That sunset whose reluctant waning Lontaine was presently to watch from
the bungalow veranda was still a glory in the sky when Lucinda motored
to Beverly Hills. The heavens in the west had opened out like a
many-petalled rose of radiant promise, whose reflected glow deepened the
warm carnation of her face and found response in the slow fire that
burned in dreaming eyes. Those whose chance it was to view so much
mortal loveliness in too fleeting glimpses all envied its possessor,
women her lot, men her lover's.
The soft air of evening, already tempered with an earnest of the coolth
to come, was sweet to taste with parted lips. Upon the perfect highroad
the car swung and swooped and swerved like a swallow, through a
countryside lapped in perennial Spring. She thought: This blessed land!
and thought herself thrice-blessed to be at once in it, in love, and in
the fairest flower of her years.
Odd, how completely that compact with Zinn, which the clasp of their
hands had sealed so lately, had done away with every form of fear and
discontent. Vanity had a deal to do with that, no doubt, self-esteem
purring with conviction that Zinn would never have offered to invest one
lonely dollar in the picture had not his appraisement of Lucinda's work
on the screen approved the risk. Zinn smelt profits in the wind; that
much was manifest; which meant that success was assured to Linda Lee.
The loss of half the little fortune she had sunk in the production was a
mean price to pay for knowledge that failure could now reward her hopes
only through some frown of fortune unanticipated by one of the canniest
of those sure-thing gamblers whom the American cinema acclaims its
financial genii.
Best of all, this new association spelled an end to all that meaningless
and inexcusable procrastination from which the work had suffered
whenever Nolan felt over-worked or harkened to the call of the
continuous crap game, an institution of the studio that had its
permanent habitat behind one of the stages. Zinn was notoriously scant
of patience with delays that meant money thrown away; and, he had
assured Lucinda (after striking his bargain) no reason existed within
his knowledge why another fortnight shouldn't see the last scenes of her
production shot. Much admittedly depended on how little or much of
Nolan's work might seem to need retaking, when the three of them,
Lucinda, Zinn and the new director, sat in judgment on the rushes in
rough assemblage. But Zinn didn't believe they would find many instances
of incompetent or indifferent direction so flagrant that they couldn't
be cured in the cutting-room.... It's surprising what a cunning pair of
shears and a neat subtitle or two can do for a scene that, as originally
photographed, is good for nothing but insomnia or to bring on sclerosis
of the sense of humour.
Nolan had left to the direction of his successor only the sequences in
two sets. Lucinda made out a mental timetable: a week for the supper
club scenes, less time than that for the living-room; another week for
possible retakes, one more in which to cut and assemble the finished
picture. In a month at most she ought to be able to call herself once
more a free woman and bid farewell to Hollywood till the courts had made
that boast a statement of consummated fact.
A single month! Such a little time when the journey's end was well in
sight, a little time to wait for life to yield up all its riches. It was
harder, truly, to be patient till this lesser journey should duly come
to its appointed end in lovers' meeting. The car was a snail, minutes
sluggards, the beauty of the land a bore to one bitterly jealous of
every second which heed for speed laws stole from the half-hour she had
schemed to have alone with Lynn before the Lontaines were to be
expected. She had so much happiness to share with her beloved, so much
to tell, everything that had happened since morning, a busy chapter of
studio history of which he could know nothing, since he had not
revisited the studio since leaving it for work on location that morning.
It seemed a churlish chance indeed that ordained a reception for her
exclusively at the hands and glistening teeth of a semi-intelligible
Jap, who, when he had uttered assorted fragments of English to the
general sense that Mister was having his foot treated by an osteopath at
the moment but would soon be disengaged, smirked himself into an
indeterminate background and left Lucinda to make the best of this minor
disappointment.
Resolutely denying this last, she put off her wrap, made herself at
home, and sought but somehow failed to distill a compensating thrill
from the reflection that she would ere long be called upon to make
herself at home here for good and all. 'Ere long' meaning, of course,
after Reno ... And why not? The house was excellently planned, amply
big for two; no reason why Lynn need move unless he really wanted to.
Only ... the eye of the prospective chatelaine took on a critical
cast ... some details would want a bit of readjustment, the all too
patent stamp of the interior decorator's damned good taste would require
obliteration before one would care to call the premises one's very own.
The present scheme, for example, lacked anything in the nature of a
study, wherein one might lounge and read and accumulate quantities of
books; according to Lucinda's notion, the real nucleus of a home for
civilized people. Lynn, poor dear! worked so hard, he had little time to
give to reading; a moan it was his wont to make whenever Lucinda gave
their talks a literary turn. The few volumes of his collection stood in
sadly broken ranks on a rack of shelves in an alcove that adjoined the
living-room, a sort of glory-hole furnished with odds and ends of sham
Oriental junk which Lynn called his "den" and Fanny had rechristened
"the vamp room."
Curiosity concerning Lynn's tastes, when he did find time to read, moved
Lucinda to con the straggling squad of titles. Novels led in number,
naturally, works of fiction old and new, in general such trash as
furnishes the cinema with most of its plot material. In addition, a
subscription set of De Maupassant with several volumes missing, another
of O. Henry, Wells' _The Outline of History_ (uncut), the _Collected
Verse_ of Rudyard Kipling, six copies of the same edition of "_Who's Who
on the Screen_", Laurence Hope's _Indian Love Lyrics_ in an
exceptionally beautiful binding....
With a chuckle Lucinda took possession of this last: Lynn _would_ have
Laurence Hope!... Evidently a gift copy. When she opened the book at its
fly-leaf, a slip of printed paper fluttered out. Without pausing to read
the inscription, Lucinda retrieved the clipping: a half-tone from one of
the motion-picture monthlies, a view of the bungalow grounds, with the
house in the distance, and in the foreground Lynn and a young woman
arm-in-arm, laughing at the camera....
The evening had grown quite dark when a crisp rattle of the telephone
startled Lucinda into renewed contact with her surroundings. She found
herself in the recess of one of the living-room windows that looked out
over the lawn. The book was in her hand. Behind her a door opened,
releasing upon the gloom a gush of golden light. Without moving she
watched Summerlad, in a dressing-gown hastily thrown on over dress-shirt
and trousers, hobble over to the telephone and conduct one end of a
short conversation of which her wits made no sense whatever. He hung up,
and peered blindly round the room.
"Linda, darling?" he called. "What's the big idea, sitting all alone in
the dark?" At the same time he switched on wall-sconces and, blinking,
saw her. "Just our luck!" he grumbled, trying to sound disconsolate.
"What do you think, sweetheart? Fanny says they can't come tonight;
Harry's laid up, got a sick headache or something, and she doesn't think
she ought to leave him. I wonder if you'd mind dining here with me
alone, this once. I can't very well go out with this foot. Eh? What do
you think?"
Lucinda made no sound. His eyes narrowed as he perceived the abnormal
absence of colour in her face, the dark dilation of her unwavering eyes.
Limping, he approached.
"What's the matter, Linda? Not cross with me, are you? Hadn't any idea
you'd be so early; and today I gave my foot another nasty wrench, out on
location, and had to call Cheney in to fix it up. He's just left, and I
was starting to dress.... What?"
An entreating hand silenced him. All in a breath Lucinda said: "Those
things don't matter, Lynn. Why didn't you ever tell me you were
married?"
Summerlad said "Damnation!" half under his breath and moved nearer, till
another flutter of her hand stopped him. "That wise husband of yours!"
he exploded then, vindictively. "I suppose he's been spilling all he
knows!"
"Did Bel know? Yes: I presume he must have. But you're mistaken, he
didn't tell me. It was this...."
Summerlad frowned, at a loss to identify the volume in her extended
hand.
"I found it, Lynn, quite by accident, while I was waiting. Hope's
_Indian Love Lyrics_. Don't you remember?... See, it's inscribed: '_To
my Lynn, on the first anniversary of our marriage, with all my heart,
Nelly._' And then this picture of you two, published just after you came
here to live.... Oh, Lynn! _why_ did you lie to me about that poor
girl?"
For a moment Summerlad gnawed his underlip without attempting to reply.
Then with a sign of despair he retreated to one end of the club-lounge,
against which he rested, to ease his foot. He said something in an angry
mumble, as Lucinda followed into the room.
"You might have told me, Lynn...."
"I didn't want you to know."
"You must have known I'd find out, sooner or later."
"I thought I could keep it from you until...."
"Till when? Till what?" He growled, inarticulate with vexation. "To let
me go on thinking ... making such a fool of myself!... Since you don't
live together, why aren't you divorced?"
"How do you know I'm not?"
"Because you told me that lying story about her. But you've lied to me
so much and so long, no doubt you think it unreasonable of me now to
expect you to remember everything.... Anyway, if you'd been divorced,
you wouldn't have hesitated to own it. Why aren't you?"
"She refuses to divorce me."
"Why?"
"How do I know? I suppose she's still stuck on me, in her way--hopes to
get me back some time."
"But what prevents you----?"
"Nelly said if I tried to divorce her she'd fight back, and she
knows...."
He didn't finish, but shut his teeth on a blundering tongue and looked
more than ever guilty. But Lucinda was in a pitiless temper.
"About you? You mean--about you and other women?"
"Hang it all! I've never pretended to be a saint, have I, Linda?"
"No wonder the poor thing hated the sight of me!... Oh, how could you
have been so unkind!"
"If you'd only give me a show to explain...."