hear, he will write me."

"Harford Willis! What's he – !" The significance of her words seemed to come to Bel all at once. "You don't mean to say you're going – ! You can't be meaning to – !" With a long stride Bel swung in front of her again at the head of the stairs to the street. "At least, tell me what you mean to do."

"I mean to go to Reno, as soon as you let me pass."

Bellamy's eyes narrowed as if in physical pain. He threw out a hand of inarticulate protest, and let it fall in despair. Subduing a strong desire to bolt for it, Lucinda began to descend at a pace not inconsistent with dignity. At the same time, sensitiveness to the situation, the feeling that they had been playing a scene of intimate domestic drama for the edification of an entire hotel, made her aware that the young man whose interest had first manifested near the elevators had followed and was now standing at the head of the steps, over across from Bellamy.

Pushing through the door, she breathed thankfully the stinging winter air. The canopy lamps made the sidewalk bright and discovered her bellboy shivering by the open door of a taxicab. As she moved toward it she heard the revolving door behind her buffet the air, then Bel's voice crying out her name.

Abandoning all pretense, Lucinda ran. The bellboy caught her arm to help her into the cab and chattered: "W-where t-t-to, m'm?" She was prevented from answering by Bel, who elbowed the boy aside and caught her by the shoulders.

"No!" he cried violently. "No, you shan't – d'you hear? – you shan't go without listening to me!"

By some means, she did not know quite how, Lucinda broke out of his hands and stepped back.

"Let me alone!" she insisted. "Let me – "

Somebody came between them. Startled, she identified the strange young man of the foyer.

"Can I be of service?" he suggested in an amused drawl.

Instinctively she gasped: "No, please – !" At the same time Bel tried to shoulder the other roughly out of his way; the gratuitous champion stood firm, merely counselling "Easy, old thing, easy!" Then Bel lost his head. Lucinda heard him damning the other. There was a slight scuffle, in which the two, locked in each other's arms, reeled to one side. The bellboy was shouting "Now, ma'm – now's your chance!" She stumbled into the taxi. Holding the door, the boy demanded: "Where to, ma'm – where to?" She gasped: "Anywhere – only, tell him, hurry!" The door crashed, gears meshed with a grinding screech, the cab leaped forward with such spirit that Lucinda was thrown heavily against the back of the seat.

When she recovered, the vehicle was turning a corner. Through its window she caught a glimpse of the sidewalk in front of the Blackstone, just a bare glimpse of two figures struggling, with several others running toward them. Then the corner blocked out the scene.

XVII

Darting and dodging through traffic-choked thoroughfares, the taxicab had travelled a mile and more before Lucinda felt able to give the next steps the careful consideration which this pinch of mischance imposed.

In the upshot, though street clocks advised that she had the best part of two hours to kill before she could board her train, she tapped on the window and directed her driver to proceed to the Santa Fé Station. She felt reasonably safe in assuming that Bel wouldn't look for her there. Since she had told him she was going to Reno, his natural inference would be that she meant to travel by the direct overland route, he would set himself to waylay her in the Union Pacific terminal if anywhere. Provided, of course, that he had succeeded in discouraging the attentions of the gallant busybody in fit shape to make himself a nuisance again that night.

She couldn't help giggling nervously over the picture painted by a superexcited imagination.

The remaining hours of the evening worked out as eventlessly as she had hoped. Bellamy didn't show up at the station, she dined after a fashion in its restaurant, with her nose in a newspaper none of whose intelligence meant anything to hers, as soon as the platform gates were opened she was conducted by a porter to her reservation in the last car of the train but one, the observation-car; and in the latter Lucinda waited till her berth had been made ready. Then she went to bed.

She had planned to read herself asleep, but the armful of books and magazines purchased at the station bookstall either purveyed only fiction of a peculiarly insipid sort or else life itself was just then too richly coloured, too swift of movement to admit of that self-surrender which is requisite if mere artistic effort is to take effect.

And then the thoughtful porter had fastened a folded sheet across the double windows to temper the penetrating breath of that bitter night. So it wasn't possible to divert oneself by watching the snow-clad land unroll its blurred vistas of blue nocturnal beauty.

One could do nothing, indeed, but try vainly not to think, watch the curtains swaying that shut out the aisle, listen to the tireless thrumming of the trucks and the melancholy hooting with which the engine saluted every cross-road, and pray for sleep.

Somewhere a peevish child wailed fitfully for hours on end, somewhere else a man snored as if strangling in his sleep. Till long after midnight noisy feet straggled intermittently to and from the observation car. And once Lucinda, at last on the verge of drifting off, started suddenly wide-awake, stabbed to the heart by tardy appreciation of the fact that, now Bel knew where she was bound, she could not be sure of finding even Reno a refuge from his persistence, his importunities.

For the matter of that, if Bel, or the detectives whom he had told Willis he might employ, had been cunning enough to trace her to Chicago, they would find her no matter where else she might seek to hide herself away.

Only perhaps by changing her name…

But how could she sue for divorce if she lived under an assumed name?

Toward morning she drifted into an uneasy form of semi-slumber, and from this into deep sleep. It was late when she was awakened by the bustle of people fighting with their garments and breaking the trails to the wash-rooms, and in the aisle a negro voice intoning musically: "Las' call fo' brekfus in the dinin'-cyar" – over and over.

To find the dining-car Lucinda had to make her way through so many sleeping-cars that she lost count, cars all alike as to aisles obstructed by people dressing, people passing to and fro, porters dismantling tumbled berths. By way of some slight compensation, she was allotted a small table with places for two, the other chair being untenanted, which she considered much preferable to the tables for four across the aisle. Then, too, the napery was spotless, the silverware lustrous, flowers were brave in a vase at her elbow, the waiter was civil and seemed eager to please.

Lucinda scribbled her order on the blank form provided, then rested her cheek on a hand and gazed moodily out at wheeling perspectives of a countryside blanketed with snow. Reminding herself that the train was due in Kansas City during the morning, she seriously thought of leaving it there and waiting over till accommodations could be had that would insure privacy for the remainder of the journey, even though this might involve weeks of delay.

Grape-fruit, coffee, and toast, all excellent, made her feel a bit better. Nevertheless she made up her mind to ask the conductor to arrange a stop-over for her at Kansas City.

As she was pouring herself a second cup of coffee, the vacant chair at her table was drawn out and an amiable, amused voice asked: "Do you mind my sitting here, Mrs. Druce?"

Lucinda jumped in consternation. The speaker bowed with an ingratiating smile: her unsought champion of the night before!..

She recollected herself and gave a jerky inclination of her head; but all she could find to say was "Oh!" Whereupon the young man laughed quietly and, construing her consent, sat down.

"I'm surprised, too," he confessed – "pleasantly, if you don't mind my saying so. And yet the dear public continually kicks about coincidences!"

Lucinda found her tongue but found it incompetent to frame any but formal phrases: "I have a great deal to thank you for – "

"Please don't think of it that way. To the contrary, I owe you all sorts of apologies – "

"Apologies!"

"For butting in where any rational angel would have been scared to death to tread, and particularly for being here – though that was my fault and this isn't. But I'm glad you're not angry with me – " The waiter thrust an order blank with the bill of fare under the young man's nose, and he concluded to give them attention with an easy: "If you'll excuse me…"

The head he bowed over the cards was well-modelled and thatched with a good quantity of hair, light brown in colour and amazingly lustrous. A skin whose patina of faint tan resembled that of old ivory, with never a blemish, covered boldly fashioned features. The mobile face had a trick of lighting up when its owner was talking as if aglow with the light of his thought, so that his look was in fact more eloquent than his speech. Lucinda thought she had never seen hands more strong and graceful, or any better cared for, not even Bel's. Nor had Bel ever dressed in better taste.

The object of her interest waved the waiter away and met her openly interested regard without loss of countenance.

"I guess it's time I introduced myself, Mrs. Druce. My name is Summerlad." After a slight pause and with a hint of self-consciousness, he amplified: "Lynn Summerlad."

Sensible that he seemed to expect her to think well of that precious name, Lucinda found no echo for it in the chambers of her memory. She bowed and said "Thank you," and all at once discovered that she had reason to be mystified.

"But how is it you know my name, Mr. Summerlad?"

"That's easy: your husband told me."

Again Lucinda was reduced to a blank "Oh!" This time she felt that she was colouring.

"In the police station," Mr. Summerlad added with a broad grin. "But don't be alarmed, we weren't either of us mussed up much. Only, you see, Mr. Druce rather lost his head – can't say I blame him – and when the innocent bystanders insisted on separating us, and a cop happened along and took a hand, he – wouldn't be happy till he'd had me arrested on a charge of assault. So the officer marched us both off to the nearest station-house, with half Chicago tagging at our heels. By the time we got there your husband had cooled down and remembered that publicity wasn't his best bet. So he withdrew the charge."

"How dreadful!" Lucinda murmured, her thoughts with Bellamy. "I'm so sorry."

"No reason to be. If you must know, I enjoyed the adventure tremendously. That's what one gets for having been born with a perverted sense of humour."

"But if you had been locked up – !"

"Oh, it wouldn't have been for long, I'd have got somebody to bail me out inside of fifteen minutes. But there wasn't ever any danger of that, really. You see, the sergeant knew me at sight and – well, the sentiment of all hands seemed to be with me. Besides, it wasn't as if I'd never been pinched before."

"You don't mean to tell me you're in the habit of – of – "

"Of mixing in every time I run across a matrimonial rukus? Hardly! I mean, pinched for speeding. You know what the roads are, out on the Coast, hard and smooth and straight as a string for miles at a time. You can hardly resist them, once you get beyond the city limits. Guess I'll have to after this, though. The last time they got me, the judge gave me his word I wouldn't get off again with a fine, the next offense would mean the hoosegow for mine. And between you and me, I haven't any hankering to see the inside of the Los Angeles County jail."

"I should hope not."

Lucinda caught the eye of her waiter and gave him a bill to pay for her breakfast. But she couldn't escape with good grace just yet, unless she wished to administer a downright snub she would have to wait for her change.

"I'd like to show you what motoring is around Los Angeles," Mr. Summerlad pursued with breath-taking assurance. "If it isn't an impertinent question, may I ask if that's where you're bound?"

"No," Lucinda replied briefly. One began to foresee that to put a damper on such abounding enterprise would prove far from easy.

"I see: taking in the Grand Canyon, I suppose. You'll find it well worth your while. Gorgeous scenery and everything. I've done the Canyon a dozen times, used to run up there whenever I got a week to myself, you know. If it wasn't for this wretched business I'm in" – again that suspicion of self-consciousness – "I'd drop off there for a few days this trip. But I'm afraid it's no go. Too busy. Beastly nuisance. Still, there's nothing more uncertain than a job like mine. So it's well to make pay while the sun shines."

"I'm sure …" said Lucinda, gathering up her change. And Summerlad's face fell touchingly as he grasped the fact that she was really going to leave him to finish his breakfast alone. "I am deeply indebted to you," she pursued. "No, please don't tell me again I must forget it, because I can't and don't want to. I was at my wits' ends last night. But, of course, it isn't a thing one can talk about – "

"Well, there are lots of other things we can talk about," Summerlad rejoined cheerily. "So let's forget the unpleasant ones. That is – hope you don't think I'm impertinent – but it's a long, lonesome trip, and I'll be very happy if you'll let me prattle in your company now and then."

Since she was leaving the train at Kansas City there was nothing to be gained by being rude. Lucinda contented herself with replying, no, she wouldn't mind, and thrust back her chair. Immediately Summerlad was on his feet, napkin in hand, bowing prettily.

"Awfully good of you, Mrs. Druce. Where shall I find you, say in an hour or two? The observation car?"

"Perhaps," Lucinda smiled.

"Or would you rather I looked you up – ?"

"I'm in the last car but one," Lucinda told him sweetly – "Section Ten."

She made her way back to that reservation determined to lose no time about interviewing the conductor. But the porter failed to answer repeated pressures on the call-button, and at length surmising the truth, that he was getting his own breakfast, Lucinda resigned herself to wait. There was plenty of time…

Now that she was extricated from it the comic element in her late rencontre began to make irresistible appeal. She picked up a book, opened it, bent her head low above it to hide smiling lips and dancing eyes from people passing in the aisle; but was not well settled in this pose when she heard a joyful cry – "Cindy! Cindy Druce!" – and rose, dropping the book in her astonishment, to be enfolded in the arms of Fanny Lontaine.

XVIII

"I feel," Lucinda confessed, "precisely like a weathervane in a whirlwind, I mean the way it ought to: every few minutes I find my nose pointing in a new direction."

"You dear!" Seated opposite her at the windows of the Lontaine drawing-room, Fanny leaned over and squeezed her hand affectionately. "I can't tell you how happy I am that pretty nose is pointing now the same way as ours."

"And I, Fanny. It's really a wonderful sensation, you know, after all that worry and uncertainty, to know one's life is mapped ahead for a few days at least. I don't believe any lost puppy ever felt more friendless than I did just before we met, when I thought I was going to get off at Kansas City. And my present frame of mind is that same puppy's when it finds itself all at once adopted by a family that likes animals."

Kansas City was already the idle menace of a dimming dream. Awkward but unavoidable explanations, haltingly offered, had been accepted without question: a manifestation of tactful sympathy which had not only won Lucinda's heart completely but, working together with her reluctance to proceed to Reno before she could feel reasonably sure of being suffered to live there unmolested, had influenced her to agree to go on with the Lontaines to Los Angeles; whither (she was tacitly led to infer) his motion-picture interests had peremptorily called Lontaine.

It seemed a sensible move as well as one most agreeable in prospect. She could rest in comfort and friendly companionship for a few weeks, consult with Harford Willis by letter, at leisure and with a calm mind plan for the future. She now saw, as if new light had somehow been cast upon her problems by this meeting of happy chance, that there was really no hurry, no reason why she shouldn't take her time about the unpleasant business, attend to its transaction only when and as it suited her will and convenience. It wasn't as if she wanted to remarry, or was in any way dependent upon Bel and must beg the courts to make him provide for her. If anything, her personal resources exceeded Bellamy's.