Linda Lee, Incorporated: A Novel

Other than this shy colour of regret, however, nothing of the trend of his thoughts, nothing of their nature, escaped the eyes, steel-blue and dense, in that lean, hard mould of features, never more self-contained, never more British than in this moment.

And presently he roused, but without change of countenance, and went on into the combination living and dining-room to which the best part of the dwelling was given over.

Here, where the dusk held close and still, Lontaine, when he had made a light, wasted no more time than was required for a stop at the buffet to treat himself to a considerably stiffer drink of pseudo-Scotch than the law allowed, or – seeing that the law allowed none at all – his superficial necessities seemed to call for.

Before the door which gave upon the more private quarters of the house, however, he hung for some time in seeming reluctance to proceed, a suspicion of strained attentiveness in his deliberation. From beyond came never a sound. Eventually he pushed the door open.

Immediately he saw Fanny. Bathed in a great glare, she sat in her dressing-room facing a long mirror of three panels; decked out en grande toilette, wearing every jewel she possessed, groomed to the finest nuance of perfection; a brilliant and strangely immobile figurine of modern femininity, with bobbed hair like burnished brass, milk-white bosom and arms rising out of a calyx of peach-blow taffeta, jewels stung to iridescent life by that fierce wash of light.

As if hypnotized by so much bright loveliness, she continued steadfastly to gaze upon her reflected self; even when she heard Lontaine at the door and the mirror placed him behind her in the doorway, she did not move by so much as a trembling eyelash. Only when he spoke, her lips parted in answer, though still she neither turned nor ceased to contemplate the vision in the glass; as if this last were something precious but tricksy, something that might incontinently vanish forever from her ken did she but for a single instant turn her eyes away.

In a voice that strained without success to sound easy and natural, Lontaine said: "Ah, Fanny! dressed already, eh? Must be later than I thought."

"It's past half-past," Fanny replied without expression.

Lontaine glanced nervously at the back of his wrist. "Right you are. Never dreamed time was getting away from me like that."

"You have been … busy, yes?" his wife enquired with a distinctly satiric accent.

"Rather. Gassing with Zinn, you know – "

"To be sure." The satiric inflexion was now more marked. "The life-saver."

"Not a bad name for him, that." Lontaine chuckled with, however, an unconvincing brevity. "Daresay Linda looks on the little beast in that light, at all events. Had a thousand details to discuss with him … ah … naturally."

"Naturally." Fanny's tone had become again illegible.

"That's what – ah – delayed me. Have to rush for it now – what? – or Summerlad'll be vexed."

"You really think so? With Cindy there to console him?"

"Something in that, no doubt. Still" – Lontaine made as if to go to his own room, but lingered – "it's hardly the thing to be so much behind time. See here, old girl: you're all dressed… I say! but you've laid it on a bit thick tonight, haven't you?"

"Don't you like the way I look, Harry?"

"Never more ravishing in all your life – "

"That's good."

"Good? Afraid I don't follow. What's got into you tonight, Fanny? You've rigged yourself out for the opera instead of a simple little dinner…"

"I wanted something to remember myself by," Fanny mysteriously informed the mirror to which her attention continued constant.

"What do you mean by that?" Lontaine paused for answer, but Fanny was dumb. He essayed another short, confused laugh. "You know, Fan, sometimes you think of the damnedest things to say."

"Yes: don't I?"

He recognized one of her mulishly enigmatic moods.

"Mean to say," he harked back – "since you're quite ready – what's the matter with your cutting along and explaining I'll be delayed a bit? Tell them not to wait dinner for me…"

"And you?" The movement of enameled lips was imperceptible.

"I'll be along later, of course, as soon as I've dressed. You can send the car back for me. Why not?"

"Why not?"

But Lontaine took this inscrutable echo for assent, and with a grunt of relief disappeared into his dressing-room. A series of clicks sounded as he turned on lights. Still the woman seated before the mirror didn't move. But her interest centered no longer upon what she saw; though she did not avert her eyes from the glowing figure painted in those still, shallow depths, all her attention now was concentrated in another faculty: she was listening.

She heard Lontaine moving about, chair-legs scrape a hardwood floor, the snap of the bathroom light. A pause followed, then a clashing noise of bottles and toilet articles impatiently shifted upon their glass shelf. After that, Lontaine's returning footsteps. Then he reappeared in the doorway.

"Hello! Thought you were going on ahead."

"Presently," Fanny replied in brittle accents. "Plenty of time. Something the matter?"

"Can't find my razors."

"No." At last the woman broke her pose: her counterfeit in the glass nodded gravely to the man behind her. "No," she iterated – and he had the flying thought that her voice had never vibrated so sweetly – "and you won't find them, either, Harry. They're in a safe place, it's no good your hunting for them."

"What!" Lontaine advanced one single, sudden stride. "What's that for?"

"I thought it might save trouble. You see, Harry, I haven't forgotten that hideous scene we had in London, last time you decided it was all up with you, there wasn't anything to do but cut your throat. I didn't see any sense in going through all that again."

After a full minute of silence Lontaine uttered heavily: "I see you've guessed…"

"There have been so many of these crises in our life together, Harry, I ought to know the signs – don't you think?"

The man stumbled to a chair, and bent a louring countenance over hands savagely laced. "What else can I do?" he muttered. "I'm in a hole there's no other way out of…"

"There are steamers every so often from San Francisco, for Honolulu, China, Japan, the South Seas…"

"No use. They'd get me by wireless if they ever allowed me to go aboard. Zinn … I'm sure that Jew devil suspects … insists on getting at the books first thing tomorrow."

"How much have you got into Cindy for?"

Lontaine said stupidly: "Eh? What's that?"

"How much have you … borrowed, Harry?"

"Fifty thou – perhaps a bit more."

Following another little silence, Fanny gave a curt laugh, left her chair and, standing at the dressing-table, began slowly to strip off her jewels, her sunburst brooch, her flexible bracelets, the pearls that had been her mother's, all her rings, even that slender hoop of platinum and diamonds which she had never removed since the day of her marriage.

"Stocks?" she enquired quietly. Lontaine replied with a dour nod and grunt. "Somebody's sure-fire tip, of course, some 'deal' that couldn't lose…" He grunted again. "Never learn anything from experience, do you, Harry? I've often wondered about the kink in your mind that makes you such a giddy come-on, eager to risk everything, even your honour, on the gossip of stock-market touts no better than yourself… Ah, well! it can't be helped, I suppose. You are what you are – and in my way, God knows, I'm no better. It's all been a ghastly failure, hasn't it, Harry? If I'd been a stronger woman, I might have made it another story for you; if you'd been more of a man, you might even have saved me…" Lontaine lifted his hand sharply, but his eyes wavered and fell under her level, ironic stare. "But it's no good crying now, nothing can change our natures at this late day."

She crossed to him and paused, looking down not unkindly at his bowed head and shoulders.

"I don't love you, Harry, and you don't love me. It's funny to think we ever did – isn't it? All the same, we've been through the rough together so often, I presume it's only natural I should be fond of you in this funny, twisted fashion. I don't want you to go away thinking I blame you…"

"Go away?" Lontaine groaned. "Where can I go, they wouldn't find me? I'd rather be dead than a convict!"

"Don't worry: I'll soon talk Cindy round, persuade her not to be too hard on you. She's fond of me, poor dear! and won't find out I'm as rotten as you are till you're at a safe distance. Here…" She bent over and poured that coruscating wealth of jewelry into the cup of Lontaine's hands. "These ought to see you a long way…"

"What!" Lontaine jumped up, staring in daze at the treasure in the hands that instinctively reached out to Fanny, offering to give back her gift. But she stepped away and stood with hands behind her, shaking her head so vigorously that the glistening short locks stood out like a brazen nimbus. "But, you, Fanny – what will you – ?"

"Never fear for me, Harry." She fixed his puzzled eyes with a smile of profoundly ironical significance. "I'll get along…"

"But these … every blessed trinket you own!.."

"I'll get others."

His jaw dropped. She continued to posture lightly before him, an exquisitely fragile and pretty shape of youth deathless and audacious, a dainty spirit of mockery temptingly incarnate, diabolically sage, diabolically sure of the potency of her time-old lures… What she had urged was true enough, too true; idle to let scruples on her account work his undoing. Let her alone and she'd get along, no fear, she'd get other jewels when she wanted them, just as she'd said, she'd go far… At heart as wanton as he was weak…

He felt a creeping tide of blood begin to scorch his face, and avoided the cynical challenge of her eyes.

"If you're content," he mumbled … "daresay there's nothing more to be said."

She nodded gayly, repeating the word "Nothing!" in a flute-like note of mirth. Hanging his head, he began wretchedly to stuff the plunder into his pockets, muttering half to himself: "What a pity! If only I could have had a bit of luck; if only we could have hit it off – !"

"If you hurry," she reminded him, "you can catch the night train for San Francisco, you can just about make it."

"Well…" He glanced uneasily at her, and again was conscious of the heat in his cheeks. "So it comes to this at last … eh? … good-bye!"

"Good-bye," she repeated, amiably casual.

"I daresay…" He gave a dubious chuckle. "Daresay it's stupid but, well, the usual thing, you know…"

"Usual thing?" she parroted, with faintly knitted brows.

"To kiss good-bye."

"You'll miss your train."

He developed a moment of desperately sincere emotion: "Fan! you've been a perfect brick to me, a perfect brick. I feel like a dog, leaving you like this."

"Oh!" she said, as one indulges a persistent child – "if you really want to kiss me, Harry, go ahead."

Nevertheless she turned her mouth aside, his lips brushed only her powdered cheek. Then she stepped back to her mirror and with a puff made good her imperceptible damage done by the caress. The glass showed Lontaine's shadow slinking out. She heard him blunder through the living-room, the slam of the screen-door. And her hand fumbled, the powder-puff dropped unheeded, mist drifted across her vision, she gasped a breathless "Damn!" Tears meant a wrecked make-up…

Though there was need enough for haste if he were to carry out the plan she had made for him, Lontaine dragged slowly down the walk, with a hang-dog air, the hands in his pockets fingering the price of the last sorry shreds of his self-respect. In the darkness the flesh of his face still burned with fire of shame…

Beside the car he halted and rested with a hand on the door for so long a time that the chauffeur grew inquisitive.

"Where to, Mr. Lontaine?"

"No, by God!" Lontaine blurted into the man's astonished face, and whirling about, strode hastily back to the bungalow.

As he drew near he could hear Fanny's voice. She was at the telephone in the living-room, calling a number he didn't catch; Summerlad's no doubt. One had forgotten all about that wretched dinner. Then the connection was established, and he paused with foot lifted to the lower-most of the veranda steps. It couldn't be possible Fan was talking to Summerlad, in that voice whose tenderness called back old times…

"Hello? Is it you, dear? Fanny… First chance I've had… Poor darling! I've been aching to see you all day and tell you how I sympathized… Yes, any time you please, as soon as you like… No: he won't mind, he … I mean, I'm all alone. Besides, we had a little talk tonight, came to an understanding. He won't be in our way after this, ever again, Barry dear…"

Something amused her, peals of musical laughter hunted Lontaine down the walk. "Union Pacific Station!" he cried, throwing himself into the car. "Drive like hell!"

XXXVIII

That sunset whose reluctant waning Lontaine was presently to watch from the bungalow veranda was still a glory in the sky when Lucinda motored to Beverly Hills. The heavens in the west had opened out like a many-petalled rose of radiant promise, whose reflected glow deepened the warm carnation of her face and found response in the slow fire that burned in dreaming eyes. Those whose chance it was to view so much mortal loveliness in too fleeting glimpses all envied its possessor, women her lot, men her lover's.

The soft air of evening, already tempered with an earnest of the coolth to come, was sweet to taste with parted lips. Upon the perfect highroad the car swung and swooped and swerved like a swallow, through a countryside lapped in perennial Spring. She thought: This blessed land! and thought herself thrice-blessed to be at once in it, in love, and in the fairest flower of her years.

Odd, how completely that compact with Zinn, which the clasp of their hands had sealed so lately, had done away with every form of fear and discontent. Vanity had a deal to do with that, no doubt, self-esteem purring with conviction that Zinn would never have offered to invest one lonely dollar in the picture had not his appraisement of Lucinda's work on the screen approved the risk. Zinn smelt profits in the wind; that much was manifest; which meant that success was assured to Linda Lee. The loss of half the little fortune she had sunk in the production was a mean price to pay for knowledge that failure could now reward her hopes only through some frown of fortune unanticipated by one of the canniest of those sure-thing gamblers whom the American cinema acclaims its financial genii.

Best of all, this new association spelled an end to all that meaningless and inexcusable procrastination from which the work had suffered whenever Nolan felt over-worked or harkened to the call of the continuous crap game, an institution of the studio that had its permanent habitat behind one of the stages. Zinn was notoriously scant of patience with delays that meant money thrown away; and, he had assured Lucinda (after striking his bargain) no reason existed within his knowledge why another fortnight shouldn't see the last scenes of her production shot. Much admittedly depended on how little or much of Nolan's work might seem to need retaking, when the three of them, Lucinda, Zinn and the new director, sat in judgment on the rushes in rough assemblage. But Zinn didn't believe they would find many instances of incompetent or indifferent direction so flagrant that they couldn't be cured in the cutting-room… It's surprising what a cunning pair of shears and a neat subtitle or two can do for a scene that, as originally photographed, is good for nothing but insomnia or to bring on sclerosis of the sense of humour.

Nolan had left to the direction of his successor only the sequences in two sets. Lucinda made out a mental timetable: a week for the supper club scenes, less time than that for the living-room; another week for possible retakes, one more in which to cut and assemble the finished picture. In a month at most she ought to be able to call herself once more a free woman and bid farewell to Hollywood till the courts had made that boast a statement of consummated fact.

A single month! Such a little time when the journey's end was well in sight, a little time to wait for life to yield up all its riches. It was harder, truly, to be patient till this lesser journey should duly come to its appointed end in lovers' meeting. The car was a snail, minutes sluggards, the beauty of the land a bore to one bitterly jealous of every second which heed for speed laws stole from the half-hour she had schemed to have alone with Lynn before the Lontaines were to be expected. She had so much happiness to share with her beloved, so much to tell, everything that had happened since morning, a busy chapter of studio history of which he could know nothing, since he had not revisited the studio since leaving it for work on location that morning.

It seemed a churlish chance indeed that ordained a reception for her exclusively at the hands and glistening teeth of a semi-intelligible Jap, who, when he had uttered assorted fragments of English to the general sense that Mister was having his foot treated by an osteopath at the moment but would soon be disengaged, smirked himself into an indeterminate background and left Lucinda to make the best of this minor disappointment.

Resolutely denying this last, she put off her wrap, made herself at home, and sought but somehow failed to distill a compensating thrill from the reflection that she would ere long be called upon to make herself at home here for good and all. 'Ere long' meaning, of course, after Reno … And why not? The house was excellently planned, amply big for two; no reason why Lynn need move unless he really wanted to. Only … the eye of the prospective chatelaine took on a critical cast … some details would want a bit of readjustment, the all too patent stamp of the interior decorator's damned good taste would require obliteration before one would care to call the premises one's very own. The present scheme, for example, lacked anything in the nature of a study, wherein one might lounge and read and accumulate quantities of books; according to Lucinda's notion, the real nucleus of a home for civilized people. Lynn, poor dear! worked so hard, he had little time to give to reading; a moan it was his wont to make whenever Lucinda gave their talks a literary turn. The few volumes of his collection stood in sadly broken ranks on a rack of shelves in an alcove that adjoined the living-room, a sort of glory-hole furnished with odds and ends of sham Oriental junk which Lynn called his "den" and Fanny had rechristened "the vamp room."

Curiosity concerning Lynn's tastes, when he did find time to read, moved Lucinda to con the straggling squad of titles. Novels led in number, naturally, works of fiction old and new, in general such trash as furnishes the cinema with most of its plot material. In addition, a subscription set of De Maupassant with several volumes missing, another of O. Henry, Wells' The Outline of History (uncut), the Collected Verse of Rudyard Kipling, six copies of the same edition of "Who's Who on the Screen", Laurence Hope's Indian Love Lyrics in an exceptionally beautiful binding…

With a chuckle Lucinda took possession of this last: Lynn would have Laurence Hope!.. Evidently a gift copy. When she opened the book at its fly-leaf, a slip of printed paper fluttered out. Without pausing to read the inscription, Lucinda retrieved the clipping: a half-tone from one of the motion-picture monthlies, a view of the bungalow grounds, with the house in the distance, and in the foreground Lynn and a young woman arm-in-arm, laughing at the camera…

The evening had grown quite dark when a crisp rattle of the telephone startled Lucinda into renewed contact with her surroundings. She found herself in the recess of one of the living-room windows that looked out over the lawn. The book was in her hand. Behind her a door opened, releasing upon the gloom a gush of golden light. Without moving she watched Summerlad, in a dressing-gown hastily thrown on over dress-shirt and trousers, hobble over to the telephone and conduct one end of a short conversation of which her wits made no sense whatever. He hung up, and peered blindly round the room.

"Linda, darling?" he called. "What's the big idea, sitting all alone in the dark?" At the same time he switched on wall-sconces and, blinking, saw her. "Just our luck!" he grumbled, trying to sound disconsolate. "What do you think, sweetheart? Fanny says they can't come tonight; Harry's laid up, got a sick headache or something, and she doesn't think she ought to leave him. I wonder if you'd mind dining here with me alone, this once. I can't very well go out with this foot. Eh? What do you think?"

Lucinda made no sound. His eyes narrowed as he perceived the abnormal absence of colour in her face, the dark dilation of her unwavering eyes. Limping, he approached.

"What's the matter, Linda? Not cross with me, are you? Hadn't any idea you'd be so early; and today I gave my foot another nasty wrench, out on location, and had to call Cheney in to fix it up. He's just left, and I was starting to dress… What?"

An entreating hand silenced him. All in a breath Lucinda said: "Those things don't matter, Lynn. Why didn't you ever tell me you were married?"

Summerlad said "Damnation!" half under his breath and moved nearer, till another flutter of her hand stopped him. "That wise husband of yours!" he exploded then, vindictively. "I suppose he's been spilling all he knows!"

"Did Bel know? Yes: I presume he must have. But you're mistaken, he didn't tell me. It was this…"

Summerlad frowned, at a loss to identify the volume in her extended hand.

"I found it, Lynn, quite by accident, while I was waiting. Hope's Indian Love Lyrics. Don't you remember?.. See, it's inscribed: 'To my Lynn, on the first anniversary of our marriage, with all my heart, Nelly.' And then this picture of you two, published just after you came here to live… Oh, Lynn! why did you lie to me about that poor girl?"

For a moment Summerlad gnawed his underlip without attempting to reply. Then with a sign of despair he retreated to one end of the club-lounge, against which he rested, to ease his foot. He said something in an angry mumble, as Lucinda followed into the room.

"You might have told me, Lynn…"

"I didn't want you to know."

"You must have known I'd find out, sooner or later."

"I thought I could keep it from you until…"

"Till when? Till what?" He growled, inarticulate with vexation. "To let me go on thinking … making such a fool of myself!.. Since you don't live together, why aren't you divorced?"

"How do you know I'm not?"

"Because you told me that lying story about her. But you've lied to me so much and so long, no doubt you think it unreasonable of me now to expect you to remember everything… Anyway, if you'd been divorced, you wouldn't have hesitated to own it. Why aren't you?"

"She refuses to divorce me."

"Why?"

"How do I know? I suppose she's still stuck on me, in her way – hopes to get me back some time."

"But what prevents you – ?"

"Nelly said if I tried to divorce her she'd fight back, and she knows…"

He didn't finish, but shut his teeth on a blundering tongue and looked more than ever guilty. But Lucinda was in a pitiless temper.

"About you? You mean – about you and other women?"

"Hang it all! I've never pretended to be a saint, have I, Linda?"

"No wonder the poor thing hated the sight of me!.. Oh, how could you have been so unkind!"

"If you'd only give me a show to explain…"

Her lip curled: "Explain!"

"I've been doing my best," Summerlad argued resentfully. "When I saw how it was going to be with you and me, and found out Nelly'd come back to Hollywood, I went to her and had things out – gave her some money and promised her more, on the strength of her promise to go back home and get a divorce on the dead quiet."

"And did you hope to keep that a secret from me?"

"My name isn't Summerlad, anymore than hers is Marquis – or yours Lee. I thought I'd… I thought everything was going to be all right till she turned up again with your officious husband."

"You think Bel had something to do – "