Linda Lee, Incorporated Part 27

XX

"To tomorrow's morning star of the screen, Linda Lee!"

Thus Lynn Summerlad, mildly exalted, graceful and gracious even beyond his studied habit, flourishing a gla.s.s of California champagne above the dinner table in his bungalow in Beverly Hills.

The toast went by acclamation, and Lucinda laughed, at once gratified, diverted, and disposed to deprecate the spirit of these felicitations as premature.

It all seemed rather ridiculous, when one stopped to think, this taking for granted the success of a venture projected so lately, by no strain of imagination to be considered as already launched, and based wholly upon the postulation that the greenest of novices might by some sorcery of the cinema be ripened overnight into a genius of sorts.

A phrase of Culp's recurred unbidden: "A lot of kids, that's what we got to make pitchers with, a lot of kids."

It was childish, in a way; on the other hand, it was undeniably pleasant to think of oneself as one was being tempted to, as a sort of Sleeping Beauty of the screen only waiting to be awakened to vivid life by one wave of the witching wand of courage and self-confidence; pleasant to let oneself go and believe such things might be.

Nor was this difficult. Whether it resulted from the catching enthusiasm of her company, or from self-reliance new-born of her success in doing without Bellamy, or whether it were the glamour of this romantic land, where man since time out of memory had been accustomed to see his maddest dreams come true, certain it was that there seemed nothing essentially improbable in the a.s.sumption that "Linda Lee," could figure if she would as "tomorrow's morning star of the screen."

One had only to listen to the gossip of Lontaine and Summerlad to appreciate that stranger things had happened in the history of motion-pictures. Nothing, indeed, was conceivably more strange than that same history, more fantastic and incredible than the record of its growth, almost within the span of a single decade, from the status of a toy to that of an inst.i.tution forming an inseparable part of the fabric of life, taking its toll of the humblest, and throning and dethroning kings of finance with the impersonal ruthlessness of an elemental force.

One of the greatest of the producing organizations, whose studios covered whole blocks of the heart of Hollywood, had had its beginnings in a trifling story photographed under a big sun-umbrella in a vacant lot. Its most formidable rival, with which it had ultimately amalgamated, had been first financed with the mean savings of a fur-cutter from the lower East Side of New York. Men whose abilities had proved inadequate to command steady employment at fifty dollars a week in the legitimate theatre were drawing a daily wage of five hundred dollars as directors of motion-pictures. The one-time pantomime comedian of an English company presenting a knockabout vaudeville act had made himself a multi-millionaire through clowning before a camera. Young men whose dramatic equipment was limited to the knowledge of how to show their teeth and slick their hair, young women who had walked into favour on the strength of their n.o.ble underpinning alone, were selling their services to the cinema under contracts running for terms of years at five thousand dollars a week; and you could take it from Mr. Summerlad that most of these had come to Los Angeles with not more than one dollar to click against another.

"Why, look at me," he invited in an expansive moment: "never had earned a dollar in my life. Didn't have to, you know: folks had a little money.

Six years ago my little sister caught a bad cold and the doctor prescribed a Winter in California. Mother and I brought her out and rented a bungalow in the foothills, up back of the Hollywood Hotel. One day while I was wandering about I saw a car-load of people in paint and evening clothes stop in front of a house with good-looking grounds. I stopped, too. So did others; quite a crowd collected while they were setting up the camera. Presently a little fellow in riding-breeches, with an eyeshade, a shock of red hair, and more freckles than anybody ever saw on a human map before or since, came weaving through the crowd as if he was looking for somebody. When he saw me, he stopped and said: 'You'll do. Got a dress suit?' I laughed and said I had. He took out a little book, wrote down my name and address and said: 'Studio tomorrow morning at eight, made up. We'll need you about three days. Five a day.'

Then he hustled on. I went home and told my mother and sister the joke.

They egged me on to try it for the fun of it. Within two months I was on the payroll at a hundred a week, and now...."

Summerlad flashed an apologetic smile. "One of the worst faults we movie actors have, Mrs. Lee, is talking big about our salaries. So I wont say any more than this: outside the Big Four--Mary and Doug and Charlie and Bill Hart--there's mighty few that drag down as much green money a week as I do."

"I'm glad to absolve you of the sin of boasting, Mr. Summerlad."

"I suppose that did sound funny; but then, you see, I _am_ a movie actor, I don't pretend to be better than the rest of us.... You wouldn't guess who that director was--a.s.sistant director he was then--who gave me my first engagement: Barry Nolan!"

The name was apparently known to Lontaine, for he exclaimed "You don't mean it!" as if no more exciting information had come to his ears in many days.

"The man I've got in mind to direct you in your first picture, Mrs. Lee; that is, if you can get hold of Barry. You couldn't do better, but his salary's ee-normous. He's working down in Culver City now, and I don't know how long his contract runs, but you might be lucky enough to make a deal of some sort. I'd give him a ring and find out for you, but I happen to know Barry's got a party on at Sunset tonight. We might jump into my machine and blow down there, if you like."

"There's no hurry, Mr. Summerlad. Remember, Mr. Lontaine hasn't taken the first step toward forming a company yet; he isn't in a position to make Mr. Nolan any definite offer."

"Well, but I'd hate to have you lose a chance. Barry's a wonder. Even Griffith takes a back seat when Barry Nolan picks up the megaphone. And there isn't anything I wouldn't do for him. Lord! how he worked to break me in."

Summerlad sighed, reminiscent. "Them was the happy days. We worked hard for little money, but we had a good time and a healthy one, out in the open air practically all day long. Light effects were then just beginning to be discussed; I don't believe two studios on the Coast had enclosed stages. Generally speaking, all our work was done either on location or on open stages under diffusers."

Lucinda repeated the last word with an enquiring inflexion, and Summerlad explained.

"You see, in those days we had to depend on the sun to light our interior sets, and direct exposure meant hard contrasts of light and shadow that didn't look natural. So we stretched great sheets of thin cloth on wire frames overhead, and they broke up the sun's rays and diffused an even glow all over the sets. But of course that restricted us to overhead lighting for all interiors, and that was monotonous and unnatural besides, because ordinary rooms aren't lighted from the ceiling. And my! but it used to be cosy, working under diffusers on a summer's day!"

"But if you depended on the sun so exclusively," f.a.n.n.y wanted to know, "what did you do in the rainy season?"

"Loafed, that's all: just loafed. There wasn't anything else to do but loaf around and watch the sky for signs of a break and tell each other how good we were. That was another reason why artificial lighting had to come; it cost too much to carry studio overheads with all production at a standstill during a rainy season that would maybe last five months, or a heavy production payroll when often the rain would stop camera-work for five days on end, and you never could count on two clear days together. So, one after another, the big studios began to build enclosed stages and work more and more by Kliegs and Cooper-Hewitts, till at last--well, today the open stage is almost a thing of the past, and acting for the camera isn't the good fun it used to be--kenneled all day long on a sweltering stage, and the lights getting your eyes like they do. Sometimes, after a spell of work on interiors, I'm as good as blind for a week.... Funny to think--isn't it?--the California studios are using artificial light almost exclusively, except of course for location work, when what brought them out here was steady sunlight that didn't cost anything seven or nine months out of each year."

"But if there is no longer any real reason, such as the economy of sunlight, why do the producers stop on here?"

"Because they took root in Los Angeles in the early days, before people had forgotten that principles of ordinary economy might be applied to making pictures, and what took root grew, till today there are hundreds of millions invested in picture plants here. Also because all the picture people have dug in around the plants. Nearly every good actor has his permanent home here, likewise most of the bad ones; and those who do get a job in the East hurry back as soon as they finish up, so as not to be among the missing if they're wanted for another job. You can cast almost any picture perfectly in a few days in Hollywood, whereas any place else, except maybe New York, it would take weeks to locate your people and bring them together, and there'd be transportation to pay for into the bargain."

Lontaine interposed a question of a technical nature, and as Summerlad answered him at length, Lucinda's attention wandered, she began to think more about the speaker, less about what he was saying. Undeniably a most satisfying creature, at least to look at. Bending over the table, his face glowing as he ill.u.s.trated his meaning with an animated play of hands: though his words were all for Lontaine. Summerlad's consciousness was constant to Lucinda, his quick eyes were forever seeking hers....

Hard hit and making no secret of it.

Not that it mattered, more than for the good it did one's self-esteem to be respectfully if openly adored by a personable young man whom one found agreeable. Vanity had been sorely sprung by Bellamy's sacrifice of his wife's love to his appet.i.te for the cheap excitement of flirting with women of cheap emotions. His pursuit of her Lucinda valued at no more than one last effort to salve the hurt her desertion of him had dealt to his vanity. Neither had Daubeney's devotion meant a great deal: being something too familiar through old acquaintance not to be misprized. It had needed some such new conquest as this to make Lucinda think well of herself again; this at least proved her charms not yet pa.s.see. Rea.s.surance for which she was disproportionately grateful; and grat.i.tude is commonly the most demoralizing of vices.

Lucinda inclined to approve the style in which Summerlad maintained himself. The bungalow, secluded in wide and well-kempt grounds, might have served as the warm-weather retreat of a Grand Duke. And if there was a suspicion of rule-of-thumb in some of its effects, at least it could be said that Summerlad had shown sound judgment in selecting an interior decorator of sound taste.

The dinner had been well cooked and served by a deft j.a.panese. As it neared its close a more cheerful partie carree would have been far to seek. Indeed, had Lucinda entertained genuine misgivings as to the wisdom of her decision to try her luck on the screen, they must have been compensated by its action on the spirits of her friends. And it couldn't have been anything else, for they had partaken sparingly of the native champagne which, while fair enough of its kind, was nothing to seduce palates educated on London Dry. Yet f.a.n.n.y's effervescence outvied that of the wine. Lontaine's eyes had lost altogether their tense expression, Summerlad was on his mettle in his dual role of host and courtier, Lucinda herself was stirred by a gayety she had too seldom known since the first years of her marriage.

By merely turning her head she could look out through an open cas.e.m.e.nt to a lawn where moonlight like liquid silver slept between mysterious, dense ma.s.ses of purple shadow. The breath of the night was bland and fragrant. Somewhere at a distance a sentimental orchestra was playing, possibly at the Beverly Hills Hotel. In Chicago the thermometer had shivered in the neighbourhood of zero; New York, according to telegraphic news, was digging out from under a snowfall second only to that of its legendary blizzard.

"I want to purr," Lucinda confessed, finding Summerlad's eyes upon her.

"You're beginning to fall under the spell of California."

"I told you this afternoon I was already sensitive of its enchantment.

Tonight, I think, completes its work: I am enslaved."

"I must make the most of these moments, then. Presently we'll both be busy, you in especial far too busy to give me many evenings like this."

"I'm not at all afraid of being doomed to ennui through any lack of ingenuity in you."

"If I'm not mistaken, that's a dare."

"It's as you care to take it."

He accepted with a smile the smiling gage of her eyes. They understood each other perfectly.

When it was time to return to the Alexandria, Summerlad insisted on driving them home himself; and as they drew near to Hollywood swung the car sharply off the highroad, and took a by-way leading into the foothills. In a few minutes more they had left behind every hint of civilization, other than the well-metalled way they travelled, and were climbing a road that wound snakily up precipitous mountainsides, threaded unholy gulches, or struck boldly across spine-like ridges from which the ground, clothed in chaparral, fell dizzily away on either hand into black gulfs of silence. The air grew colder, Lucinda and the Lontaines grateful for the wraps which Summerlad had pressed upon them.

In the course of half an hour the car halted on an isolate peak, and all the lowlands lay unfolded to their vision, from the foothills to the sea, a land like a violet pool with a myriad winking facets of blue-white light; as some vast store of diamonds might be strewn by hands of heedless prodigality upon a dark velvet field.

Pointing, Summerlad began to recite the names of places represented by lines and groups of lights: Hollywood at their feet, the Wilshire district with Los Angeles beyond, Culver City, Pasadena away to the left, Santa Monica far to the right, Venice, Del Rey, Redondo.... "The kingdoms of the world you're come to conquer, Mrs. Lee."

"I shan't say 'Get thee behind me,'" Lucinda retorted; "I've a sensible notion you're safer where I can keep an eye on you."

It was true enough that the facile infatuation which California inspires in the uninitiate already held her senses in fee; she felt as one might who had miraculously found the way to cross the far horizon and go down into the magic realms of true romance.

But she fell asleep that night to dream of coursing a will-o'-the-wisp through a land whose painted illusion failed and faded as she fled, till in the end there was no more beauty, nor happiness nor hope, but only the bare grin of the desert savage and implacable.

She started awake with her husband's name trembling on her lips.