Linda Lee, Incorporated Part 35

Such was her first thought.... In another minute or two, as soon as she was able to acknowledge what she might not much longer ignore, Bellamy's att.i.tude of patient but persevering attention, everybody present must learn that she had no right t.i.tle to the style by which she had palmed herself off on Hollywood; by nightfall the studios would be agog over the news that Linda Lee was no less a personage than Mrs. Bellamy Druce.

She was curiously disturbed less because of the circ.u.mstances in which her husband had found her out than on account of the menace he presented to the plans she had of late begun to nurse so tenderly. All at once Lucinda discovered how pa.s.sionately her heart had become implicated in this adventure, how deeply the ambition had struck its roots into her being to win by native ability unaided to those starry eminences whereon the great ones of the cinema sojourned. To hear the inevitable verdict read upon her career before it was fairly launched, "Another screen-struck society woman!" were an affront to decent self-esteem by the side of which it seemed a trivial matter that Bellamy, no more her husband but by grace of the flimsiest of civil fictions, had caught her in the act of kissing another man.

Notwithstanding, her cheeks were hot, she experienced infinite vexation of the knowledge; and--all her efforts to recover hindered by a silence d.a.m.nably eloquent of general sensitiveness to a piquant and intriguing moment--she was shaken by gusts of impotent irritation in whose grasp she could almost without a qualm have murdered Bellamy where he stood, if only to quench that graceless grin of his, and the more readily since he, on his part, seeing her reduced to temporary incompetence, chose to treat her with the most exemplary and exasperating magnanimity.

Hat in hand, the other proffered in sublime effrontery, smiling his winningest smile, Bel strode blithely into the forbidden ground of the camera lines; while his gay salutation fell upon ears incredulous.

"How d'you do, Miss Lee. Don't say you've forgotten me so soon! Druce, you know, Bellamy Druce----"

"Don't be ridiculous, Bel!"

"Can't blame me for wondering--can you?--the way you stare, as if I were a ghost."

"So you are," Lucinda retorted, shocked into gasping coherence by this impudence. "I can't imagine a greater surprise...."

"I believe you. But think of mine--I mean, of course, my astonishment."

Bel would have her hand, there was no refusing him that open sign of friendship; for an instant Lucinda let it rest limply in his grasp, appreciating there was nothing she could do now but take his cues as they fell, and treat the rencontre as one of the most welcome she had ever experienced....

"But wherever did you bob up from, Bel?"

"From the East, naturally--last night's train. The Alexandria told me where you'd moved, the Hollywood directed me to your studio, somebody there said you might be found out here--'working on location,' think he called it. So took a chance--and here I am. Hope you don't mind...."

"Mind? Why should I?"

"Couldn't be sure I wasn't violating Hollywood etiquette. Never saw a movie in the making before, you know. Most entertaining. Congratulate you and Mr. Summerlad on the way you played your little scene just now.

Only for the camera over there, I'd have sworn you both meant it."

"Don't put too much trust in the camera, Mr. Druce," Summerlad interposed blandly. "Rumour to the contrary notwithstanding, the blame'

thing has been known to lie."

"H'are you, Mr. Summerlad?" Bellamy met his impudence with irresistible audacity. "So we meet again. Sure we would some day. Well: pleasanter circ.u.mstances than last time, what?"

"Conditions are what one makes them, out here in California. I hope you'll find the climate healthier than Chicago's."

"Trust me for that," Bellamy retorted in entire good-humour. "But, I say"--he glanced in feigned apprehension toward the camera--"not obstructing traffic, am I?"

"No fear, or Jacques would've bawled you out long ago."

"'Sright," Jacques averred, coming forward to be introduced. "All through for today, folks," he called back. "Le's go!"

Breaking into small knots and straggling off to the waiting motor-cars, the company prepared for its journey home, while cameras and properties were packed up and the horses herded away toward their overnight quarters in Azusa.

Slender, fair, insouciant, looking a precocious little girl in her extravagantly brief skirts, but with all the wisdom of Eve a-glimmer in her wide eyes, f.a.n.n.y sauntered up and permitted Bellamy to be presented.

"My chaperon," Lucinda explained with the false vivacity of overtaut nerves--"the straight-laced conservator of les convenances."

"I hope very truly," Bel a.s.serted, bowing over f.a.n.n.y's hand--"you never need one less charming or more complaisant."

f.a.n.n.y giggled, enjoying the contretemps hugely and determined it shouldn't lose savour for want of ambiguous seasoning.

"As for complaisance, the camera covers a mult.i.tude of indiscretions.

That aside"--her glance coupled Lucinda and Summerlad in delicately malicious innuendo--"taking one consideration with another, a chaperon's lot is not a vapid one."

"I'm sure of that," Bellamy agreed with a straight face. "Not only that, but if you've any time at all to spare for your job, Mrs. Lontaine, the percentage of impaired eyesight among native sons must be high."

"Appreciation is such a beautiful thing!" f.a.n.n.y purred. "Dear man! I do hope you'll be lingering in our midst a long, long time."

"No such luck for me. A few days at most. I only ran out to go over some matters with my man of business out here."

"The square-headed body with the blue gimlet eyes?" f.a.n.n.y enquired, openly appraising the person who had accompanied Bellamy to this meeting, but who remained in the car with stony gaze riveted on nothing in particular--"who looks like a private detective in a five-reel re-hash of the eternal triangle?"

"The same."

"You have so many interests in California, you need a man on the spot to look after them?"

"Not many but, such as they are, of prime importance to me," Bellamy corrected with meaning.

"How romantic!" f.a.n.n.y sighed, with a look so provocative that Bellamy's mouth twitched involuntarily and he hoped fervently that Lucinda wasn't looking.

He needn't have worried. Lucinda was too thoroughly occupied with her own reactions to the several more agitating aspects of this predicament to have any thoughts to spare for frivolous by-issues.

Not only that, but in pace with the growth of her interest in Summerlad, the sense of detachment from all actual relationship to Bellamy had come to be so absolute it could never have occurred to her to be anything but entertained by the notion of a reciprocal interest springing up between f.a.n.n.y Lontaine and her husband. f.a.n.n.y knew her way about, in the by-ways of flirtation was as sure of foot as any chamois on its native crags. As for Bellamy, in Lucinda's sight he was no longer property of hers, he was free to follow the list of his whim, free as the wind, as free as herself....

But the bare conception of anything of the sort was far from her mind just then, too many graver considerations were making imperative demands. To begin with, she was at one and the same time grateful to Bellamy for being so decent about her a.s.sumed ident.i.ty and in a raging temper with him for having dared to follow her across the Continent, in sequel to the even more intolerable insolence of setting detectives to spy upon her. No more than in f.a.n.n.y's mind was there question in Lucinda's as to the real calling of that "man of business" whom Bellamy had left in his car. But she earnestly wanted to know how long and how closely that one had been her shadow, and what he had reported concerning the interests professional and social which had been engaging her.

More than this, Lucinda was at a loss to think how to deal with Bel, now he was here. Patently on his good behaviour, taking care of himself, not drinking too much; more like the man she had married for love so long ago; showing so vast an improvement over the Bellamy of later years that his unpretending presence alone somehow was enough to diminish the stature of every man present and place even Summerlad on the defensive--Lynn Summerlad, the crowned exquisite of the screen!--obviously the Bel of today was not to be reckoned with as readily as one had reckoned with the drink-stupid, conscience-racked Bel of yesterday.

Disturbed by the sound of a voice addressing her in a tone pitched to pa.s.s unheard by Bellamy, she lifted perplexed eyes to Summerlad's face.

"You're dining with me tonight. Don't forget."

"I don't know ..." Lucinda doubted. "Ought I?"

"Why on earth not? Surely you won't let _him_ influence you?"

"I don't know what's best. It might be better to see him tonight and get it over with."

"Don't be foolish. Besides, I'm telling you, not asking you. I'll call for you as soon as I can get home, change, and run back to the Hollywood."

She liked and resented this dictation, and showed both emotions in a semi-petulant smile which she intended as a preface to a retort that was never uttered. For Bellamy interrupted, and immediately she was glad of Summerlad's insistence and forgave him.

"Anxious to see you, Linda, of course, and have a talk, some time when you're not professionally engaged. Tonight be agreeable?"

"Sorry, Bel, but I'm booked for tonight."

"Tomorrow, then?"