Linda Lee, Incorporated Part 59

"Call it what you like. Nothing I could say would convince you to the contrary. Does it matter?"

"Then your suggestion doesn't deserve my notice."

"In that event"--Bel smiled in a knowing fashion difficult to tolerate--"I've got my answer, plain enough: you're bent on going on."

"Have you any objection?"

"If I thought my views had any weight with you I might be tempted to tell you."

"You'd waste your time--if you think I don't know what you'd say."

His brows circ.u.mflexed a mocking: "So?"

"You want me to give it up."

"Well"--he stressed a shrug--"one would think you'd seen enough of this sort of thing to satisfy even your curiosity."

"You think I had no other motive?"

"Plus gratification of your vanity--the inevitable factor in every human equation."

"You don't believe my work means anything to me for its own sake?"

"Are you asking me to believe _you_ consider this a life worth while? Or that any success it may purchase is worth the sacrifice?"

"What sacrifice, pray?"

"Of the woman you might yet be, if you'd give up this nonsense."

"I think you must mean the woman I might have been before your conduct killed her in me!"

Bel made a wry face as he stooped to pick up his motor-coat. "This conversation is degenerating into a wrangle in which I have the traditional chance a s...o...b..ll has in the place where motion-pictures were sp.a.w.ned. A husband, even a deserted one, is always in the wrong....

Mind lending me a hand, Linda? Can't quite manage this with one arm."

At once angrily and gently Lucinda draped the motor-coat over his shoulders. "Generalizing on the hardships of husbands," she suggested sweetly, "is hardly an excuse for making it your specialty to be always in the wrong."

"I feel that, you know." Bel replied with lips that twitched--"feel it like everything.... I'm to understand, then, my wishes mean nothing to you?"

Lucinda gave a little, silent laugh, and in silence for a moment gazed on Bellamy, her eyes unreadable. Nor was there the hostility he had expected in the tone in which she asked: "Have you any reason to advance, why your wishes should influence me?"

"If you know of none, Linda--no."

"I know of nothing that counterweighs the persecution you've been subjecting me to, ever since you found out where I was hiding from you--persecution that ended last night in a tragedy. I can't forget that, if you hadn't bribed that unfortunate girl to come back----"

"If I hadn't!" Bel interrupted--"and G.o.d knows I regret what came of that as bitterly as anybody!--if I hadn't brought Nelly back here, you might still be playing fast and loose with Summerlad's ambition to make you his mistress. Got anything to say to that? You know now, at least, he never intended anything else. And yet, if looks could kill, you'd strike me dead where I stand for having presumed to be as wise in advance as you've been made by the event! And because I made the mistake of trying to stage-manage things so you would presently find out for yourself what a rotter you were throwing yourself away on, instead of chancing your deeper hatred by telling you outright what every other soul in Hollywood knew--running the risk of seeing you go straight to his arms to prove your indifference to me--because of that error of judgment you'll see me d.a.m.ned before you'll give up a mode of life for which you're about as well fitted as--as I am for that of the Kingdom of Heaven!"

"You forget, what I don't, Bel," Lucinda said slowly, "that it was you who made the mode of life with which I was content impossible for me. If this life I've taken up here is in some sense a makeshift, it's all I've got to take the place of all I had. And now you'd rob me even of it! And one thing more you forget: If I should give in to your wishes and leave Hollywood today, I would only be doing what you say you want to prevent, confessing by flight that my only real interest in my picture work was my greater interest in Lynn Summerlad. For that reason alone--and not, as you believe, to spite you--I've got to and I'm going to go on to the end of this present production at least. After that ... I don't know...."

Discountenanced, "I hadn't thought of that," Bel owned squarely. "You may be right...."

"I am; but even if I weren't, it wouldn't be any use your trying to force me to forego my chance at a career in pictures just to get rid of you. Believe me, Bel, it's no good. Give it up, give up this producing blind--I know it's only a blind--and go back where you belong. And leave me to do my best with what I have--with what you've left of my happiness. And remember you have my faithful promise to set you free as soon as the courts will grant me a divorce."

"That's your last word, Linda?"

"My last word to you, Bel--I hope."

He hesitated, the muscles of his face working beneath its day-old stubble; and for a moment, reading truly or mistakenly the look in his eyes, from which all anger had died out, Lucinda was in deadly fear lest he were on the verge of making one last appeal in another key, one which she was, in that time of emotions, ill-prepared to deal with.

Then flinging out his hand in the salute of the vanquished, Bel bowed and, whirling on a heel, left her--left Lucinda for once at a loss, intuition inextricably hobbled by a mat of doubts.

XLIII

For how long she was never quite sure Lucinda remained rooted in that moment, unseeing gaze steadfast to that door whose closing had been synchronous with the opening of another upon her understanding, to let in light, a revelation blinding and arrestive, upon the mirk of her distraction--that failure of self-confidence and determination which had come with realization, for the first time in her history, of inability to read her own heart and mind and guide her steps by such self-knowledge.

Thus posed she was found when f.a.n.n.y, weary of knocking and getting no response, without more ceremony drifted in, a vision fair of impudent innocence in dainty organdie, the ravages of "oversleeping" perceptible in dim blue stains beneath eyes the more alluring for such underscoring; and with a start and a cry of solicitude perhaps a thought theatrical, convincing enough for all that, dropped parasol and handbag and ran to strain Lucinda tenderly to her bosom of an adolescent.

"You poor, dear darling!" she cooed--"no wonder you sounded so troubled over the telephone--and so sad! I couldn't imagine ... Why didn't you tell me?"

"How did you hear?" Lucinda evaded, gently extricating herself to disguise distaste for the sickly-sweet fragrance of f.a.n.n.y's breath. "Who told you?"

"The papers, dearest: haven't you seen them?" Lucinda fell back a step, clasping her hands in sharp dismay: she had never once thought of the newspapers. "Screaming headlines on every page: one would think Lynn, poor dear! was the President of the United States lying at point of death from an a.s.sa.s.sin's bullet.... But what a frightful experience for you!"

"It was a shock," Lucinda a.s.sented in a murmur. Without conscious volition she found herself moving away to a window, as if to hide her emotion. "When I heard...." In private amazement she heard her voice break; and touching a handkerchief to her lips, said no more.

"Heard! but you were there, weren't you, when it happened?"

Still acting as if in deference to an authority outside herself, Lucinda, without withdrawing her gaze from the street--now basking in the calm gold of the belated sun--deliberately shook her head.

"When I found you and Harry weren't coming," she said--"I mean, when Lynn told me what you had telephoned, I came away. I thought it best, everything considered."

"Oh, how fortunate!"

But there was in that exclamation an undertone of disbelief clear enough to untrusting ears. And of a sudden Lucinda, while continuing to view with astonishment her duplicity, all unpremeditated as it had been, no more regretted it.

"Fortunate?" she breathed. "I don't know ... perhaps...."

Now too thoroughly enmeshed in tissue of involuntary falsehoods to extricate herself without confession, she collected her wits to deal with f.a.n.n.y's breathlessly vollied questions; and found curious gratification in matching the texture of fact with strand after strand of fabrication, till at length the stuff of lies was woven in with and not to be distinguished from that of the truth. Mixed with which feeling was a sort of dull and angry wonder at herself, that she should be doing something so foreign to her every instinct, lying with such shameless artistry to the one true friend she had saved from the shipwreck of her old life--and this at the behest of the man who alone had been responsible for that disaster.

She had no more than reached home (she told f.a.n.n.y) after refusing to stop at the bungalow for dinner alone with Summerlad, when Bel telephoned to tell her what had happened. Suspicious of Nelly's temper for days, Bel, upon her failure to keep a dinner engagement with him, had traced her to Beverly Hills, arriving just too late, if in time to be shot in the arm by Nelly when he tried to prevent her escape.

Determined to see Summerlad--not as yet comprehending the whole truth concerning his relationship to Nelly--Lucinda had instructed her chauffeur to leave her car at the side door of the Hollywood; meaning to drive secretly to Beverly Hills. But this she couldn't do till Bel kept his promise to call and give her all details. It was while they were talking that the car had disappeared. Bel had promptly reported the theft to the police, and that morning had called to tell Lucinda how sharp work had trailed it north along the Coastal Highway to the scene of Nelly's death.... Accident or suicide, who could say?...

At the same time Bel had begged her to make sure of f.a.n.n.y's silence in respect of the aborted dinner party. It was unnecessary that Lucinda's name should be dragged into the case in any way, if it were she could hardly hope to come through with her incognita intact. She felt that she owed Bel that much consideration; it wasn't his fault she was still his wife. Not that she herself had any wish to court publicity in connection with the affair....

"But of course, darling! you know you can depend on me."