Linda Lee, Incorporated: A Novel

"Linda?" Bel's tongue, as thick as she had expected it to be, called again, insistently: "Linda? 'Wake, Linda?"

She made no stir at all, and presently he closed the door and she heard him grumbling, then a click as he switched off his bedside lamp.

Later he began to snore, something he never did unless he had been drinking heavily.

Her drowsy time had passed, not to return. She lay for hours, looking wide-eyed into darkness, thinking.

How had Dobbin known – or guessed – she was unhappy?

She wasn't, she was neither happy nor unhappy, she was just a little lonely … wasted…

III

Bellamy Druce began the day frugally with grapefruit, the headlines of the Herald, and coffee. It is no more than fair to state that he seemed to hold all three in one degree of disfavour. The interest he showed in the other dishes set forth for his sustenance and delectation on the small table in the bow-window of his sitting-room, was limited to a single jaundiced glance at the ensemble.

From the news of the day, too, he turned affronted eyes. Strong daylight on white paper was trying to optic nerves this morning. Over his coffee he lighted a cigarette, but after a few puffs took it from his lips and examined it with louring distrust which suggested the birth of a suspicion that his tobacconist was not a true friend. Hastily putting the thing from him, he shuffled listlessly the dozen or so envelopes on the breakfast table, put these aside in turn, and for a time sat morosely contemplating his joined fingers, trying to recollect something confoundedly elusive. The mental effort contributed nothing toward assuaging a minor but distinct headache, just back of his eyes.

At thirty-five or something less, Bellamy was beginning to notice that even a few drinks tended to play the deuce with one's memory. He liked to boast and believe he never drank to excess, but it was none the less true that, of late, his alcoholic evenings were frequently much of a blur in retrospect.

After a while he unlaced his hands, held them out to the light with fingers spread, and frowned to observe their slight but unmistakable tremor.

In a petulant voice he asked the time of his valet and, learning it, ruefully digested the reflection that he had eight hours more of life to live, if it could fairly be called living, before the hour of the first cocktail.

As a man of strong principles, he made it a rule never to drink before six in the evening.

After another minute of wasted endeavour to put salt on the tail of that tricky memory, he made a disconsolate noise, told his valet to order the car round, and bestirred himself to finish dressing.

Bellamy Druce buttoned himself into his coat before a mirror. Like many men who make no pretensions to deserve the term handsome, he was inordinately finical about his person. His relations with his tailors, boot and shirt-makers, were intimate and marked by conferences as solemn and consequential as those which keep European premiers out of mischief, but no more so. No valet had yet succeeded in earning his confidence in such questions as that of the right shirt for the lounge suit of the day.

But the inspection he gave his attire this morning was perfunctory, his graver concern was with the tone of his complexion and the look of his eyes.

To his relief the one proved to be clear and of good colour, the other betrayed ravages of dissipation only in a hint of heaviness. More than this, the tremor of his hands had in the last few minutes become barely perceptible. Already a strong constitution, hardened by an athletic history and inured to abuse, was beginning to react to restorative measures taken immediately after waking, deep breathing, a steaming hot bath, an icy needle-shower, a rub-down.

Drawing one more long breath, he straightened his shoulders, lifted his chin a trifle, and went to pay his matutinal addresses to Lucinda, hoping she wouldn't notice anything, or, if she did, would be enough of a sportswoman to let it pass without comment.

He found Lucinda seated on a chaise-longue in her boudoir, running through her morning's mail by way of preparation for the daily half-hour with her secretary which it demanded. Posed with unfailing grace in a négligé scarcely more than a sketch in lace and ribbon, with the light from the windows seemingly drawn to a focus by hair abundant, always rebellious, and the hue of ripe corn-silk, she seemed as pretty, as fair and fragile as a porcelain figurine. Bellamy needed only to see her thus to know a stab of shame and self-reproach.

Why must he be such a fool as ever to let himself be flattered into forgetting sheer perfection was to be found nowhere if not within the walls of his own home?

Bending to kiss his wife, he put that thought behind him. He couldn't afford to dwell upon it. Already he was too far committed in this new affaire to withdraw without losing face. But he would find some way soon to make an end of it (thank God! they all had an end sometime) and this would be the last – "and after this, never again!"

He really meant it this time, he vowed he did…

"Rest well, dear? Don't need to ask that, though, only need to look at you. Besides, you know you went to sleep as soon as you got home; you were dead to the world when I came in."

"You didn't stay late at the Brook?"

"As a matter of fact, made excuses to get away early. But you were too quick for me, my dear."

Bellamy sat down on the foot of the chaise-longue and helped himself to one of Lucinda's cigarettes. To his relief, it tasted remarkably like tobacco.

"Never looked sweeter in your life than last night, Linda. I was quite jealous of old Daubeney, monopolizing you…"

"You needn't have been, Bel."

"Don't know about that. Dick took it pretty hard when you accepted me, and if I'm any judge now, he's come back only to be hit twice as hard, in the same place, too. If not, he's got no right to look at you the way he does."

"I don't think you were in a good condition to judge." Bel winced, because he had laid himself open to this, and it could be taken two ways, neither comforting. It was actually a relief to hear Lucinda add: "You seemed to be fairly preoccupied yourself, at the table."

"Oh, bored to tears, assure you. Amelie's a pretty little thing, amiable enough, but nobody to talk to – no conversation whatever."

Lucinda limited comment to a mildly quizzical look. Her maid, having answered the door, was announcing that the car was waiting for Mr. Druce. Bellamy nodded, but seemed in no hurry. What was on his mind?

"Doing anything special today?"

Lucinda shook her head slowly, watching him with a half-smile lambent with lazy intelligence. He felt vaguely uneasy, as who should of a sudden find himself hard by the brink of some abysmal indiscretion.

"Thought we might meet somewhere for luncheon, if you're lunching out."

"I'd love to." Lucinda put out an arm deliciously rounded beneath skin of a texture fairer and finer than any other Bellamy had ever seen, and took a morocco-bound engagement book from her escritoire. "Let me see…" She riffled the leaves. "I know I've got some shopping to do – "

"Have you, now!"

"And Mrs. Rossiter Wade's bridge-tea for some charity or other this afternoon, but… Oh, yes! I'm having Fanny Lontaine to lunch at the Ritz, with Nelly Guest and Jean Sedley. What a pity. Though nothing can prevent your coming, too, if you like."

A dark suspicion knitted Bellamy's eyebrows. "Some actress? Sounds like it."

"Fanny Lontaine?" Needless to ask which he meant, the other women were fixtures of their immediate circle. Lucinda laughed. "Nothing of the sort. Fanny was at school with me – Frances Worth – "

"Chicago people?" Bellamy put in with symptoms of approval. "Not a bad lot. Old man Worth – 'Terror of the Wheat Pit', they called him – died not long ago in the odour of iniquity, leaving eighty millions or so. Your little schoolmate ought to be fairly well-fixed."

"I don't know, I'm sure. I believe it's something to do with the will that brought them over. Fanny's father disliked Harry Lontaine, so Fanny had to run away to marry him and was duly excommunicated by the family. She's lived in England ever since; her husband's an Englishman."

"I see: another of your charity cases."

"Hardly. They're stopping at the Ritz, that's where I met Fanny the other day."

"Anybody can stop there, but not everybody can get away."

"Does it matter?"

"It's only I don't like seeing you made use of, Linda. Your name makes you fair game for every climber and fortune-hunter who can claim or scrape acquaintance with you."

"But my friends – "

"Oh, you're forever being too friendly with stray cats. Why did you ask Nelly and Jean to meet this woman if it wasn't in the hope they'd take her up, too?"

Lucinda shrugged. "Come to my luncheon and see for yourself. Not that I think you'd care for Fanny, though she is pretty to death."