Linda Lee, Incorporated Part 20

She thought of telegraphing old Harford Willis, who had been her father's close friend, legal adviser, and executor of his estate, as he was today steward of Lucinda's. But he could not be expected to understand a peremptory demand for money in Lucinda's name, from a city which he had no reason to believe she had ever even thought of visiting, without explanations too lengthy and intimate for transmission by telegraph. The alternative was to write him, and that meant a long, full letter, for (Lucinda suddenly discovered) Willis was the one man in the world whom she could safely and freely confide in, consult and trust.

She did not even remember Dobbin's pretensions to such standing with her. In the first twenty-four hours of her flight from Bellamy she had not thought of Daubeney once. Now, when she thought of him at all, it was as of some revenant of kindly countenance from a half-forgotten dream.

She spent most of the afternoon composing her letter and despatched it after dinner, a rather formidable ma.n.u.script under a special delivery stamp.

After that there was nothing to do but fold her hands and commend her soul to patience.

Three eventless days dropped out of her history. The dreary weather held, there was rain and snow, gales like famished banshees pounded and yammered at the hotel windows. She seldom ventured into the streets, even for exercise. She read a great many novels purchased at the hotel news-stand, or pretended to, for her mind refused as a general thing to travel with the lines of print. Her most exciting diversion lay in reviewing and enlarging the list of things she meant to buy as soon as she was able. And one afternoon she went to see Alma Daley in her latest production (not "The Girl in the Dark," of course, it was too soon for that) at a motion-picture theatre near the hotel.

She came away confirmed in her belief that Miss Daley was an unusually attractive and capable young mistress of pantomime. But the picture-play itself had seemed frightfully dull stuff. Indeed, Lucinda had experienced considerable difficulty in following its thread of plot, and sat it out only because of her personal interest in the actress.

Returning to her rooms possessed by memories of that afternoon she had spent at the studios of Culp Cinemas Inc., the last afternoon of her life as Bellamy's wife, she wondered, not with any great interest, how her tests had turned out, what the others, Dobbin and Jean and Nelly, and f.a.n.n.y Lontaine and her husband, had thought of them; whether any one had known or guessed the reason for her absence, when they had gathered in Culp's projection-room for the showing; whether any one had cared.

Dobbin had cared, of course. At least, Dobbin had believed he cared. So had Lucinda, then....

How long ago it seemed!

XV

INEXPRESSIBLY SHOCKED ARRIVING TO-MORROW WILL CALL ON YOU TEN A M MEANWHILE BANK OF MICHIGAN WILL SUPPLY YOU WITH FUNDS IN ANY AMOUNT YOU MAY REQUIRE IF YOU WILL BE PLEASED TO IDENTIFY YOURSELF TO MR. SOUTHARD THERE.

The author of this telegram, which was delivered on the morning of Lucinda's fifth day in Chicago, was punctual to the minute of his appointment; otherwise he would hardly have been the rectilinear gentleman of the frock-coat school that he was.

Notwithstanding that Harford Willis was pledged to a code of morals and manners vinted in the early Eighteen-Eighties, and so implacably antagonistic to the general trend of present-day thought on the divorce question, his great affection for Lucinda predisposed him to allow that the course she had taken with Bellamy had been the only one his conduct had left open to her.

On the other hand he was unhappily unable to hide the disconcertion inspired by the simple gladness of her greeting, the spontaneity of which was in such marked contrast to his own well-composed demeanour of honorary pall-bearer at a fas.h.i.+onable funeral.

"If you only knew how good it is to see a friendly face for the first time in a whole week!"

"But, my dear Lucinda," Willis intoned deliberately in his well-modulated voice of a public speaker, "I must say you seem to be bearing up remarkably well, all things considered, re-mark-ably well."

"I've stopped howling and drumming the floor with my heels," Lucinda admitted--"if that's what you mean. When I found it didn't do any good, I gave it up, and I've felt more cheerful ever since."

"Cheerful!" Willis repeated in a sepulchral voice.

"More like an average human being who's been horribly hurt but who can't see why life should be counted a total loss for all that; less like the wronged wife in a movie, mugging at a camera."

"But, my poor child! how you must have suffered."

"Let's not talk about that, please," Lucinda begged. "It only makes me vindictive to remember; and I don't want to feel that way about Bel, I don't want to be unjust. It's bad enough to have to be just."

"Must you?" Willis asked, shaking a commiserative head.

"Yes." Lucinda met his skeptical old eyes with eyes of clear candour.

"Absolutely," she added with a finality not to be discredited.

Willis sighed heavily, released her hand, sat down, and meticulously adjusted the knees of striped grey trousers.

"I will confess I had hoped to find you of another mind."

"I'm sorry. Please don't think me hard or unforgiving, but ... I've had plenty of time to mull things over, you know; and _I_ know I couldn't consider going back to Bel, no matter what he might be ready to promise.

Bel can't keep a promise, not that kind, at least."

"I feel sure you wrong him there; it's true I don't know your husband as well as I know you, my dear, but I a.s.sure you that amongst men he has the reputation of a man of honour."

"Man of honour meaning, I presume, one who won't cheat another man but will cheat a woman."

"Oh, come! that's a bit sweeping."

"The men who know Bel know how he's been treating me--all New York knows! If he treated them as treacherously, would they call him a man of honour?" Willis gave a vague gesture of deprecation, and Lucinda laughed a little, but not in mirth. "Women are at least more honest among themselves; if a woman knows another who isn't playing fair with her husband, she either keeps quiet about it or calls her a cat, and lets it go at that--she doesn't call her a woman of honour."

"You don't think it would be worth while," Willis suggested as one in duty bound, "to forgive Bellamy, give him another chance?"

"I don't know I've got anything to forgive him, Mr. Willis. Bel did the best he could. And that's the whole trouble. Why should I forgive him for being true to himself? It's myself I can't forgive, because I was silly enough to let him go on as long as I did, making me a laughing-stock.... Besides, I'm not so sure it's good for us to be forgiven our sins; we're all such vain creatures, we're too apt to take forgiveness as a license to misbehave still more.... Don't you see?"

"I see you are beginning to formulate a philosophy of life."

"Isn't it about time?"

"You will need it, my dear, if you mean to fight this out alone.

Philosophy is good medicine only for lonely hearts. The others it merely hardens."

Lucinda eyed Willis sharply. "Bel has been to see you."

"He looked me up," Willis admitted in mild surprise, "two days after your disappearance, thinking you might have communicated with me. Of course, I could tell him nothing. But how did you know----?"

"That suggestion, the underlying thought that I might not be intending to fight out my fight alone--that originated with Bel, didn't it?"

"Well!" Willis stammered, trying to smile disarmingly--"I confess----"

"It wasn't enough, of course, that I should have found Bel out for the dozenth time, there had to be a lover in _my_ background to account for my leaving _him_! Did he mention any name?"

Willis made a negative sign. "Bellamy didn't imply--he merely said he was afraid----"

"It doesn't matter. What else did he have to say?"

"He seemed most remorseful----"

"I know how remorseful Bel can seem."

"And determined----"

"In what way?"