Lucinda told Fanny that, when the dressing-room door had shut Bellamy
out, she "didn't know whether to laugh or to cry"; though it's true that
the laugh, if any, being admittedly on herself, she was the more moved
to weep. And for some minutes she stood in thought, with a curiously
uncertain expression, a look that, trembling between a smile and a
frown, faithfully reflected a mind that couldn't readily choose between
relief and chagrin. In the end throwing herself into a chair, she hid
her face in her hands and shook with mirth which she really wasn't able
to control, all the while aware that, but for the assurance of Lynn's
love to cushion the shock to self-esteem, tears instead must have been
her portion.
After all, one couldn't deny that it had been a facer, that complete
snub Bel had administered to her expectations with his cool
relinquishment of all pretense of claim upon her, barring that which was
his beyond dispute, his right to demand the speediest feasible
dissolution of their bonds.
"And you really think divorce is what he's after?" Fanny doubted darkly,
having duly turned the matter over in her mind.
"I'm sure you'd think so, if you had heard him."
"I don't know.... Of course, he was your property long enough, you ought
to know his wretched little ways. But I wouldn't trust any man to mean
what he says to a woman under such circumstances."
"Fanny! how long is it since you set up to be such a cynic?"
"As long as I've been an honest married woman, darling. I think the
first thing a woman with her wits about her learns, once she begins to
convalesce from that foolish bride feeling, is that men are just as
treacherous as we are in affairs of the heart, so-called. Anyway, if
your Bellamy were mine, he'd wait a long time for me to give him his
freedom, precisely as long as he insisted on sticking round and making
me uncomfortable.... The most outrageous proceeding I ever heard of!"
"I don't see through Bel, myself," Lucinda admitted. "You'd think it
would be the last thing he'd do. Of course--I'll speak to Harry about it
tonight--we can't stay, we'll have to move as soon as we finish this
picture."
"We're lucky to be as well along as we are, in that case. Barry Nolan
said today he expected to finish up in two weeks more."
"Then there's no time to be wasted. Your husband will have to begin
looking for new studio accommodations right away; though I haven't the
least idea where we'll find them, if Bel told the truth."
"It's barely possible he did, of course. And then it's equally possible
that he's taking advantage of the demand exceeding the supply to force
you out of the business, assuming you'll quit Zinn's even if it involves
suspending production, rather than be made miserable by seeing him every
day. In which case, of course, he'll have some other scheme ready to
make it difficult if not impossible for you to resume."
"Heavens! what a wild-eyed theory, Fanny!"
"Any more wild-eyed, pray, than the facts in the case?--than what
Bellamy has done in leasing space in the same studio with a woman whom
he has every reason for wishing to avoid, if one can believe a word he
says! Cindy: don't tell me you believe Bellamy Druce ever left New York,
his home and his friends, to come out here and muck about Hollywood
because he likes it, or because he's discontented with having been no
better than a drone all his life long and wants to redeem himself by
doing something worth-while? If _that's_ his motive, in Heaven's name!
what made him pick out the motion-picture business?"
"It is funny," Lucinda confessed. "I don't pretend to understand...."
No more did she. But the seeds of suspicion that conversation planted
took root readily and flowered into a dark jungle of strange, involuted
fancies in which fears ran wild until Lynn Summerlad came home to charm
them all asleep. Lucinda only needed to see him, indeed, to forget her
troubles altogether and become once more the voluntary thrall of a
species of intoxication as potent to her senses as a drug.
The Lontaines had arranged a supper party at Santa Monica in Summerlad's
honour for that night, but considerately had neglected to preface it
with dinner. So the lovers had the hours till eleven to themselves. At
seven Summerlad called, finding his way unannounced to Lucinda's
sitting-room. She went to his arms with a cry of joy, buried her face on
his shoulder, clung to him as if she would never let him go.
"I've missed you so, Lynn, I've missed you so!"
He seemed startled and unmistakably affected by the artlessness of this
confession, and held her close, comforting her with all the time-old and
tested responses of the lovers' litany, with a tenderness in his voice
more deep and true than he had ever sounded in the most impassioned
moments of his wooing.
"But, my dearest girl! you're trembling. What is it? Tell me...."
"It's so wonderful to have you back, Lynn. Don't ever leave me for so
long again."
"You tempt me to," he laughed indulgently. "I think you've learned to
love me better while I've been away than you did in all the while that I
was here!"
She answered with an odd little laugh of love and deprecation: "I really
think I have...."
They dined at Marcelle's, not the happiest selection for their first few
hours together, for the place was thronged with picture-folk, as it is
always of a Saturday, and acquaintances were continually running over to
their table to tell Summerlad how glad they were to see him back.
Practically the only moments they had alone were when they danced; so
they made excuse to leave early, that they might drive to Santa Monica
by the most round-about way.
Nothing was wanting to endue that drive with every illusion of a dream.
Spring was so well advanced that the night air, windless, was as warm as
it would ever be in Summer. There was again a moon, as on that first
night when Summerlad had driven Lucinda and the Lontaines home from
dinner at his bungalow and on the way had turned aside to show Lucinda
from that high place in the hills all the provinces of her new kingdom
mapped out beneath her. Summerlad's car, its superb motor in perfect
tune, made light of speed laws on lonely roads far from the
main-travelled ways that link the towns. On the back seat, snuggled into
the hollow of Summerlad's arm, Lucinda rested a long time in contented
silence, watching the molten magic of the night fling itself at their
faces, dissolve, blend into rushing shadows, and sweep behind, to music
of cloven air like fairy laughter. How could she ever have been so
stupid as to harbour a thought disloyal to this land of dim enchantment?
"It is too perfect," she murmured at length, "too sweet to last. It
can't last, I know it can't!"
"Why not? So long as we love, what's to prevent all beauty lasting?"
"Life. I mean"--it took all her courage to speak of what she had till
then purposely kept back--"Bellamy."
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 deshabille. 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.