XIX

Bridge killed the long hours of that first afternoon on board a train

whose windows revealed seldom a prospect less desolate than one of

prairie meadows fallowed but frozen, dusky beneath a tarnished sky: a

still and roomy land spaciously fenced, scored by rare roads that knew

no turning, but ran like ruled diameters of the wide ring of the

horizon: the wheat-bin of the world swept and garnished by winter winds.

Lynn Summerlad made a fourth at the table set up in the Lontaine

drawing-room; invited by Lontaine as an acquaintance of Lucinda's and a

grateful addition to the party because he played something better than

merely a good game.

Not only "fearfully easy to look at" (as Fanny confided to Lucinda) but

fair spoken and well if at times a shade carefully mannered, he was

intelligent and ready of wit; so that, when he proved these qualities by

not forcing himself upon the trio at or after dinner, he was missed; and

Lucinda, while she waited for sleep to blind her eyes that night,

discovered that she was looking forward to the next afternoon, when

Bridge would be again in order and infeasible without the fourth.

But she was too sleepy to be concerned about the methods with which

Summerlad, making no perceptible effort, had succeeded in winning back

the ground which over-assurance had lost for him at the breakfast table.

It was enough that he qualified as that all too unordinary social

phenomenon, "an amusing person."

She began to study him more intently if discreetly, however, when the

train pulled into Albuquerque for its scheduled stop of an hour at noon

of the second day, and the Lontaines and Lucinda, alighting to stretch

their legs, found Summerlad, alert and debonnaire, waiting on the

platform, prepared to act as their guide and protect them against their

tenderfoot tendency to purchase all the souvenirs in sight.

This quiet process of noting and weighing ran like a strand of

distinctive colour through the patterned impressions of the day, till,

retracing it in reverie after nightfall, it was possible for Lucinda to

make up her mind that she liked Lynn Summerlad decidedly. True that he

was not of her world; but then neither was she herself any more, in this

anomalous stage of the apostate wife, neither wife nor widow, not even

honest divorcee.

If Summerlad's character as she read it had faults, if an occasional

crudity flawed his finish, these things were held to be condonable in

view of his youth. He seemed ridiculously young to Lucinda, but sure to

improve with age, sure to take on polish from rubbing up against life.

Especially if he were so fortunate as to find the right woman to watch

over and advise him. An interesting job, for the right woman....

Not (she assured herself hastily) that it would be a job to interest

her. An absurd turn of thought, anyway. Why she had wasted time on it

she really didn't know. Unless, of course, its incentive had lain in

consciousness of Summerlad's naive captivation. One couldn't very well

overlook that. He was so artless about it, boyish, and--well--nice. It

was most entertaining.

It was also, if truth would out, far from displeasing.

Apprehension of this most human foible in herself caused Lucinda to

smile confidentially into the darkness streaming gustily astern from the

observation platform, to which the four of them had repaired to wait

while their several berths were being made up. But the hour was so late,

the night air so chill in the altitudes which the train was then

traversing, that no other passengers had cared to dispute with them the

platform chairs; while Fanny had excused herself before and Lontaine had

quietly taken himself off during Lucinda's spell of thoughtfulness. So

that now she found herself alone with Summerlad, when that one, seeing

the sweet line of her cheek round in the light from the windows behind

them, and surmising a smile while still her face remained in shadow,

enquired with a note of plaintiveness: "What's the joke, Mrs. Druce?

Won't you let me in on the laugh, too?"

"I'm not sure it was a joke," Lucinda replied; "it was more contentment.

I was thinking I'd been having a rather good time, these last two days."

"It's seemed a wonderful time to me," Summerlad declared in a voice that

promised, with any encouragement, to become sentimental.

"Quite a facer for my anticipations," Lucinda interposed

firmly--"considering the way I had to fly Chicago and my husband." Then

she laughed briefly to prove she wasn't downhearted. "But I daresay

you're wondering, Mr. Summerlad...."

"Eaten alive by inquisitiveness, if you must know. All the same, I don't

want to know anything you don't want to tell me; and I don't have to

tell you, you don't have to tell me anything--if you know what I mean."

"It sounds a bit involved," Lucinda confessed, judgmatical; "still, I

think I do know what you mean. And it's only civil to tell you I was

leaving to go to Reno by way of San Francisco when my husband found me

at the Blackstone. But now the Lontaines have persuaded me to spend a

few weeks with them in Los Angeles----"

"That's something you'll never regret."

"I hope so."

"You won't if you leave it to me."

"Yes, I'm sure you mean to be nice to us; but you're going to be very

busy when you get to Los Angeles, aren't you?"

"I'm never going to be too busy to----"

"But now you remind me," Lucinda interrupted with decision. "I've got a

great favor to beg of you, Mr. Summerlad."

"Can't make it too great----"

"Fanny and I were discussing it this morning, and it seemed wise to

us.... You've seen something of how persistent my husband can be----"

"Can't blame him for that."

"Well, then: the only way I can account for his having found me in

Chicago is on the theory that he employed detectives. But of course I'd

made it easy for them by using my own name wherever I went."

"Why don't you use another name, then?"

"Just what Fanny and I were saying. If I don't, Bel--Mr. Druce--is sure

to follow me to Los Angeles, sooner or later, and make more scenes. I'd

like to avoid that, if I can."

"Surest thing you know, he'll find out, if the Los Angeles newspapers

ever discover Mrs. Bellamy Druce of New York is in the civic midst. The

best little thing they do is print scare-head stories about

distinguished visitors and the flattering things they say about our

pretty village."

"That settles it, then: I'm going to be somebody else for a while. Help

me choose a good, safe nom de guerre, please."

"Let's see: Mrs. Lontaine calls you Cindy...."

"Short for Lucinda."

"How about Lee? Lucinda Lee?"

"I like that. But it does sound like the movies, doesn't it?"

"What do you expect of a movie actor, Mrs. Druce?"

"Mrs. Lee, please."

"Beg pardon: Mrs. Lee."

"And you'll keep my horrid secret, won't you?"

"If you knew how complimented I feel, you'd know I would die several

highly disagreeable deaths before I'd let you think me unworthy of your

confidence."

"That's very sweet," Lucinda considered with mischievous gravity. "And I

am most appreciative. But if you will persist in playing on my

susceptibilities so ardently, Mr. Summerlad, I'll have to go to bed."

"Please sit still: I'll be good."

"No, but seriously," Lucinda insisted, rising: "it is late, and I want

to wake up early, I don't want to miss anything of this wonderful

country."

"You won't see anything in the morning but desert, the edge of the

Mojave."

"But we've been in the desert all afternoon and I adore it."

"Oh, these Arizona plains! they're not real desert; they're just letting

on; give them a few drinks and they'll start a riot--of vegetation. But

the Mojave's sure-enough he-desert: sand and sun, cactus and alkali. I'm

much more interesting, I'm so human."

"Yes: I've noticed. Masculine human. But, you see, a desert's a novelty.

I really must go...."

She went to sleep under two blankets, but before day-break a sudden rise

in temperature woke her up.

The train was at a standstill. Lucinda put up the window-shade to see,

all dim in lilac twilight, a brick platform, a building of Spanish type,

a signboard proclaiming one enigmatic word: NEEDLES.

Sharp jolts in series ran through the linked cars, a trainman beneath

the window performed cryptic calisthenics with a lantern, one unseen

uttered a prolonged, heart-rending howl, couplings clanked, the train

gathered way.

As it toiled with stertorous pantings on up-grades seemingly

interminable, the night grew cool again but by no means so cold as at

bedtime. The outposts of Winter had been passed. The porter who tidied

up the drawing-room in the morning opened a window and adjusted a

cinder-screen: the breath of the desert was warm but deliciously sweet.

Outside, heat-devils jigged above a blasted waste that was, as Lucinda

viewed it, weirdly beautiful. The noontide air at Barstow had all the

fever of a windless day of August in the East. Within the riven scarps

of the Cajon Pass it was hotter still. A long, swift down-swoop toward

the Pacific brought them by mid-afternoon to San Bernardino, set in

emerald, where people lolled about the platform in white flannels and

airy organdies.

The panorama of sylvan loveliness, all green and gold, commanded by the

windows from San Bernardino onward, prepared for a Los Angeles widely

unlike the city of Lucinda's first confused impressions, for something

Arcadian and spacious instead of a school of sky-scrapers that might

have been transported en masse from almost any thriving commercial

centre of the North Atlantic seaboard. She was sensible of dull

resentment as Summerlad's car--an open one but of overpowering bigness

and staggering in its colour-scheme of yellow and black with silver

trimmings--progressed in majesty through streets where monstrous

trolleys ground and clanged, motor vehicles plodded, champing at the

bits, in solid column formation, and singularly shabby multitudes

drifted listlessly between towering white marble walls.

Only train-weariness and the glad prospect of a tub bath earned the

Hotel Alexandria forgivenness for its sin of ostentation in pretending

to stand at Broadway and Forty-second street, New York.

That sense of having been somehow swindled was, if anything, stronger in

consequence of an expedition afoot with Fanny after breakfast, in the

course of which the two women explored the shopping and business

district adjacent to the hotel. The imaginations responsible for the

plan and building of the city had suffered from that deadly blight of

imitativeness which afflicts the American mentality all the land over,

restricting every form of emulation to charted channels, with the result

that ambition seldom seeks its outlet in expression of individuality but

as a rule in the belittling of another's achievement through simple

exaggeration of its bulk and lines, in being not distinctive but only

bigger, showier, and more blatant.

Having lunched with Fanny (Lontaine was busy, it was understood,

promoting his indefinite but extensive motion-picture interests) Lucinda

returned to rooms which Summerlad had caused to be transformed in her

absence into the likeness of a fashionable florist and fruiterer's shop;

and while she was trying to decide whether to move half the lot or

herself out into the hall, the telephone rang and a strange voice

announced that Mr. Summerlad's chauffeur was speaking and Mr.

Summerlad's car was at the door and likewise at the disposition of Mrs.

Lee and Mrs. Lontaine for the afternoon.

"Ought we?" Lucinda doubted with a little grimace.

"Why not?" Fanny asked.

"It seems just a bit.... Oh, I don't know. I presume it would be

ungracious to question Californian hospitality."

"Copy-Californian," Fanny corrected. "Chances are you'll find

Summerlad's a native son of Omaha or some point East. Does it matter? He

means well, and we want to see Los Angeles."

"But that car!"

"It is rather a circus-wagon; but judging by what we've seen in the

streets today, the way to make oneself conspicuous here is to sport a

car of gaudy black or screaming navy blue. In the racy idiom of the

Golden West--let's go."

They went. In ten minutes Los Angeles of the sky-scrapers was forgotten.

For three hours league after league of garden-land, groves, plantations,

ocean beach, bare brown hills, verdant valleys wide as an Eastern

county, all bathed in sunlight of peculiar brilliance and steadiness

falling through crystalline air from a sky innocent of cloud, passed in

review before beauty-stricken eyes.

In the end the car turned without warning off a main-travelled highway,

swept the bluestone drive of what might well have been parked private

grounds, and stopped before the imposing, columned portico of an old

Colonial mansion.

The chauffeur turned back a friendly, grinning face. "This is where Mr.

Summerlad works," he announced--"the Zinn Studios."

"Studios!"

"Yes, ma'm--where they make the movin'-pictures."

Lucinda stared unbelievingly at the building, finding it hardly possible

to reconcile such mellow beauty of scheme and proportion, so harmonious

with the spacious lawns and massed foliage of its setting, with memories

of those grubby, grimy, back-street premises tenanted by the Culp

studios in New York.

A screen-door beneath the portico opened, Mr. Summerlad emerged, a shape

of slender elegance in Shantung silk, and ran impetuously down to the

car. With more deliberation Lontaine appeared and waited.

"Mrs. Lee, Mrs. Lontaine: I hope you'll forgive me for telling Tom to

stop in here instead of taking you back to the hotel. Lontaine's here,

and we've planned a little surprise, dinner at my place out in Beverly

Hills, just the four of us. You won't say no and spoil everything?

That's splendid! But it's early, and perhaps you'd like a look around a

regular movie factory first...."

Conducting them through the building by way of a panelled entrance hall,

Summerlad explained that the stages were temporarily idle, due to the

fact that photography on two productions in process had recently been

finished and their casts disbanded, only the directors and their staffs

remaining to cut and title the films; while the production in which

Summerlad was to play the lead was as yet not ready for the cameras.

The working premises lay behind the administration building. But here

again Lucinda noted few points of close resemblance to the Culp studios.

A field several acres in extent, about half in turf, was surrounded by a

sizeable village of glass-roofed stages and structures housing the

technical and mechanical departments--a laboratory, a costumier's,

property, carpenter and scene-painting shops, directors' offices,

dressing, projection and cutting-rooms, a garage, sheds to shelter

motor-cars and trucks by the score, stables, a small menagerie, a huge

tank for "water stuff," a monolithic fire-proof vault of cement for the

storage of film.

Due in great measure to temporary suspension of active camera-work, the

place seemed very peaceful and pervaded by an atmosphere of orderliness

and efficiency. There were no actors wasting time about the grounds, no

sets occupied the huge enclosed stages, the men at work in the several

departments seemed all to be busy.

"Well, Mrs. Lee: what do you think of a California studio? Not much like

what you've seen back East, eh?"

Lucinda shook her head, and smiled. "I am enchanted with this country,"

she said; "if what I've seen of it this afternoon is any criterion, I'm

afraid it's going to be hard to go away from...."

"You haven't begun to see it yet." Summerlad declared. "Wait till we've

had a few motor trips."

"As for your studio, it is most marvellous to me. If they're all like

this, I don't wonder people are mad to act in motion-pictures. If Mr.

Culp had promised me anything like this, I don't believe I should have

had the courage to refuse."

"It's not too late to change your mind, Mrs. Lee," Lontaine suggested.

"In fact, if I thought there was any hope you would, I'd go down on my

knees to you. Oh, not to act for Culp, but for me; or rather, for

yourself, as the head and the star of your own company. No: I'm

serious. I've been talking with several people today who want me to try

producing out here. I can get unlimited capital to back me. This country

today is crying for better pictures--and I know how to make them. I can

bring to the American cinema the one thing it needs, a thorough

knowledge of European methods. Only one thing makes me hesitate, the

lack of a suitable star. All the people of real ability seem to be tied

up under long-term contracts. I may lose months looking for the right

actress unless you----"

"Why pick on me?" Lucinda laughed. "I'm not even an actress."

"Ah! you forgot I've seen you prove on the screen what you can do. You

don't know yourself, Mrs. Lee. There isn't a woman in the country can

touch you, if you'll take your ability seriously. You need only two

things to make you great, a good director, and self-confidence."

"Aren't you running a great risk, making such flattering overtures to an

untried, unknown amateur?"

"Don't worry about me. If I had any hope of being able to persuade you

to try it on, I'd tell you to name your own terms, and shoulder the risk

without a murmur."

Lontaine's earnestness was so real that one might no longer meet his

arguments with levity. There was a strained look of anxiety in the blue

eyes, a restrained passion of pleading in the ordinarily languid

accents. Or else Lucinda fancied these things.

But a sidelong glance showed that Fanny, too, was apparently hanging

between hope and fear....

And a thought revived that had once or twice before presented itself, a

suspicion that all was not as well as one might wish with the state of

the Lontaine fortunes, strengthening the surmise that Lucinda's decision

meant more to them both than Lontaine had confessed.

Still one hesitated to believe....

"But you can't be serious! Do you really want me to become a movie

actress under your management?"

"You can't think of anything I wouldn't do to persuade you."

"Why not, Mrs. Lee?" Summerlad urged. "It would be great fun for you,

and you can't fail, you can't lose anything. If you only knew how

inferior most stars are to you in every way...."

"And if you should fail, Cindy," Fanny chimed in--"what does it matter?

Who would know? It wouldn't be you, it would be Lucinda Lee."

"No," Lontaine insisted: "I've got a better screen name than that for

her. Not Lucinda: Linda Lee."

"Come, Mrs. Lee: say you'll try it on, if only for the lark of it."

"If I should, Mr. Summerlad, it wouldn't be for fun."

"So much the better."

"Then you will?" Lontaine persisted. "Do say yes."

"Let me think...."

And why not? Lucinda asked herself. She was alone in the world, lonely

but for these good friends who needed her help, or seemed to. It would

be good fun, it would be interesting, it would satisfy a need of which

she had been discontentedly aware even in the days when she had yet to

dream of leaving Bel. And--even as Fanny had argued--if she should fail

and have to give it up, who would care what had become of "Linda Lee"?

"Very well," she said at length, with an uncertain smile--"suppose we

try."