Linda Lee, Incorporated: A Novel

Lucinda quoted Mr. Lane's eulogy of King Laughlin.

"Well, there you are," Dobbin commented. "I presume genius must be humoured in its poses; even so, I saw nothing in Laughlin's directing to offset the silliness of his performance with the orchestra. I should say the business is poorly organized that permits men of his calibre, with so little sense of balance, to hold positions of absolute authority."

"You don't think Mr. Lane may have exaggerated Mr. Laughlin's importance – "

"Perhaps; though he was honoured with suspicious reverence by everybody present."

"Except Mr. Culp."

"Well, yes; Culp didn't seem so much overpowered. All the same, I noticed he didn't attempt to call Laughlin to order."

"But possibly the man is a genius. He seemed to know what he was about when he was showing them how to play that scene."

"I'll admit his grasp of primary mechanics; but the scene as he built it would have been ridiculous in the theatre."

"But it wasn't for a theatre, it was for the movies."

"Precisely my point. Why should motion-picture plays be less plausibly done than plays on the stage? The American theatre outgrew 'Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model' long before motion-pictures were seriously thought of; I mean, American audiences outgrew such trash. Yet today our movies are shaped on identically the lines of the popular melodrama that was laughed off the boards a generation ago. There's something wrong."

For some reason which Lucinda didn't stop to analyze, Daubeney's arguments stirred up a spirit of contentiousness.

"At all events, Mr. and Mrs. Culp seemed satisfied."

"Two people who have made a huge lot of money in an astonishingly short time: it isn't likely they'd be disposed to interfere with the system that enriched them, even allowing that they are sensible of its defects."

Lucinda caught herself frowning, then had the grace to laugh. "Can't make me believe they're lacking in artistic appreciation, Dobbin."

"Why not?"

"You don't know about the handsome offer Mr. Culp made me, with his wife's approval, just as we were going away."

It was Dobbin's turn to frown. "What kind of an offer?" he demanded shortly.

"To become a movie actress under the Culp banner, a sister-in-art to Alma Daley."

Daubeney ejaculated "What for?" with an expression of such utter dumbfounderment that Lucinda gasped with stifled mirth, then gave way to outright laughter.

"You're awfully funny, Dobbin! And they thought they were paying me a compliment."

But Daubeney would not see the fun of it.

"Do you mean to tell me that fellow Culp actually had the impertinence – "

"Oh, come!" Lucinda's amusement subsided. "It wasn't so bad as all that. Mr. Culp was most kind, at least he meant to be. He said he, his wife and his cameraman – whose opinion he values more highly than any director's – all agreed I had shown a great deal of promise; and that, if I cared to try it on, he'd be glad to give me a good part in Miss Daley's next picture, and if I made good in that he'd form a company to star me."

"What rot!"

"Dobbin!"

"They're trying to work you – "

"But, my dear! isn't it barely possible Mr. Culp was sincere?"

"The thing's absurd on the face of it."

"Isn't that a matter of opinion?"

"It's a characteristic scheme to exploit you to Alma Daley's profit, to get her a lot of publicity on the cheap by letting the newspapers announce that Mrs. Bellamy Druce is going to act in her support."

"You won't admit, then," Lucinda persisted, nettled, "I may possibly have some latent ability as a motion-picture actress?"

"It doesn't matter. The proposition is a piece of – of preposterous impudence. What did you say to Culp?"

With countenance half averted, Lucinda said coldly: "My dear Dobbin: do you realize you're being rude?"

He was all contrition. "Oh, I'm sorry, Cinda, if I let my indignation on your behalf – "

"Gratuitous, you'll admit."

Daubeney reddened and swallowed hard. "I repeat: I didn't mean to offend. I apologize."

"Very well, Dobbin. Let's say no more about it."

But Lucinda's tone lacked friendliness, and the eyes were visibly sulky that, refusing to recognize his pleading, blindly surveyed the milling riot of dancers.

The silence that fell between them, like a curtain of muffling folds, was presently emphasized by an abrupt suspension of the music. When Daubeney could endure it no longer, he broke it with a question, the most impolitic conceivable: "You didn't tell me what answer you gave Culp, Cinda?"

"Didn't I? But I'm sure it doesn't matter."

To himself, but half-aloud, Dobbin groaned: "Oh, the devil!"

But his manifest penitence earned him no more than a show of restoration to favour. The heart in Lucinda's bosom felt hot and hard and heavy with chagrin, she had banked so confidently on Dobbin's sympathy… He might be truly in love with her, she hadn't much doubt that he was, but the understanding she had counted on was denied her, the sense of security in his affection was no more. She felt cruelly bereft, more desolate than at any time since the breach with Bel had begun to seem unbridgeable.

It made no difference that she knew this feeling was unfair to both, that its childishness was clear to her whom it victimized the most. The day-long drain upon her emotions was inexorably exacting its due. With no more provocation than a sting of puerile pique, she had lost her temper, and all her efforts to retrieve it seemed unavailing. She felt broken, beaten, and very tired, she wanted to creep away to bed and cry herself asleep. Yet she must somehow find strength to hold up, or forfeit self-respect, she dared not confess the stuff of her spirit as mean as her heart's. She shook herself impatiently…

At the same time the band rewarded tireless hand-clapping by again breaking loose in blasts of delirious cacophony, and Lucinda pushed back her chair.

"Don't let's talk any more for a while, Dobbin – I'd rather dance."

Descending the several steps from the box level to the common, they threaded their way through a jam of tables to the fringe of the dance-mad mob, in whose closely-packed, rocking and surging rout considerable imagination and ingenuity were required to find room. Nevertheless Daubeney adroitly created a space where none had been, and swinging smoothly away, they became one with and lost in the crush, their progress of necessity slow but amazingly easy, for Daubeney led with grace and skill.

Lucinda tried to forget her vexation in watching the faces of their fellow dancers and their styles, a diversion which seldom failed to flood her being, even when she was saddest, with sweetness and light.

All about them couples were practising every conceivable variety of step that could be executed to the rhythm beaten out by tireless drums whose timbre had all the grim and weirdly stimulating monotony of African tom-toms. Many contented themselves with a solemn, wellnigh ritualistic jigging by means of which they traversed the floor crab-wise, inch by inch. Others charged short distances at headlong speed, checked short, whirled madly, darted and swooped again with incredible agility, in a sort of corybantic frenzy. Still others favoured a tedious twirling, like amorous dervishes. Yet there were strangely few collisions…

Young things drifted by with faces buried in the shoulders of their partners, whether for shame or in somnambulism it was impossible to say. Those who are always with us, locked as in a death-grapple, ploughed doggedly along with tense mouths and rapt eyes. Couples whose mutual passion was stronger than feminine regard for the most carefully composed complexion, moved as one, her cheek glued to his. Portly and bedizened dowagers wore set smiles on lips that moved to inaudible counting, and their paid partners, professional young male dancers, that patient yet abstracted expression that tells of bandaged, swollen feet. Little girls who apparently should have been at home, getting a good night's rest in preparation for a long school-day tomorrow, lifted up unformed, flower faces breathlessly to the hard, mature faces of the vulpine men who held them.

Lucinda saw those to whom this was adventure, those to whom it was romance, those to whom it was physical agony, and those to whom it was a source of soul-destroying ennui. She smelt the breath of sticky bodies and the cloying perfumes in which the optimistic reposed mistaken faith.