Linda Lee, Incorporated: A Novel

Summerlad's arm tightened protectingly around her. "What about him? Has he come back? Been annoying you any way? Tell me about it."

She told him her version of that noon-hour meeting at the studio, Summerlad swearing softly beneath his breath as he listened.

"So you see, my dear – as I said – it can't last. We can't continue to work together in the same studio, with Bel spying on us, or able to do so any time he happens to want to. I'll have to move – you can't, of course, because your contract is with Zinn himself. And I imagine – in fact, I'm sure – the best thing for us both is for me to leave Los Angeles altogether for at least six months."

"Go away from Los Angeles? From me! Linda, you can't mean it."

"Only to make it possible to be nearer to you when I come back, dear. I mean, I must go to Reno, where I should have gone in the first place. If I had, these impossible conditions Bel has brought about could never have been."

"Oh, damn your husband!"

"I don't know: he's making things awkward for us, truly, but perhaps in the end we'll be grateful to him. If it weren't for Bel, it's quite likely I'd keep on putting off my divorce rather than be separated from you for so long. But after all, what are six months, when they earn us the right to spend all our lives together afterwards?"

Lynn made no answer, other than to hold her more tightly. She twisted round to look up into his face. The moonlight showed it set in a scowling cast.

"What's the matter, Lynn? Don't you think as I do about Reno?"

"Of course," the man muttered. "But I don't fancy your being away from me so long. Six months! Anything can happen in six months."

The car was swinging into the streets of Santa Monica. Lucinda gave him her lips.

"Let's forget it for tonight. Kiss me again while there's time."

The restaurant to which the Lontaines had bidden them was the one in those times most favoured by the froth of the picture colony for its weekly night of carnival; an immense pavilion by the sea, but too small by half for the crowds that besieged it toward midnight every Saturday, pathetically keen to rub shoulders with celebrity in its hours of relaxation from arduous labours before the camera. When Lucinda and Summerlad arrived the velvet rope across the entrance was holding back a throng ten deep, a singularly patient and indefatigable lot, its faces all turned in hope toward the lights beyond, eager to catch the eye of the proprietor, though informed by sad experience that the reward would be what it always was for those who had failed to make reservations, a coldly indifferent shake of the head and nothing more. Through this fringe prayers and elbows opened a sullen way till Summerlad's unusual height won recognition from within, and he passed through with Lucinda to a place where pandemonium set to jazz ruled under light restraint.

Round the four walls and encroaching upon the cramped floor for dancing, tables were so closely ranked that passage between them was generally impracticable. It seemed little short of miraculous that so many people could be crowded even into that huge hall, incredible that they should care to be. Yet everybody of any consequence in the studios was there, and everybody knew everybody else and called him by his first name – preferably at the top of his lungs. Much fraternizing went on between the tables, much interchange of the bottles of which at least one was smuggled in by each male patron as a point of honour, against the perfunctory prohibition of the management posted in staring letters at the entrance. An insane orchestra dominated the din by fits and starts, playing snatches of fox-trots and one-steps just long enough at a time to permit a couple to make half the round of the dance floor at the meditative gait imposed by the mob massed upon it, then stopping to let a leather-lunged ballyhoo bullyrag the dancers into contributing their cash as a bribe for further measures. When the musicians rested and the floor was cleared, impromptu exhibitions of foolery were staged by slapstick clowns and applauded with shrieks and cat-calls. The women present, mostly young – for the camera has little use for years beyond the earliest stages of maturity – exhibited themselves in every degree of undress short of downright déshabille. Masculine Hollywood as a rule thriftily saves its evening clothes for service under the Kliegs.

Lontaine's party, a large one, comprising the most influential members of the colony with whom he and Summerlad were on agreeable terms, had been long enough in session already to have become individually exalted and collectively hilarious. Summerlad it took to its bosom with shouts of acclaim, and he seemed to find it easy to catch the spirit of the gathering. But Lucinda sat with it and yet apart from it, a little mused. She could not drink enough to be in tune with her company, and would not if she could. A sense of frustration oppressed her. Before her dreaming eyes the pageant passed again of hills and fields asleep in sweet glamour of moonlight, breathing pastoral fragrance upon the night. She had been happy half an hour since. Here in this heady atmosphere of perfumed flesh, tobacco reek and pungent alcohol, the idyl of her evening grew faint and fled. While the man she loved had no regrets.

In a moment of disconcerting lucidity she saw him as a strange man, flushed with drink and blown with license, looking on other women with a satyr's appraising eyes, bandying ribald wheezes with the lips she had so lately kissed. And she winced and drew away, recalling that abandon of affection with which she had given herself to his embrace at the hotel, feeling of a sudden soiled and shop-worn as from common handling.

A strange man, a man she had known but a few brief weeks!

Covertly watching him, she saw Summerlad in the middle of a passage of persiflage start and fall silent, his lips in an instant wiped bare of speech. And following the line of his stare, she espied, at some distance, at a table near the edge of the dance-floor, Bellamy sitting with a woman.

He saw her but made no sign more than to intensify his meaning smile, and immediately returned courteous attention to his companion.

At this last Lucinda stared in doubt for several seconds, she was so changed. But finery that shrieked of money spent without stint or taste could hardly disguise the wild and ragged loveliness of Nelly Marquis.

XXXII

In a freak of unaccountable reluctance to believe it was really the Marquis girl, Lucinda looked a second time. More than a month had passed since that brief, distressing chapter of their acquaintance, which Lucinda had put out of mind so completely that her efforts to recall the features of the other conjured up only a foggy impression of a shabby, haggard, haunted shadow, by turns wistful and feebly defiant, that bore what might be no more than chance likeness to this figure of flaunting extravagance at Bellamy's table.

A question forming on her lips, Lucinda turned back to Summerlad, but surprised the tail of his eye veering hastily away, and fancied a shade of over-elaboration in the easy, incurious air he was quick to resume; as if he wished her to believe he either hadn't noticed those two or else saw no significance in their association on terms apparently so intimate and mutually diverting.

So she held her tongue for a while, till the comforting suggestion offered that Lynn in all probability had but sought to spare her feelings…

She stole another glance across the room. By every indication Bellamy found his company most entertaining; he was paying her sallies a tribute of smiling attention which she as evidently found both grateful and inspiring. It was plain that she had had enough to drink and something more; but on that question she held strong views of her own, and while Lucinda was looking drained her highball glass and with an air peremptory and arch planted it in front of Bellamy to be replenished; a service which he rendered with the aid of a pocket flask – adding to his own glass, however, water only.

Not that that necessarily meant anything. Bellamy knew the chances were that Lucinda was watching him. Still, one had to admit he was showing none of those too familiar symptoms; in that gathering, where the cold sober were few and far between, Bel looked conspicuously so. Was he, then, to be believed when he insisted he had finally foresworn alcohol in remorse for having driven Lucinda to leave him? One wondered…

Summerlad was eyeing her with a quizzical air. Lucinda managed half a smile.

"Having a good time, Linda?"

"I can't complain." A slight movement of shoulders rounded out the innuendo.

Summerlad made a mouth of concern. "Tired, dear? Want to go home?"

"Afraid Fanny and Harry wouldn't like it…"

Was one unfair in reading disappointment where Lynn wished solicitude only to be read?

"How about another little drink?" Lucinda shook her head decidedly. "Well, then: what say we dance?"

She surveyed the crowded floor dubiously. "It's an awful crush, I'm afraid…" Nevertheless she got up and threaded the jostling tables with Lynn at her heels: anything for respite from the racket the Lontaines and their crew were kicking up.

Odd, how those two, so quiet and well-behaved when she had first met them in New York, had let go in this demoralizing atmosphere of what Fanny had rechristened the loose and windy West. Odd, but in a way quite British. The Anglo-Saxon temperament inclines to lose its head once the shackles of home-grown public opinion are stricken off. Long ago a wise man pointed out that there wouldn't be any night life in Paris worth mentioning if it weren't for strict enforcement of the early closing law in London…

It was an awful crush. Few better dancers than Lynn Summerlad ever trod a ball-room floor, but even he was put to it to steer a safe course in that welter. It was, after all, not much of an improvement on sitting still and trying to appear unaware of Bellamy and that weird Marquis creature. Lucinda felt sure, now, she had not been mistaken about the girl, but concluded to ask Lynn anyway; and her lips were parting with this intention when she heard a hiss of breath indrawn and looked up to see Lynn's face disfigured by a spasm of pain. In the same instant he stopped short, in the next he groaned between set teeth.

"Have to get out of this, I'm afraid," he grunted. "My foot – somebody with a hoof like a sledge-hammer landed on it just now. That wouldn't matter, only the confounded thing got caught between a couple of logs while we were doing that river stuff. The swelling went down several days ago, and to tell the truth I'd forgotten about it… But this reminds me plenty!"

He had an affecting limp on the way back to their table, where he delayed long enough to tell his story and receive commiserations, then announced that, though desolated to leave such a promising young party, he would have to get home and out of his shoes before he could hope to know another instant's ease. If the Lontaines wouldn't mind seeing that Lucinda got back to the Hollywood all right…

The Lontaines were ready enough to undertake that responsibility, but Lucinda wouldn't hear of staying on. Lynn's chauffeur could as well as not take her to the Hollywood after dropping Lynn in Beverly Hills… She was glad enough of the excuse, of course, but she did resent, what she couldn't help covertly looking for on the way out, the sardonic glint in Bel's eyes.

Really, Bel's effrontery seemed to know no limit. To protest at noon that "casual women" meant nothing to him any more, and at midnight to make public parade of his interest in a demi-rep! On top of that, to give his wife that odious look of understanding when she passed him with Summerlad, a look implying privity to some indecorous secret involving them!

Simmering indignation rendered her demeanour unsympathetic, perhaps, while Lynn was being made as comfortable as might be in his car, with the shoe removed from his poor hurt foot and the latter extended on one of the forward seats. And for some minutes after they had got under way she maintained, in the face of inquisitive sidelong glances, a silence which Lynn seemed loath to break. But in time it began to wear upon his nerves.

"Cross, sweetheart?" he enquired gently. "I'm sorry you let me drag you away – "

"It isn't that," Lucinda replied, almost brusquely. "I wasn't enjoying myself, anyway – wanted to leave almost as soon as we arrived."

"Then what is it?"

She asked evasively: "How's your foot?"

"Much better, thanks. Guess I must've dislocated one of the smaller bones, in that logging stunt. It doesn't feel just right. I'll get an osteopath in tomorrow morning and see what he makes of it."

"It really was hurt while we were dancing, then?"

"What do you think? That I'd make a fuss like that and spoil my party just for fun?"

"I thought possibly you were pretending on my account."

"You mean, because your husband was there."