Linda Lee, Incorporated Part 53

"Please yourself. But remember, the papers are going to make big capital out of this scandal in the movie colony. They've been itching for it for years, licking their chops with impatience, knowing it was bound to break some day.... Good G.o.d! what's got into you, Linda? How long do you imagine it'll be, after this affair gets into print, before the reporters will ferret out the fact that 'Linda Lee' is Mrs. Bellamy Druce? Do you want to go into a witness-box and testify against that demented creature when she's tried for murder? Do you want everybody who knows you--all your friends back home--to think what everybody in his sane mind has every right to think?"

"What you think...."

"What the devil do you care what _I_ think? But if it comes to that, tell me this: If you aren't what people are going to say you are, what are you doing here, alone with Summerlad, in his own home, at night?"

"The Lontaines were coming to dinner, but----"

"'But'!" Bel snorted. "Oh, all right! I'll be a high-minded a.s.s, if that'll satisfy you; I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, if that'll induce you to clear out of this before it's too late. But don't forget I'm the only one who will. His wife wouldn't--didn't. Neither will another living soul who knows you were here when this thing happened.

Your only salvation now is to get back to the hotel and lie low; if you hear any rumours, be as much surprised as anybody; if you're asked any questions, know absolutely nothing. If you'll do that, and leave the rest to me, perhaps I can save you."

"You are too kind----"

"I'm not. Don't fool yourself. I'm thinking of n.o.body but Bellamy Druce.

All I'm after is to save my name from being linked up with this rotten business. Think of yourself, as I'm thinking of myself, then. Think whether it's going to be worth the name you'll get, to have the satisfaction of this heroic gesture, this theatrical effect of sticking bravely by the side of your actor lover--so n.o.bly wounded!--this man whose promiscuous amours have made his name a by-word even here, even in Hollywood!... But for the love of G.o.d, think quickly!"

He ceased upon a note of impatient admonishment, then, when Lucinda remained silent, changed his tone.

"I treated you badly enough, G.o.d knows! but you paid me out properly, you can afford to be magnanimous now. I've done nothing to deserve your active ill-will since you left me. And it isn't as if you could do Summerlad any good by staying. His fate's all up to the surgeons. And you can trust me to see that everything possible is done for him. I'll keep you posted, I'll come to the hotel tonight and tell you what the surgeon says."

He bent with painful effort and lifted her wrap. She took it without a word, swung it round her shoulders, turned and left the room.

Bellamy followed as far as the front door. His car was waiting on the drive, its motor running. The chauffeur, already instructed, held the tonneau door for Lucinda, closed it smartly, smartly climbed into place at the wheel. She looked back as they drew away. Bellamy stood en silhouette against the light, nursing his bandaged arm. A turn in the drive blocked out that picture, the car wheeled sharply into the public street, gathered speed. And Lucinda crouched down in her corner, chilled to her marrow by realization of the loneliness of her lot, from whom Life had stripped away even the forlorn company of her last, most dear illusion....

XL

Amazing to learn, upon authority as sound as that of the clock in the hotel lobby, that the age of the evening was still something short of nine ... preposterous to credit that lapse of time so little could have wrought the transformation of life's kindly countenance at close of day to its present cast, so bleak, forbidding, and implacable....

Yet neither circ.u.mstance was a whit less certain or more disputable than the other. And that the hour was what it was, no earlier, no later, gave one good reason for thanksgiving. For now the miscellaneous dinner mob with its components of envious sharp eyes and ungenerous tongues had scattered on its various ways; while the cinemaniacs were not yet due to come trooping home from the neighbouring halls of their addiction. Only the elderlies remained in evidence, that element of the clientele which f.a.n.n.y had styled the Grumpies in discrimination from the Gaddies; staid, smug bodies in black taffeta, old lace fichus and rocking-chairs, or stiff collars, shapeless trousers and blunt-nosed boots, devoted to solitaire, fancy-work, and gossip of the home-brewed brand that cheers but not inebriates; a species of migratory perennials to whom the cotton-wool climate of Southern California is a sort of gracious prelude to the grave; at once avidly intrigued by and as honestly innocent of that other Hollywood with whose lively denizens they rubbed shoulders daily, as of the other world and its press of equally unquiet souls.

Dotting the public rooms with little groups, engrossed in cards, knitting, and placid prattle, these took only casual account of the flying transit of that vision of elegance and youthful charm with evening wrap caught high about the pretty face. Such sightly shapes were too much a commonplace of their deliberate and self-sufficient days, and always pa.s.sed in haste; as young blood does ever, irrationally enough, having so much time before it, so little patience....

So, though she knew them for a pack of greedy scandal scavengers, and conceived every eye among them to be regardful of her and all her shifts to deceive them spent for naught, not one who observed her guessed with what agitation she was a-quake, what unrelenting urgency whipped on her feet till they all but stumbled in their eagerness to find her sanctuary behind locked doors, where she might ease off at last the tension of self-control, pillow her sore and aching head, and give range to the pent tempest of emotions brewed by love thwarted and chagrined, faith confounded, dreams done shamefully to death....

Fleeting free of that gauntlet, she gave a sigh to find herself in the quiet corridor leading to her apartment. How good it was to think she would in another minute be alone, what an inspiration had been hers when, looking forward to an evening long drawn out, she had given her maid liberty till morning!

She pa.s.sed the door through which she once had ventured to discover Nelly Marquis lying in a faint brought about by Lynn's cruelty.... And now what would become of that one? Whither had she turned in her flight?

with what hope of asylum or immunity? A hapless creature beating blindly through the night, a land-bird swept to sea by an off-sh.o.r.e gale, questing what it might never hope to find....

Lucinda slipped into her sitting-room, turned the key, found the switchbox near the door, and in an abrupt blaze of illumination stood, startled beyond speech, face to face with the woman the riddle of whose fate had been riding her imagination.

One of Nelly's hands was planted flat against the wall; but this support helped not at all to abate the vicious racking of her body by nerves deranged. The other, a begrimed fist, was fumbling at her mouth. Those eyes whose haunted beauty had first laid claim to one's humanity were now--their blazing madness of a short hour since dispelled--black pools of pathos in a face whose chalkiness was runneled by tears and framed in hair like tarred rope unravelled. Her dress of hackneyed smartness was bedraggled, the skirt marked by knees that in some fall had ground into loam. The black satin slippers were pale with dust, and the openwork stockings, which boasted two great tears as well.

In that first flash of affrighted recognition, Lucinda started back to the door and fumbled for the key, but had yet to find it when the woman plunged down to grovel at her feet, catching at her knees, lifting up a face of torment, supplicating against teeth that chattered as if with an acute ague.

"O Mrs. Druce, Mrs. Druce! I'm all right now, I am, I swear I am!

Forgive me, and for G.o.d's sake don't turn me out, don't call the police!"

Still frightened and mistrustful, Lucinda yet held her hand on the k.n.o.b.

"What do you want?" she asked in a voice that shook.

"Just to talk to you a minute.... Don't be afraid...."

"I'm not afraid," Lucinda lied. Nevertheless, in compa.s.sion and dawning rea.s.surance, she stooped, freed her skirts from the clutching hands, and stepped back. "Get up," she said, watchful. "Tell me plainly what you want...."

The woman scrambled to her feet again, cringing and fawning. "I had to come," she protested. "I didn't know where else to go, I had to know.

Mrs. Druce: please tell me, is he.... Did I hurt him bad?"

"Desperately," Lucinda replied, wondering at the reserve of fort.i.tude which enabled her to speak with such composure. "Whether he'll live or not we don't know yet. He was unconscious when I left, before the doctor came."

"You left him that way? You didn't wait to find out! O my G.o.d!"

"Are you reproaching me?" Lucinda retorted in amazement--"as if it were I who shot your husband!"

"_My_ husband!" Nelly shrilled. "It's yours I'm talking about, it's Mr.

Druce. It's not knowing how bad I hurt him that's driving me crazy ...

not meaning to harm even his little finger, I hope to die! I didn't hardly know who he was, that time while we was fighting...." She drove her knuckles against her mouth again and sunk teeth into them till pain helped her rea.s.sert self-control. "I didn't know what I was doing!" she mumbled between sobs----"I didn't know."

"Do you know now?"

"Oh, I do, I do! I'm all right now, honestly I am. I know what I've done and what--what I've got to pay for doing it. But I don't care!" She jerked up her chin, bravado fighting with fear in her eyes. "Lynn only got what was coming to him. I warned him often enough, time after time I told him how it was all bound to end if he kept on like he was doing; but he wouldn't listen, he'd just laugh and tell me what I could do if I didn't like his ways.... I don't mean I threatened him, Mrs. Druce. It wasn't like that. I don't believe I ever dreamed of striking back at him before today. I always thought it would be some other woman would do it, somebody that didn't love him like I did, and couldn't stand being treated like a dog, just because he got tired--I always thought somebody like that would make Lynn pay, I never thought I'd have the nerve. But today, all at once, I couldn't seem to stand it any longer.... And when I looked in at that window and saw you alone with him, and him holding you in his arms, even if you did try to make him quit.... But I'm not sorry! Lynn never treated any woman so mean, and I guess it was right his punishment should come from me. I ain't a bit sorry, I hope he dies.... Do you--do you think he will?"

To the implicit hope that thus gave vaunted impenitence the lie, Lucinda returned, in a low tone and against her wish, the one word, "Probably...." and saw the woman quail and writhe away, twisting her thin, graceful hands into each other till their knuckles shone dead white through the tortured skin.

"I don't care," she wailed--"I don't! And anyway, it wasn't about him, it was Mr. Druce I came here to find out about. I couldn't go away without knowing.... He's been such a prince to me, a regular prince, and I never meant him any harm. It just makes me sick to think...." She swung pa.s.sionately back to Lucinda. "Won't you please, _please_ tell me how bad he's hurt?"

"Not much--a flesh wound in the arm----"

"Thank G.o.d it wasn't worse!" Nelly drooped heavily against the wall, with a pathetic smile testifying to her relief of mind. "I'd never have forgiven myself, never...."

Profound fatigue seemed to be overcoming her. The quavering murmurs failed upon her lips, her eyes closed, her head sagged toward one shoulder.

"Are you in love with him, then?" Lucinda demanded inexorably. "Is Bel in love with you?"

Startled, Nelly stood away from the wall, with a hysterical note in the laugh that scorned this notion. "No, no, no, no!" she cried. "He isn't that sort. You ought to know he isn't. I don't know what the trouble was between you two, but I'll tell the world it wasn't on account of any other woman.... It wasn't as if Mr. Druce didn't have his chance, either; any time he'd wanted it he could have had it with me, anytime!"

"Yet you tell me you're not in love with him!"

"You don't have to be in love in the picture business...." The fugitive, twisted smile vanished away, the l.u.s.treless eyes stared into s.p.a.ce.

"Mostly it's better if you aren't. If you are, it's likely to turn out like it did with me and Lynn. If a girl wants to get on, she can't afford to care for anybody, only herself. It hasn't mattered much to me what happened, since Lynn.... But Mr. Druce never as much as held my hand."

"Wouldn't you tell me that anyway?"

"It's G.o.d's honest truth."