The day of the Last Stand in the Living-Room Doorway began auspiciously
enough with receipt of a night-letter from Harford Willis stating that
money matters had been arranged in conformance with Lucinda's wishes,
and adding that Willis hoped before long to give himself the pleasure of
calling on her in person; the business of another client was requiring
his supervision in San Francisco, on the way out he could readily stop
over in Los Angeles for a day or two, he was leaving New York the day he
telegraphed.
Not a little to her own wonder, Lucinda found herself pleasantly excited
by the thought that she was to see this old friend so soon again. Had
his telegram come a week or so earlier, she must have been quite as much
annoyed, have deemed its implicit promise of meddling in her affairs an
inexcusable impertinence. But a week or so ago, at least up to the time
of Bellamy's reappearance, she had been comparatively serene, smug with
self-contentment because of the semblance of success which had thus far
attended the rather off-hand measures she had adopted in dealing with
the larger issues of her life. Now, however, she knew no more peace of
mind, in the last fortnight the pressure of perplexities had grown so
heavy that she found herself eagerly looking forward to the arrival of
one in whom she could confide, of whom she could ask counsel, without
fearing to hear self-interest sound in his responses.
Harford Willis might disapprove the roads she chose to go, but so long
as she kept within certain bounds, which she herself would never dream
of overstepping, he wouldn't censure; and if she found the going rough
in the ways of wilfulness, his sympathy would none the less be constant,
he'd never say, "I told you so;" and never would he be guilty of
advising any course of action to the end that he himself might profit.
Take him for what he was, there was nobody like him, nobody else whom
she could so trust ... not even Lynn....
Not even Lynn! A bitter thought to have to think, but a true, and one it
were not the part of wisdom to ignore, that she couldn't look to the man
she loved with all her heart, and who loved her well in his way, she
knew, for sympathy in her trials and for unselfish advice, as she could
to another in whose consideration she was merely a pretty, headstrong
girl whom he had known since she was little, the daughter of an old
friend.
For the truth was (idle to deny it longer or hope against hope that one
might be mistaken) Lynn was changed, had ceased to be the light-hearted
and irresponsible but tender lover of the days before Bellamy had come
back to play skeleton at their feast, of late had grown irritable in a
fashion new to Lucinda's knowledge of him, somewhat sulky and suspicious
of temper, impatient of Lucinda's troubles when she wanted condolence
and soothing, and over-ready to remind her he had troubles of his own.
She wasn't disposed to quarrel with him on that account, she was too
fair-minded to deny him his grievances or the right to nurse them.
Surely the situation in which Lynn now newly found himself was one to
play the deuce with the sunniest of dispositions--to be an accepted
lover and have a husband continually if with pretended playfulness
snapping at one's heels, or else circling watchfully in the not too
remote distance and showing his teeth, every time one looked his way, in
a grin as malicious as it was brilliant.
Then there was that trouble with Lynn's foot, something that had turned
out, rather to Lucinda's astonishment, to be a real injury, no
make-believe feigned for an occasion. At the studio second-hand accounts
came to her, of how Summerlad's foot had slipped, while he was doing
"river stuff," and had been severely pinched between two logs. It hadn't
seemed much of a hurt at the time, and Summerlad had made light of it,
just as today he made light of it; but it had been slow to mend, and
even now, though he usually managed to get through his work for the
camera without registering the injury, there were days when he walked
with a noticeable limp, when inability to get about with comfort
interfered seriously with the amusements he had been accustomed to share
with Lucinda.
So she wasn't seeing so much of him as aforetime, and when she did, what
with natural preoccupation in their respective afflictions, to say
nothing of the greater annoyance that afflicted them in common, the old
unconstraint was grievously missed.
But nothing in this life lasts (Lucinda insisted on iterating, in a
temper doggedly philosophic) and even as that earlier time of ecstasies
had passed, this time of trial would pass, the day would come when, her
picture finished, she would be free to leave the studio and forget
Bellamy's existence, go on to Reno and get her freedom, when Lynn would
be hers alone and they two could look back at this time and laugh to
think how it had galled them.
Busy with such reflections, and with the pleasing prospect of soon
having a willing audience for her complaints, Lucinda made nothing of
the fact that Lontaine showed the whites of his eyes and shied back like
a skittish cob from the telegram which she submitted to his inspection,
and was even not much tranquillized by the cheque which, at the same
time, she gave him for the replenishment of the company's coffers. And
in her most amiable temper she hurried from his office to her
dressing-room, into the newest, prettiest and most becoming dance frock
she had ever owned, who had owned so many, and then out to the stage.
The company was waiting, the cameras were waiting, Nolan with an air of
noblest patience was waiting. All of which was quite needless, for there
was other work in abundance that could have been attended to, there were
scenes in the same sequence in which she didn't appear and which might
easily have been rehearsed if not photographed even though Lucinda was a
bit tardy. But that wouldn't have suited Nolan's little book: having
told Lucinda when he would want her at a fixed hour, he was determined
that nothing should go forward till she showed up. That wasn't the Nolan
method in dealing with women, to let them play fast and loose with his
mandates and pretend it didn't matter. Was he not Barry Nolan,
well-known for his success in taming temperamental actresses? A
reputation honestly earned and of which he proposed that Lucinda should
now be reminded in no uncertain accents. And if one had ventured to
question his policy, he would have pointed out that company morale was
bound to suffer if the director neglected to "go to the mat with" his
star every so often. The success of every human undertaking depended on
undisputed authority vesting in one and only one directing head--in
moving-pictures, the director's. A lesson every star needed to be taught
upon occasion. You had to keep hammering it into the poor dumb-bells, or
they got the swelled head--and then where were you?
In point of sober fact, Nolan was enjoying himself tremendously, though
to have admitted as much, even to his private conscience, would have
spoiled the fun entirely. He couldn't possibly have been having such a
good time if he hadn't been in such a vile temper.
Up to the moment of Lucinda's appearance, he had been whiling away the
Wait by delivering a monologue of spontaneous generation, a discourse
having for its subject the habits of stars in general and of self-made
feminine stars in especial, studiously impersonal in phrasing but
mordant of wit, and delivered with an air of gentle and melancholy
detachment which took no perceptible account of the snickerings of his
henchmen and the ill-hidden smiles of actors who, in the absence of
Lucinda, were hazarding no guesses as to which side their bread was
buttered on.
As Lucinda drew near, Nolan hoisted himself out of the basket-chair in
which he had been lounging, with something more than a suggestion of
limbs cramped by prolonged inactivity, and bowed politely, too politely.
But Lucinda was feeling much too kindly minded toward all the world,
that morning, to resent his nonsense, though by no means unaware of its
cause and aim. And with every intention of keeping the peace she
returned a brief but good-natured nod and smile.
"Sorry if I've kept you waiting, Mr. Nolan, but I had some business with
Mr. Lontaine we couldn't put off."
"No matter at all, Miss Lee, I assure you--no matter a-tall! My time is
yours, the company's time is yours, all the time there _is_ is yours, to
use or waste, just as you think best."
Lucinda couldn't very well let offensiveness so pointed pass without
comment. She stopped, turned squarely to face Nolan, with a keen smile,
looked him deliberately up and down, a movement of shoulders summing up
clearly enough the substance of her impressions.
"Thank you for telling me," she said sweetly. "And now _that_ is
understood, suppose we try to make up for the time I've wasted, if
possible, by getting to work at once...."
The only retort that occurred to Nolan as at all appropriate he felt
instinctively to be inadequate in point of elegance; so he judiciously
refrained from uttering it. And anyhow, the day was young yet, his hour
would come.
"Fair enough," he agreed with a passable display of good spirit. "Le's
go to it, then." He approached the set on which two cameras stood
trained at close range, with Klieg lights focussed. "Now, Miss Lee, I'll
just line in what I want of you this scene."
The set was a simple angle, where two walls met in an apartment hallway,
with a door that opened inward from a living-room set beyond. In this
last the big dramatic moment of the play was to be staged, a scene
involving Lucinda and her two leading-men, the heavy father and the
juvenile, his son, both of whom were understood to be in love with
_Nelly_.
Here, in his bachelor apartment, _Nelly_ was to call at midnight on the
father, seeking him without care for appearances in an hour of
desperation, to beg him to intervene with the villain of the piece and
save her wayward brother from imprisonment on a charge of theft.
The madly infatuated father was to take this opportunity to propose
marriage, and _Nelly_ was to accept him, momentarily carried off her
feet by the sincerity of his passion as much as by the glamour of his
wealth and social position.
While this was going on, _Dick_, the son, passing in the street, was to
catch a glimpse of _Nelly's_ shadow on the window-shade and, wild with
jealousy, demand admittance. The father, divining his son's suspicions
and desiring to allay them, furthermore at a loss for a fair excuse for
refusing to see the boy, was to conduct _Nelly_ to the private hallway
and leave here there with the understanding that, while he was letting
_Dick_ in at the front door, she was to slip away by the back.
Instead of doing so, _Nelly_ was to linger behind the door and overhear
the quarrel between father and son, in the course of which it was to
transpire that the former had once offered to wager the latter that he
could make the girl his mistress within a given period of time.
Whereupon, in revulsion of feeling, _Nelly_ was to confront the two and,
while confessing she had planned deliberately to marry either one or
the other of them for his money, assert herself to be too good to be the
wife of either.
It is illustrative of the topsy-turvey methods of cinema production that
no part of this sequence had as yet been photographed except the scenes
in the street when _Dick_, passing on the way home to his own bachelor
quarters, looked up and espied Lucinda's shadow; and that Lucinda was
now to enact the scene at the doorway before taking part in the
living-room scenes which in the photoplay would precede and follow it.
The angle had been set up directly adjoining the living-room set, in
order that the door, when _Nelly_ opened it to denounce father and son,
might reveal a glimpse of that interior with the two men standing
thunderstruck.
Nolan proceeded now to act out in his own person the business which he
conceived to be in character for a girl of _Nelly's_ quality in
circumstances so contrived as to make voluntary eavesdropping on her
part seem constructively defensible. And Lucinda looked on with earnest
attention and puckered brows, eager to catch every hint that would help
her become a better actress. Her distrust of Nolan extended only to his
abilities as a constructive builder of story-telling pictures and a
judge of pictorial values. For the very considerable amount of raw power
as a pantomime which he indubitably possessed, she had much respect.
Prior to invading the realm of motion-pictures, Nolan had served long
and arduous apprenticeship as a general utility actor in stock companies
of the Middle West and the Pacific Coast. He knew every trick of gesture
and expression and how to communicate the secret of their most effective
use in the delineation of theatrical as distinguished from real emotion.
In this respect his greatest fault was a tendency to overdo things, to
let enthusiasm for acting run away with discrimination.
This enthusiasm was running away with him now, he was building the solo
scene which Lucinda was to play on lines of broad emotional melodrama
widely inconsistent with the situation. Forgetting that, while the
conversation assumed to be going on beyond the door was one well
calculated to annoy and disgust her whom it concerned, its revelations
were after all hardly of a character to break her heart, who was in love
with neither of the speakers--indifferent to these considerations, Nolan
was, as _Nelly_, ranting and raving in the angle like one gone half-mad
with shock and grief. Yet such was the fire he infused into the
performance that for the time being he truly succeeded in perverting
Lucinda's grasp of the scene, and won her admiration in spite of her
latent dislike. So that when, having exhausted his repertoire of
emotional artifice, he stepped out of the camera lines, consulting
Lucinda with a glance and the stereotyped enquiry, "See what I want,
dear?" she replied without thinking--"You make it most real. I'll do my
best"--and stepped into character and the set as the lights blazed on,
the cameras began to tick, and Nolan seized his baton of authority, the
megaphone which he invariably used while directing, though he had as
much need of it now as the cameras had of telescopic lenses.
"Now, dear," he blared through this instrument--"go to it and show us
all you've got. Don't be afraid of letting yourself go. Remember, this
is your Big Scene, biggest you've got in this story, your one grand
little chance to put it over that you're a sure-enough actress....
That's it"--the elderly leading-man ushered Lucinda into the set from
the living-room side, laid a finger to his lips, and pointed down the
hallway before disappearing--"that's it--nod to show you know what he
means. Now you start for the back door. You haven't thought yet it would
be a swell idea to stop and listen to all they're saying about you. But
now you do, now you hesitate, turn, look back at the door, frowning.
Pretty work. Now go back, but not all at once. Make us see you don't
think you ought to do this sort of thing, make us see the big struggle
with your better nature, and better nature losing out. Good. Now you put
your ear to the crack in the door and hear your name. Give a big start
and look horrified. You never dreamed men could talk about women like
that, you know, you wouldn't have believed _Richards_ and _Dick_ could
talk that way about you. Show us horror, dear, and make it strong, you
can't make it too strong. Remember: you're just realizing the man you
love is such a rotten cad he could make a bet about your virtue. It just
makes you feel sick all over----!
"Great snakes! what's _that_ for? What's the matter?"
For of a sudden Lucinda laughed outright, suddenly the heart-rending
tremolo of Nolan's voice as he detailed the awful offense Richards had
committed against _Nelly_ in the play tickled irresistibly her sense of
the absurd; and her laugh followed naturally, inevitably,
uncontrollably.
Now as Nolan with a frantic wave bade the cameraman cease cranking, she
made a sign of helpless appeal and, inarticulate with mirth, rested
weakly against the door and held her sides.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Nolan," she gasped. "Forgive me, I--I didn't know I was
going to laugh till--till--till it struck me as so funny----!"
Her voice rose and broke in another peal of hysterical merriment, her
words became unintelligible, while Nolan literally ground his teeth.
"_What_ struck you as so funny?" he exploded. "Show me anything funny
about this scene and I--I'll eat my megaphone. What's so damn' funny?"
"Oh, I am sorry!" Lucinda was doing her utmost to sober herself, but
still her voice shook and her body rocked with recurrent spasms of
idiotic mirth. "You see--when you said that--what you said about
_Richards_ being a rotter--all at once it struck me--I'm sure I don't
know why--as funny, too awfully funny for words!"
"Well, why?" Nolan insisted, all but dancing with rage. "Hell! Give me a
reason. Why's it funny?"
"Because--well, you see--I don't like to criticize, you resent my
suggestions so--but really, you know, this is a ridiculous way to expect
_Nelly_ to carry on when she hears what she hears. She isn't in
love with _Richards_, she isn't even in love with _Dick_; and
surely"--Lucinda was now rapidly growing serious in her anxiety to
justify herself to Nolan's face of a thunderhead--"surely she oughtn't
to go all to pieces just because she hears _Richards_ confess, what
she's known all along, that he's the sort of a man he is."
"Listen here: who's directing this scene, you'r me? Who wrote the
continuity, you'r me? Who knows best what this story's all about, heh,
you'r me?"
"But, Mr. Nolan, I'm sure, if you'll just think a moment you'll see it
isn't natural for a girl like _Nelly_ to rant like a tragedy queen over
this situation. She'd be hurt, I grant you, and she'd be angry, angry
with herself as much as with _Richards_, but she wouldn't tear around in
this corner like a--like Lillian Gish in _Broken Blossoms_ when's she's
trapped in the scullery and her father's breaking in to murder her.
Don't you see?"
"Sure I see." Nolan spoke with an unwonted evenness of tone, for him;
but the tone was ugly. "I see a lot of things. I see you've made up your
mind to try to make a fool of me, arguing about my visualization of this
scene like you have. I see you're dead-set on making me so mad I'll give
up my job rather than go on trying to make an actress out of
screen-struck near-society dame. Well, all right, you _win_. I resign.
I'm out. You've got your wish. And this time I don't come back, not if
you was to go down on your knees to beg me to finish this fool picture!"
In an abrupt break of fury, oddly out of keeping with the level tone he
had used, Nolan raised the megaphone above his head and with all his
might cast it upon the floor at Lucinda's feet.
"And that ends that," he announced quietly, and walked off, leaving
Lucinda in a temper curiously divided between relief and regret. For
this time, she was sure, Nolan meant it.