Linda Lee, Incorporated: A Novel

And all her movements were, like theirs, measured by the swing of that giggling, grunting, whistling, clanging, moaning band…

Suddenly she knew she had had enough.

"It's too crowded," she told Dobbin; and he nodded agreement. "Shall we stop when we get around to our box?"

Without warning more than a smothered cry of alarm in a woman's voice, Lucinda was struck by a wildly careering body with such force that she lost footing altogether and must have fallen but for Dobbin, who instantly tightened his hold and braced himself against the dead drag of her weight, this though the shock of collision almost carried him off his own feet.

Simultaneously the floor shook with the impact of two heavy falls. And clinging to Dobbin, a little dazed, Lucinda saw a strikingly pretty young woman, stunningly undressed, sprawling at her feet, and at a yard's distance a man in similar plight.

Derisive cackles and guffaws of clowns broke out on all sides, a space was cleared round the unfortunates.

"Are you all right, Cinda?" Dobbin asked. She nodded and tried to smile. "Sure you're not hurt?"

She shook her head vigorously, and by way of proof stood out of his arms, but swayed dizzily and, with a little apologetic laugh, caught at one of them again.

"All right," Dobbin said hastily. "Let's get out of this."

"No – wait!" Lucinda insisted. "Perhaps she's hurt."

She brushed his arm aside, only to discover that the overthrown woman had regained her feet, and now stood watching her partner in shrewish fury as, grinning foolishly, he scrambled up.

"You clumsy dumb-bell!" she stormed in a rasping voice that must have carried clearly half across the room. "I hope to Gawd I got enough sense not to dance with you again when you're pickled!"

And catching her first glimpse of the man's crimson face, Lucinda yielded all at once to Daubeney's insistence.

But she never quite knew how they got back to their table.

XIII

But even with the three sides of the box affording their false show of privacy, it never entered Lucinda's head to sit down and pretend nothing had happened, the instinct to fly at once from this theatre of disgrace was still predominant. Only for a moment she rested standing, while her eyes, darkly dilate, sought Daubeney's, which held a look of such heart-broken regret that they won a compassionate smile even in her hour of affliction, and somehow helped Lucinda pull together the rent and draggled garment of her dignity.

"At least," she said quietly, "Julie Allingham isn't here – thank Heaven for that! You saw him, of course?"

Dobbin made a vague gesture of sympathy: "Frightfully sorry…"

Lucinda shrugged. "Don't be. It wasn't your fault, it was I who insisted on coming here."

Her gaze veered to the floor; but the dancers had already swarmed over and abolished the break in their ranks, and though she looked beyond the sea of bobbing heads, to right and left, reviewing all she could see of the room, Bellamy was nowhere in sight.

"I presume we couldn't have been mistaken…" Dobbin ventured half-heartedly.

"No: it was Bel."

"Hoped we might have been misled by a resemblance. Somehow the poor devil didn't look quite like Bellamy."

"He's apt to look not quite like himself when he is – as the pretty lady with him so delicately put it – 'pickled.'"

"Think he knew you?"

"Oh, yes; I saw him look directly at me just before we turned away." Lucinda took up her wrap. "If you'll help me with this, Dobbin, I think I'd like to go."

"Afraid I'll have to ask you to wait a minute or two. I've got these to pay for…" Daubeney indicated the untasted glasses of lemonade they had ordered. "I've sent for our waiter."

"Then if you don't mind, I'll go ahead. Let me have the carriage check, and I'll wait in the car."

Daubeney surrendered the pasteboard slip, and Lucinda went out. The passageway behind the boxes enabled her to gain the entrance without running the gauntlet of the floor, and she descended the stairs with her head slightly lowered, in panic hope that she might thereby escape recognition if bad luck would have it that she must meet Julie Allingham. But she was spared that misfortune.

At the street door she gave the attendant the carriage-check together with a coin. "And hurry, please!" The man saluted respectfully and vanished.

She waited restlessly just inside the glass doors till the reflection that every second was making an encounter with the Allingham woman more certain drove her out to the street; a move which she found immediate reason to repent. Only a few feet away Bellamy stood with an affectionate arm round the shoulder of the door-porter, greatly to the seeming embarrassment of that monumental personage and the amusement of the street. A knot of grinning bystanders had already begun to gather.

Bel's derby was perilously perched, his overcoat, donned in haste, was poorly settled on his shoulders, though he had contrived to worry two buttons through the wrong buttonholes, and he was explaining, unconsciously to everybody within a wide radius, the personal service he required in return for the ten-dollar bill which he was waving beneath the porter's nose.

"Now, lishn, Jim… Do' mind my callin' you Jim, do you, ol' scout?.. Get thish straight: M'wife's here t'night 'nd I don' want her know I wash here, shee? If she don' know I wash here, she's got nothin' on me, nothin' 'tall, shee? So you don' know me, you never heard of me, shee?"

"Yes, Mr. Druce."

"'Caush it's this way: if she's got nothin' on me, I'm all right, 'nd I got somethin' on her. Believe me, Jim, I got good 'nd plenty on her t'night. She's here with man I know and don' like, man I got no ush for at all – shee? – no ush whatever. Ain't that limit, jush like woman? Insist you gotta walk chalk-mark, but minute your back'sh turned, what they do? Go off on private lil parties all their own, that'sh sort of thing they do!.."

Panting and sick with mortification, Lucinda turned from the sound of that babbling voice of a fool – and heard her own name pronounced.

"The car is here, Mrs. Druce."

In a wild stare she identified the face of her chauffeur, saw that he understood the situation and was anxious to be helpful.

"Wait," she quavered.

And then by a miracle of will-power she managed to master her nerves and, putting aside her horror and humiliation, took thought quickly and clearly.

"All I wan' you to do ish remember, if Mishish Druce asks if you've seen me, you never heard of me, don' know me 'tall – shee, Jim, shee what I mean?"

As Lucinda drew near the porter must have guessed who she was, for he spoke to Bellamy in a low voice, and the latter swung round with startled eyes and a dropping jaw. She closed her fingers on his wrist and put all her strength into their grasp.

"Come, Bel," she said clearly and not unkindly. "Please don't keep me waiting. The car is here, we're going home."

For a moment the balance wavered, then Bel's eyes fell, and she knew she had won.

"Oh, a'right," he mumbled with strange docility. "Didn' know you were waitin', Linda. Get ri' in the car – be with you in jush a minute."

"No," she said firmly – "you're coming with me now."

She drew him away. He yielded without remonstrance, permitted her to lead him to the door of the car, stumbled in on his knees, and crawled up to the seat. Lucinda followed, the door closed behind her with a clap sweeter than music in her hearing, and with purring gears the car shot out of range of those leering faces.

Lucinda had forgotten Dobbin as utterly as if she had never known him.

Bellamy lay in a loose slouch, breathing heavily. The passing lights revealed the stupidity of his congested features. His eyes were half-closed, he seemed to be asleep.

Cringing as far away from him as she could, Lucinda dug nails into her palms to keep from giving over body and mind to the dominion of hysteria. She saw nothing of the streets through which they passed, knew no thought other than to preserve her self-control.