The incorporators of Linda Lee Inc. were not, however, long left
dependent on motor-cars that plied for hire and the orange-and-black
outrage on wheels which was everywhere known as "Lynn Summerlad's bus."
One of Lontaine's first acts as president of the fledgling organization
was to pay out ten thousand dollars of its capital for a startling
blue-and-silver car, the whim of an absent-minded motion-picture star
whose sudden flitting from threats of arrest on charges of bigamy had
left the car on the hands of its builders, to be picked up at what
Lontaine called a bargain price. Lucinda was disposed to hold the cost
immaterial, but demurred about accepting it for her personal use; and
the consideration urged by Summerlad, that the more eye-arresting the
colour scheme the better the advertisement for Linda Lee, failed to move
her. So Lontaine felt constrained to use it himself; and Fanny demurely
professed resignation, pointing out that in such a conveyance no husband
would ever dare pursue any but paths of conspicuous rectitude.
For herself Lucinda eventually selected a modest landaulet of dark
maroon; but it saw little service, save on shopping trips, till she
began to use it for daily transportation to and from the studio.
Weeks slipped stealthily away, the rainy season waned, a Spring ensued
like an Eastern Summer, with lusty vegetation, lengthening days of dry
heat, and nights deliciously cooled by airs that swept through every
sunless hour from the highlands to the sea; while delays on delays
accumulated and still the day when "shooting" should begin lingered
remotely down tomorrow's dim horizon.
Lontaine had leased studio space in the Zinn plant, which Summerlad
recommended as the most modern and completely equipped on the Coast. For
this the company was paying a weekly rental of fifteen hundred dollars.
An expensive executive and technical staff, lacking only a director, was
kicking heels of enforced idleness on full pay. A story had been
selected, an old novel by a moderately popular author to which Zinn had
in 1914 purchased all motion-picture rights outright for five hundred
dollars and which he was now willing to part with for ten thousand as a
special courtesy because he had taken such a mad fancy to Lontaine. A
scenario writer, warranted by Zinn "the best in the business," had
received five thousand for casting the story into continuity form, the
labour of one whole week, and retired rejoicing to his hundred-and-fifty
a week job in the Zinn scenario department. A reading of his bastard
brain-child had persuaded Lucinda that continuity writing must be the
mystery its adepts alleged; in fact, she couldn't understand the greater
part of it, and what she did understand somewhat preyed upon her mind.
But Lontaine seemed satisfied, Summerlad solaced her misgivings with the
assurance that P. Potter Monahan simply couldn't write a poor
continuity, and both agreed that Barry Nolan would know what to do to
make it right when he got down to work on it.
Incidentally, he did: Nolan read it half-through, thoughtfully shied the
manuscript out of a window, and dictated a continuity all his own, of
which nobody but himself could make head or tail, and which at times in
the course of its production seemed to puzzle even its perpetrator. But
this Nolan was a resourceful lad and never hesitated to revise himself
when at a loss: "That's out," he would inform his assistant; "we'll
cover up the break with a subtitle. C'mon, let's shoot the close-ups;"
or it might be: "Got another angle on that now. Instead of that scene
where she casts him out of her life forever, I'm going to stick in some
business Leslie Carter used to do in the last act of _Zaza_. We'll get
round to that later. What's next?"
But these revelations of an unique technique, justly celebrated as such,
were reserved for the indefinite future. Notwithstanding that he was
under contract to Linda Lee Inc. to begin work as soon as he had
finished the production he was then making, Lucinda was to be hounded
through her professional debut by another megaphone than Barry Nolan's.
In the engagement of that one resided the only reason for the delays.
While negotiations for his services (at twice as much pay as he had ever
received before) were in progress, Nolan confidently expected to be free
in a fortnight. The day he signed the contract he admitted that he might
possibly keep them waiting a trifle longer. It was two months later when
he at length notified Lontaine that he was running up to San Francisco
for a few days' rest and relaxation but would positively be "on the lot"
and ready to go to work, in another week.
In the meantime Lucinda had moved to the Hollywood Hotel, the Lontaines
to a furnished bungalow nearby, where they vainly pressed her to join
them. She thought it wiser to decline.
"I'm far too fond of both of you to risk living with you," she
explained. "It's no good deliberately placing ourselves in a position to
get fed to the teeth with one another. Besides, I've got to get
accustomed to shifting for myself, and it's high time I was learning to
breathe in a proper motion-picture atmosphere."
This the Hollywood provided to admiration. Summerlad assured Lucinda,
and on her own observation she could well believe, that at one stage or
another of their careers almost every motion-picture player of
consequence in the country must have registered at this hotel. Many
continued to reside there, though no reason existed why they should not
observe the custom of other happy holders of long-term contracts and
move into homes of their own. Aside from such fixtures--and a
non-professional element composed mainly of middle-aged folk with set
incomes who had contracted the habit of spending their Winters and not
much else in California--the hotel boasted a restless movement of birds
of passage: stars of the legitimate stage brought on from New York to
play in a single picture, lesser lights coming West at their own risk to
solicit a "try-out;" playwrights and novelists with reputations in two
continents declining to profit by the experience of innumerable
predecessors, fatuously assuming that imagination, intelligence and
honest workmanship had a dog's chance in the studios; directors enjoying
their favorite pastime of hopping from Coast to Coast with everything
paid; overlords of the cinema visiting the West Coast to look after
their own or their rivals' fences and filch actors and directors from
one another. These came and went by every trans-continental train.
Remained the incurable addicts with yet another element, hardly less
habitue but humbler, maintaining precarious residence in the hotel on
meagre means, on remittances from home or God knew how (and, knowing,
wept) hanging on desperately to hope of happier tomorrows, when they,
too, would have their own cars call to take them to their daily toil,
instead of trudging or trolleying from studio to studio in pursuit of
the elusive day's work as an extra: a class largely feminine and
insistently youthful.
With most of these Lucinda became acquainted by sight, with many she
grew accustomed to exchange smiles and the time of day. They were a
friendly lot, indomitably cheerful and brisk. If sheer joy of living
didn't keep their eyes bright, belladonna did; their hand-painted smiles
were unfailing; their slender, silken legs twinkled in vivacious by-play
on veranda steps and in the public rooms; by every sign they were ever
on the wing and jolly glad. Lucinda liked them all involuntarily, and
wished them well; and when she came to know some of them better her
heart ached for them.
This was inevitable. The most glacial reserve must have melted to the
warmth of such gayly casual overtures. It was good business to know Miss
Linda Lee, and they made it their business without undue delay. She had
not been twenty-four hours a sister-guest before all these young things
knew an astonishing lot about her that wasn't so, and a deal that was.
Lucinda was a raw tenderfoot who was going to finance her own company, a
prominent stage favorite trying her luck under an assumed name, a
Baltimore society beauty with the motion-picture bee in her bonnet,
nobody at all except the dear friend of this or that nationally known
man, who was paying to put her into pictures to get rid of her. It
didn't matter who or what she was, more than what was irrefutably
established: that she was Linda Lee, she had simply sloughs of coin, she
was to star in her own productions, Barry Nolan had been engaged to
direct her, Lynn Summerlad had gone nutty about her; all of which summed
up to this, that Lucinda was in a position to utter words of power whose
fruit might be days and days of work at ten or fifteen per--who
knew?--perhaps the miracle of a steady job!
They made up to her saucily or shyly, according to the style they
believed became them best, with assurance or with humility, with
ostensible indifference, and some in open desperation. But on one point
they were all agreed: they wanted work. Lucinda spoke about two or three
of them to Lontaine, who laughed and advised her to recommend them to
Barry Nolan's assistant, when that far day dawned on which the question
of casting subordinate roles would be in order. She spoke to Lynn
Summerlad, and was rewarded with a worried frown, the first sign of care
she had ever detected in him, together with some well-chosen thoughts on
the dangers of contracting haphazard hotel acquaintanceships. Lucinda
explained that she hadn't sought them, they had been practically forced
upon her; she could see no merit in being rude and "upstage." Summerlad
retorted darkly that one never could tell; the motion-picture colony
harboured any number of queer birds; it wouldn't do for her of all women
to pick up with a wrong one.
"First thing you know, they'll be trying to borrow money from you."
Lucinda was silent for want of a conscience that would sanction an
indignant rejoinder.
"I was afraid of this when you moved into the hotel. But then I told
myself not to be a fool, you weren't the sort to encourage total
strangers."
With malice, Lucinda enquired absurdly: "Are you reproaching me with
relaxing from the conventions of my former milieu, Mr. Summerlad?"
"You know very well what I mean, Linda."
"You think, perhaps, I'm growing to be a shade too free and easy?"
"If you must know, I do."
"But this is, after all, Hollywood."
"No excuse for doing as the Hollywoodenheads do."
"Then, I take it, you think it might be more discreet of me to stop
going about with you alone."
Since the same roof no longer sheltered them, the Lontaines had ceased
invariably to include Lucinda in their plans and gaddings, as when
social courtesies were extended them by people whom Lontaine met in the
way of business and to whom Lucinda was not known at all. So she was
enjoying some little time to herself, when Summerlad's attentions
permitted; and when they didn't, felt free to follow her inclination and
dispense with chaperonage on occasion, irrespective of the looks of the
thing. (If anything could be held to have any particular "looks" where
principles of laissez-faire and assiduous attention to one's own
concerns were so generally vogue.) Linda Lee, furthermore, could do as
she pleased when her pleasure must have been taboo to Mrs. Bellamy
Druce.
"O Lord!" Summerlad groaned. "I might've known better than to start an
argument with a woman."
"I don't relish being reproached by you for lack of decorum."
"Decorum! I'm only anxious you shan't get in with the wrong sort, be
victimized or worse."
"Touching thoughtfulness on my behalf.... But Lynn: what do you mean by
'worse'?"
"Not sure I know, myself. I don't want anything to happen to worry you."
"What could?"
"Oh, I don't know. If I did, I could take measures to prevent its
happening. But not so long as you insist on living here. A hotel's no
place for a woman alone. People all the time coming and going.... Who
knows who and what they are? You might be recognized."
"So that's what's on your mind?"
"I don't like to think of any outside influences working on you just
now."
"Just now?"
"Distracting your attention from really important matters, like me and
what you're going to do about me. I'm so desperately in love with you,
Linda."
Lucinda said nothing for a little. She had been expecting this for days.
Now that it came it found her, of course, unprepared. Nothing to
complain of in that; a declaration of love always finds a woman
unprepared, no matter how long she may have been preparing for it. The
primitive instinct of flight from the male is deathless, though it
manifest only as in that one brief moment of panic that Lucinda knew.
She was glad of the darkness of that section of the hotel veranda where
they had been sitting for a quarter of an hour after returning from
diner a deux in the city. It had seemed early to part, as people
interested in each other reckon the age of an evening together--not
much after ten--and since no one was visible on the veranda, Lucinda had
suggested that Summerlad stop and chat a while. Now she wished she
hadn't.
Not that it made much difference. This had been bound to come before
long. One knew the signs in a man who had held his peace about as long
as he could. Five weeks since that night when, in the Beverly Hills
bungalow, she had concluded that Summerlad's interest in her was neither
impersonal nor of a transitory nature....
An amazingly long time for him to wait, had she but known, a tribute to
the sincerity of the passion she had inspired, to the respect in which
he held her whose training had not been such as to encourage much
respect for women in general. Almost anybody in Hollywood would have
told her that Lynn Summerlad was "a fast worker." That no one had done
so was probably due in most part to an impression that to carry such
information were work of supererogation....
The worst of it was, she was glad.
How strange (and what proof of her heart's unique intricacy!) that she
should be affected by such paradoxical displeasure in the pleasure it
gave her to hear Lynn profess a passion of which she had been so long
and well aware; as if it grated upon some slumbering sense of what was
fitting; as if any reason today existed why Lynn shouldn't be in love
with her and, for the matter of that, she with him (only, of course, she
wasn't) or why he need hesitate to speak and she be loath to listen....
"Well, Linda?"
She put away her pensiveness, smiling softly in the darkness that
enfolded them, smiling to see Summerlad bending forward in his chair,
whose arm just failed to touch the arm of hers, anxiously searching her
face for a clue to her mind, but with the anxiety of impatience more
than the anxiety of doubt. He wanted to have her in his arms. A
pleasant place to be, perhaps; but she wasn't ready yet, she was not yet
sure....
"Well, my friend!" she said in amused indulgence--"so it seems you love
me."
"How long have you known it?"
"Quite as long as you have loved me."
"And you----?"
"I don't know yet."