Linda Lee, Incorporated: A Novel

Mr. Culp broke off suddenly, singled out from the attendant cloud of retainers a young man wearing an eyeshade and a badgered expression, and instructed him to send the extra people packing, but to tell them to report for work at eight o'clock the next day.

"'Sno use keepin' 'em any longer, 'safternoon," he explained confidentially. "When that little woman says a thing she means it, d'y'see, so chances are it'll be mornin' before she changes her mind. And if you ladies'll excuse me, I guess I ought to be sittin' in with her and King now. The only things they think I'm any good for, in this studio, is pay salaries and referee battles."

He was affably disposed to waive ceremony under the circumstances, but gave in with good grace when Lontaine insisted on formally presenting him to each of his guests; and thus reminded of the first purpose of their visit, which he seemed to have forgotten altogether, Mr. Culp delayed long enough to recall the worried young man with the eyeshade, whom he made known as Mr. Willing, the assistant director, and charged with supervision of the proposed tests.

And Mr. Willing was to understand that these were to be regular tests and no monkey business; he was to see that someone with plenty of know-how helped the ladies make up; after which he was to shoot the party as a whole in some little scene or other, in addition to making individual close-ups.

If Mr. Willing accepted this commission with more resignation than enthusiasm, he proved to be a modest person with pleasing manners and no perceptible symptoms of temperament. And he was as good as his name. It was his suggestion that a corner of the Palm Room be utilized, as most suitable for the group scene. And while the cameraman was amiably setting up his instrument to command this new location and superintending the moving of the lights, it was Mr. Willing who conducted Lucinda, Nelly, Jean and Fanny to a barn-like dressing-room and hunted up a matronly actress, a recruit from the legitimate theatre, to advise and assist them with their respective make-ups.

Lucinda killed time while waiting for her turn by trying her own hand with grease-paint, powder, and mascaro, with the upshot that, when she presented her face for inspection and revision, the actress refused to change the effect by the addition or subtraction of a single touch, and laughingly declined to believe it had been achieved without experience.

"It's no use, Mrs. Druce, don't tell me you haven't been in the business!"

"On the stage, you mean? But only in the most amateurish way, schoolgirl theatricals."

"No," the woman insisted – "they don't make up like that for a test unless they're camera-wise."

To this she stuck stubbornly; and Lucinda found herself curiously pleased, though she had done no more to deserve commendation than supplement native good taste and an eye for colour with close observation of the Daley make-up and how it had fared under the lights.

Another compliment signalized their return to the studio; nothing less than the presence of Miss Daley – "in person" – composed, agreeable, hospitable, showing every anxiety to make their tests successful and never a sign of the storm that had presumably broken behind the scenes.

But Lucinda reckoned it significant that Mr. King Laughlin was nowhere visible.

"I thought it would be nice if we could all have tea in my dressing-room," Miss Daley explained; "and then Daddy suggested we could have it served here, on the set – make a regular little scene of it, you know, for the camera."

"I'm sure that would be delightful," replied Lucinda, suspended judgment melting into liking even in those first few minutes.

"Oh, Daddy thinks of all the nice things!"

"And I'll see each you ladies gets a print," Culp volunteered benignly, "so's you can get it run through a projectin' machine any time you want, d'y'see, and show your friends how you once acted with Alma Daley."

"Daddy! don't be ridiculous."

Vivacious, by no means unintelligent, and either an excellent actress in private life or else an unpretending body, happy in her success and unashamed of humble beginnings, Miss Daley was tactful enough to make her guests forget themselves and the trial to come, as they took their places – with no prearrangement but much as if they were actually meeting at the Ritz – and were served with tea by actor-waiters in correct livery. All the same, Lucinda noticed that their hostess ingeniously maneuvered to a central position in the foreground, where she sat full-face to the camera; this being by far her best phase. And just before the lights blazed up, the girl launched into a spirited account of her passage-at-arms with King Laughlin, which, recited without malice but with keen flair for the incongruous, carried the amateur players easily over the first minutes, in which otherwise constraint must inevitably have attended camera-consciousness.

"I was so fussed," she concluded, "I swore I'd never act another scene for him. But when I remembered how foolish he looked, posing in front of that awful orchestra like a hypnotized rabbit, I just had to laugh; and I couldn't laugh and be mad at the same time, of course. And then I had to tell King what I was laughing at, and that made him so ashamed he's sulking in his office now and won't come out while any of you are here."

"Then all's serene-o once more, Miss Daley?"

"Oh, sure. You see, Mr. Lontaine, we've simply got to finish this picture tonight, somehow, even if we have to work on till morning; so I accepted his apology and made it up."

"But those extra people Mr. Culp let go – ?"

"That's all right," Culp responded from his place beside the camera. "When I see how things was goin', I sent down to the cashier and told him not to pay 'em off, so they didn't any of 'em get away."

At this point, clever actress that she was, Miss Daley extemporized a star part for herself by rising without warning and announcing that she would have to run and change for the scenes to be photographed as soon as the tests had been made.

"I'll hurry and try to get ready before you go," she said, shaking hands all round with charming grace; "but if I don't see you again, it's been just wonderful to meet you all, and I do hope this isn't good-bye forever!"

The general flutter in acknowledgment of her farewells had barely subsided when the bank lights hissed out and the camera stilled its stuttering.

"Nice little scene," Mr. Culp applauded generously, intercepting Lucinda as, with the others, she left the set, clearing it for the individual tests. "Goin' to screen pretty. You'll be surprised."

"Can you really tell, Mr. Culp?"

"How it's goin' to look in the projectin'-room, y'mean? Sure. Not that I'd gamble on my own judgment, I don't pretend to know how to make pitchers; all I know's how to make money makin' 'em, d'y'see. When I say that little scene's goin' to go great on the screen, I'm bankin' on Jack here."

He dropped an affectionate, fat hand on the shoulder of the cameraman. "Excuse me, Mrs. Druce, want to introduce you to Mr. Jack Timilty, best little cameraman ever turned a crank." The cameraman grinned sheepishly and preferred a diffident hand. "No temp'ament, no funny business about Jack, Mrs. Druce, always on the job and deliverin' the goods. And sticks, d'y'see. Take it the way it is nowadays, you don't hardly get time to get to know a director before he stings somebody else for a coupla hundred dollars more'n you're paying him, d'y'see, and quits you cold as soon's he finishes his pitcher. But Jack sticks. That's why y'always can count on good photography and lightin' effects in an Alma Daley production. And when Jack says that little scene took pretty, I know it did."

"'Sright, Mrs. Druce," Mr. Timilty averred. "I wouldn't like to say about the others, but you and that other little blonde lady – "

"Mrs. Lontaine."

"Guess so, ma'm, didn't catch her name. Her and you registered like a million dollars."

"It's awfully nice of you to tell me so, Mr. Timilty – "

"Jack wouldn't pass you a compliment unless he meant it, Mrs. Druce. He's no kidder."

"Anyway I guess it ain't the first time anybody's told you that, ma'm. It's easy to see you've been camera-broke."

"But I haven't," Lucinda protested, laughing. "Really, I assure you – "

At this juncture Mr. Willing called for Mr. Timilty's co-operation in taking the test of Jean Sedley. So Lucinda stood aside and watched and wondered if it were really true that she had shown any evidences of ability out of the ordinary.

Not that it mattered.

Nevertheless the little fillip administered to her self-esteem made her feel more contented; into the bargain, it deepened her interest in the business in hand.

Mr. Willing seemed to be taking a deal of pains to make fair and thorough tests. For each of the four women he improvised brief but effective solo scenes to bring out their best points, if nothing that made severe demands upon the ability of the subject or the invention of the director.

Lucinda, for example, was discovered to the camera arranging flowers in a vase. A servant entered, delivered a letter, retired. Lucinda recognized the handwriting, and (the word was new to her in this application) "registered" delight, then – as, smiling, she opened and read the letter – bewilderment, misgivings, and a shock of cruel revelation which strangled all joy of living in her, struck her down, and left her crushed and cringing in a chair.

Despite a natural feeling that she was making herself ridiculous, Lucinda executed to the best of her ability the gestures prescribed and tried to impart to them some colour of sincerity. As a matter of fact, she was singularly (and stupidly, she assured herself) anxious to deserve the further commendation of Mr. Culp's cameraman.

But it was at best a trying task and, when it came to posing for the close-up with a wall of blinding incandescence only a few feet from her eyes, a true ordeal. She was glad when it was over, and quite satisfied that she wouldn't care to repeat the experience, in spite of Mr. Timilty's encouraging "Pretty work, Mrs. Druce!" – whose source she could only surmise, since in her bedazzled vision everything remained a blur for some time after she had been delivered from the torture of the lights.

When at length that cloud of blindness cleared, Mr. Culp was nowhere to be seen. Nor did he show up again until the last test had been made and the party, once more shepherded by Mr. Lane, was on the point of leaving. Then Culp put in a hasty reappearance, coming from the direction of the dressing-rooms, nominated an hour for projecting the tests at the studio the next afternoon, bade a hearty good-bye to each of his guests, and insisted on escorting Lucinda to the door.

On the way, however, he managed to detain her and let the others draw ahead and out of hearing.

"Lis'n, Mrs. Druce," he abruptly volunteered: "Jack says your test's going to turn out great. That's just what he said – 'like a million dollars.' And I been thinkin' … I was speakin' it over with Mrs. Culp in her dressing-room, d'y'see, and she's strong for it, says she'd be tickled to pieces. She's a wonderful little woman, Mrs. Culp is, she ain't never yet made any mistake about nobody, d'y'see, and she's took the biggest kind a fancy to you, and says tell you she's sure you'll never regret it – "

"Please, please, Mr. Culp! You are too good, and it makes me most happy to know Mrs. Culp thinks well of me. But what," Lucinda laughed – "what are you talking about?"

"Why," said Culp in some surprise – "I was thinkin' maybe you'd like to try goin' into pitchers. You got everythin', d'y'see, looks and style and all, everythin' but experience; and that's somethin' you can get right here in this studio, workin' with Mrs. Culp. I got a good part for you in her next pitcher you could try out in, and – "

"It's awfully kind of you," Lucinda interrupted, "and I'm truly appreciative, Mr. Culp; but really I couldn't think of it."

"That right?" Culp seemed to be genuinely dashed. "'Sfunny," he observed dejectedly. "I s'pose you know best what you want to do, but it'd be great little experience for you, take it from me, Mrs. Druce."

"I'm sure it would."

"And I got a hunch you'd make good all the way. You've got things nobody else on the screen's got but my little woman, d'y'see, and it wouldn't be no time at all, maybe, before you'd be a star with your own company. I'll take care of that, you wouldn't have to worry about the money end of it at all, d'y'see – "

"But what if I don't want to be a motion-picture actress, Mr. Culp?"

"Well, of course, if you don't, that's different." He pondered gloomily this incomprehensible freak. "Lis'n," he suggested, brightening: "Tell you what, Mrs. Druce: you go home and think it over. You got all night and most of tomorrow – you won't be comin' here to look at the tests till five o'clock, d'y'see – and if you should want to change your mind, I stand back of all I said. All you got to do is say yes, and walk right into a nice part, fit you like a glove, in the next Alma Daley pitcher – "

"Seriously, Mr. Culp; if I should think it over for a month, my decision would be the same. But thank you ever so much – and please thank Mrs. Culp for me, too."

"Well," Culp said reluctantly, holding the street door, "if that's the way you feel about it … well, of course… G'dnight, Mrs. Druce, and pleas't'meet you."

The street was dark with a gentle darkness kind to eyes that still ached and smarted. And the frosty air was grateful to one coming from the close atmosphere of the studio, heavy with its composite smell of steam-heated paint and dust and flesh.

And crossing to her car, Lucinda experienced a vagary of vivid reminiscence. Just for an instant the clock was turned back for her a dozen years and more, she was again a little girl, a child bringing dazed eyes of dream from the warm and scented romance of a matineé, her thrilled perceptions groping mutinously toward reconciliation with the mysterious verities of streets mantled in blue twilight.

That passed too quickly, too soon she was Lucinda Druce once more, grown up and married, disillusioned…

And with a shiver of pain Lucinda realized anew what the afternoon with its unsought boons of novelty and diversion had made her for hours on end forget, the secret dolour of her heart.

X

Notwithstanding that she drove directly home, or paused only to drop Daubeney at his club and the Lontaines at their hotel, it was after seven when Lucinda regained her rooms and was free at last to be once more her simple self, disembarrassed of the pride and circumstance that stayed the public personality of Mrs. Bellamy Druce.

Out of that social character she stepped as naturally as out of her gown, and with much the same sense of relief, in the easing of that tension to which she had been keyed all afternoon. Even at the studio, when interest in that quaint, ephemeral environment of other lives had rendered her forgetful of both self and the passage of time, subconsciously the strain of keeping up appearances had been still constant and made unremitting demands upon her stores of fortitude and nervous energy.

But she counted that cost not exorbitant, seeing the immunity it had purchased.

Dobbin alone had not been taken in…

She began to be a bit afraid of Dobbin. A danger signal she had the wit to apprehend in its right value. The woman who pretends to be afraid is setting a snare, but she who is truly afraid is herself already in the toils.

Dobbin saw too much, too deeply and clearly, and let her know it in a way that not only disarmed resentment but made her strangely willing to let him see more. She to whom reserve was as an article of faith! But if the woman in love with her husband knew she had no right to foster an intimacy, however innocent, with any other man, the woman harassed and half-distracted was too hungry for sympathetic understanding not to be tempted when it offered, grateful for it and disinclined to pass it by.

This common life is unending quest for spiritual companionship – and love is the delusion that one has found it.

At twenty-six Lucinda was learning what life often takes twice that tale to teach, that though flesh must cleave unto flesh, the soul is lost unless it walk alone, creature and creator in one of its own bleak isolation.

In a moment of clear vision she promised herself to go warily with Dobbin…

And in the next, the telephone rang in the boudoir. Lucinda was in her bath, so her maid answered for her, and presently came to report: Mr. Druce had called up to say he wouldn't be dining at home that night, he was detained by a "conference."

Without looking, Lucinda knew that the woman's eyes were demure, her lips twitching.

Her just anger of that afternoon recurred with strength redoubled.

Not that she had been looking forward with any eagerness to the evening, the "quiet" dinner during which Bel would defiantly continue his tippling, the subsequent hours at the opera poisoned by forebodings, the homeward drive in antagonized silence, finally the trite old scene behind closed doors, of the piqued wife and the peccant husband, with its threadbare business of lies, aggrieved innocence, attempts at self-extenuation, ultimate collapse and confession, tears of penitence and empty promises … and her own spirit failing and in the end yielding to Bel's importunity, out of sheer weariness and want of hope.

It had been sad enough to have all that to anticipate. To be left in this fashion, at loose ends, not knowing what to expect, except the worst, was too much.

On leaving her bath Lucinda delayed only long enough to shrug into a dressing-gown before going to the telephone.

The voice that responded to her call said it thought Mr. Daubeney had just left the club, but if madame would hold the wire it would make sure.

She knew a moment of pure exasperation with the evident conspiracy of every circumstance in her despite.

Then the apparatus at her ear pronounced in crisp impatience: "Yes? This is Mr. Daubeney. Who wants him, please?"

"Oh, Dobbin! I'm so glad."

"You, Cinda!" The instantaneous change of tone would have been laughable if it hadn't been worse, the cause of a little flutter of forbidden delight. "Why, bless your soul! I'm glad I came back. They barely caught me at the door."

"Were you in a hurry to get on somewhere, Dobbin? I mean, am I detaining you?"

"Not a bit. Foolishly staggering out to try to find some place where the cooking was less perfunctory than here at the club."

"Sure you've got nothing important on?"

"If you must know, I was wondering what to do with a lonely evening."

"Then that makes two of us. Why can't we join forces and be miserable together?"

"With you? I'll do my best, but I don't promise… What's up?"

"Oh, everything, more or less. I'm in a villainous temper, Dobbin, and you'll be a dear if you'll come and dine with me – Bel's telephoned he won't be home – talk me into a decent humour and take me to the opera. And then – I don't care what we do!"

"Well, if you're half as reckless as you try to make out, you certainly need somebody to keep you from kicking over the traces."

"Then you will come?"

"Stop pretending to be stupid. When?"

"As soon as you like."

Later, seated at her dressing-table, adding those deft touches whose secret one woman in ten thousand knows, touches which lift an evening toilette out of the ruck of commonplace prettiness and render it wholly sorcerous, Lucinda caught in her mirror an odd look of dubious speculation on the face of the maid who waited by her shoulder.

Half an hour earlier such a look would have irritated, now its impertinence had no more effect than to make Lucinda smile illegibly at her image in the glass. What did it matter what questions might be taking form in that shallow mind? If Bel could afford to ignore the gossip of servants, that had its source in knowledge of his escapades no doubt infinitely more detailed and precise than she might ever hope or fear to gain – why, so could Bel's wife afford to go her own way and let this scandal-mongering world go hang.

Whether or not she could afford it, she meant henceforward to make her own life – as Bel did, as everybody did – and an end to this drifting with the winds of forlorn and fading hopes. She was too young, too proud, too richly warmed by ardent wine of life, to accept without a murmur affronts and slights such as were now her daily portion, without a struggle reconcile herself to the estate of the outworn wife, tolerated mainly as an ornamental prop to the dignity of the house of Druce.

Bel should learn…

Poised lightly before the cheval-glass for the final inspection from head to foot, she perceived that she had never made herself lovelier for Bel; and Dobbin's spontaneous tribute as she entered the drawing-room agreeably confirmed this judgment.

"Heavens, Cinda! how do you do it?"

"Like the way I look tonight?"

"Like! It's unfair, it's premeditated cruelty, monstrous! You ought to be ashamed of yourself to look like that to a man who's having a tough-enough fight with himself as it is."

"Fraud," Lucinda commented coolly. "You know you fancy yourself no end in the rôle of the luckless lover, you'd be scared silly if I gave you any reason to fear you'd ever have another part to play."

"Try me and see."

"No fear. I like you too well as you are. The part fits you to perfection, you do play it beautifully. Please don't ever stop: I love it."

"Imp! You need a good shaking. Don't you know you're flirting with me?"

"Do you mind?"

"Oh, no. Not if it amuses you. Not if you'll play fair."

"What do you call unfair?"

"For one thing, the way you've turned yourself out tonight."

"But only a moment ago you were leading me to believe I'd turned out at least passing fair." Lucinda affected a sigh. "And I was so happy to think I'd found favour!"

"I presume the intellectual level would be lowered if I were to say with What's-his-name, 'If she be not fair to me, what care I how fair she be'?"

But Lucinda, in a pensive turn, shook her head and, eyeing him gravely, murmured: "I wonder…"

"What do you wonder, Cinda?"

"What you told me last night… Was it true?"

"That I had never stopped being in love with you? God help me! that was true enough, too true."

"Then I wonder if it's fair to you, and to me, the way we're going. I mean…" She faltered, with a sign of petulance. "Be patient with me, Dobbin. It isn't easy to figure some things out, you know. I mean, if you are in love with me – "

"Forget the 'if'."

"And Bel is not… Oh, no, he isn't! He's in love with the figure he cuts as my lord and master and the dashing beau of every other pretty woman – not with me. Well! since you are and he isn't, and I'm discontented, and so fond of you, Dobbin: is it fair to either of us – because I'm bound to think of you, you know, and can't very well think of you dispassionately…" She concluded with a little shrug and a deprecating smile. "I don't know, Dobbin, I really don't know!"

"It isn't fair," he said – "of course – unless – "

She nodded seriously: "That's just it."

"I can only say, Cinda, whatever you do or say or think is right. It's all for you to decide."

"And I'm afraid I can't – not yet, at least. And when I do, I ought to warn you, the chances are I shan't decide the way you want me to."

"I know. But don't worry about me. I can take punishment, I've proved that, I think. So do what seems best to you. I'll faithfully follow your lead. I only want to play the game."

"And I… But we both want to be sure it's worth the scandal, don't we, Dobbin?"

"You joke about what's life and death to me!"

"I did it on purpose, old dear." Lucinda tapped his arm intimately with her fan. "Yes, I did. I don't want you to think, afterwards – if it turns out so you'd be tempted to think it – that I didn't, as you say, play fair. So it's only fair to let you find out as soon as possible that I'm an incurably frivolous person, Dobbin, vain, trifling, flippant, and – I'm afraid – a flirt."

"Not you!"

"Truly. Haven't I been letting you believe I made myself pretty tonight for your sake? It isn't true, at least not all true. It was for my own sake, really, because we're going to the opera, and everybody I know will see me there, and I want them to know what Bel neglects for his – other women!"