Linda Lee, Incorporated Part 62

In the upshot Lucinda acknowledged receipt of neither, but for two mornings her waste-basket, with its deep drifts of note-paper minutely sc.r.a.pped, bore witness to her endeavors to frame a reply at once final and not too cruel.

Better (she decided) send no word at all than a letter which could only hurt his pride ... _if_ Lynn still believed he loved her ... if he had ever!...

The talk of the studio kept her advised concerning the good progress of his convalescence. She knew no doubt at all but that he would as speedily get well of his disappointment in her.

For her part, the thing was dead and done and finished and as something that had never been; the only wonder was, it ever had....

One evening, as she was leaving the studio, she met Wallace Day on the steps of the administration building, and learned from him that, making fair allowance for every imaginable delay, he counted on making an end to camera-work in two days more.

Accordingly, instead of going directly home to the Hollywood, Lucinda motored to Los Angeles and booked reservations for Reno by the night train of the second day following, a slow train but the first that she could feel sure of catching.

She had meant to keep her purpose secret, holding it of no consequence to anybody but herself what she might elect to do, once her work was finished, and bearing in mind the possibility that, if news of her intention should by any chance leak out at the studio, it would find its way to the ears of Summerlad. She understood that he was now far enough forward on the road to recovery to spend part of each day in an invalid chair, and thought it wise to run no risk of finding out that his improvement had been understated.

Conscience nevertheless reproached her when she thought of f.a.n.n.y, and on the way back to the Hollywood she instructed her chauffeur to make a detour and stop at f.a.n.n.y's hotel.

If f.a.n.n.y had no prior engagement, they might have one last evening together. But she would hold back her news till the moment came to say good-bye....

Drawing near the hotel, she recognized the conspicuously ornamental car of Barry Nolan waiting at the carriage-block, and as she bent forward to tell her chauffeur not to stop, she had changed her mind, she saw f.a.n.n.y come out of the entrance, Nolan ambling, with an air of contented habit, at her elbow.

At the same time f.a.n.n.y caught sight of Lucinda, pulled up short in confusion, then smiled brightly and waved a hand, while Nolan rather blankly fingered the visor of his cap. And Lucinda nodded, smiled in turn, and pa.s.sed, wondering if the deep colour she had remarked in f.a.n.n.y's cheek had been merely the sunset's mordant comment on an artful glow of pink.

Well: that was that....

Yet it was long before the picture faded of that girlish figure, posed prettily in startlement, brief skirts whipped about it by the evening wind, with its gay look of mirth, half shame-faced, half-impudent, wholly charming ... sweet grist for the mills whose grinding knows no rest.

The pity of it!... Or was it? Had one the right to say? The mills of Mammon grind ever but free will alone keeps the hoppers filled. The choice had been with f.a.n.n.y, she had chosen in conformance with the dictates of predisposition.

And who could say she hadn't chosen wisely, who had every gift that makes for swift and prosperous progress along the road she had preferred to go?--beauty and wit, ready adaptability, and that highly developed sense of self which often enables the worst of women to travel far and thriftily. Idle to waste time deploring that she had seen fit to throw herself away on Nolan: she hadn't, Nolan, though he might never know it, was but a stepping-stone, a single link in a chain that led to a far sh.o.r.e whose sands were dust of gold....

XLV

When she had bribed her maid to observe discretion concerning her plans, and had herself attended to the business of checking her trunks through to Reno, thus keeping her destination secret even from the woman, Lucinda felt fairly confident of getting away unhindered and unpursued.

In the middle of the afternoon, finding she was to be detained at the studio till the last moment, Lucinda telephoned the maid to take her hand-luggage to the station and have it put in her drawing-room. She caught the train with little to spare, and not until it was in motion did she discover the box of roses in the luggage-rack overhead.

Her favorites, Hadleys, two dozen suavely moulded blooms of deepest crimson, exquisitely fresh and fragrant; roses such as Bel had been accustomed to send her daily, once upon a time ... how long ago!...

Eyes cloudy with the dreams of yesterday their breath inspired, Lucinda sat a long time with the open box upon her lap.

An age since any one had sent her flowers....

The box bore the name of a city florist, but was untagged and contained no card to identify the donor.

From Summerlad, by any chance? Lucinda didn't think so. If Lynn had thought it worth his while to try to win her back with roses, he wouldn't have waited so long, and he would never have neglected to enclose a card or a note.

No: that chapter was closed, and Lynn must surely know how wasted would be his every effort to reopen it.

In the end Lucinda concluded that the maid had bought the flowers for her, as a gift of grat.i.tude. Wildly fanciful as this hypothesis might appear, there had in this instance been unusual provocation, Lucinda in all her dealings with the woman had been more than generous.

And, after all, flowers were plentiful in Los Angeles and among the few things reasonably priced.

Arranged in the metal catch-alls in the corners of the drawing-room, stems bedded in wet tissue-paper, they made a brave show through the evening, and proved rare company, too, trembling with eagerness to salute Lucinda with lovely, friendly nods, and drenching the dead atmosphere with a witching sweetness that called up memories like gentle ghosts.

Their rich yet subtle perfume saturated her mood and coloured every thought as she lay wakeful in the dark, watching the ghastly panorama of the Cajon Pa.s.s, basking in unearthly moonlight, unfold like a march upon the hitherside of h.e.l.l, and, later on, the vast, still ranges of the desert, where tortured cacti entreated Heaven with frozen gestures of torment and terror, while from afar the goblin hills looked on in dark, sphinxlike disdain.

Here, linking widely s.p.a.ced oases, where the pepper-tree and eucalyptus shadowed roofs of ribbed iron, and the pineapple palm posed its graceful fronds against the ungainly bulks of water-tanks on stilts, dim trails ran with the tracks, and ever and again panting and bouncing flivvers would spring up out of the night to race the train for a mile or so, or, less frequently, cars more powerful would overtake and distance it as it laboured up-grade; shapes of solid shadow hurtling through the night as if breaking their hearts in hopeless efforts to overtake the fugitive fans of light thrown out by their lamps ... as men pursue hope through life ... as women pursue love....

And Lucinda, watching, wondered at life's strangeness and its sadness, and marvelled at the mettle men are made of to sustain them through the race, though they know the end is ever failure, heart-break, death.

The scent of roses numbed mind and senses: pain and opiate in one....

And it was as if she had slept not at all, save that she felt rested; as if she had closed her eyes on darkness and unclosed them an instant later to find the very scene she had been gazing on bathed in hot splendor of sunlight, warm with colour. Still the desert stretched its flats of sand and alkali, sage and cactus, to a far, notched rim of hills, still the train drudged stoutly on an up-grade, buffeting the hushed air with stentorian gasps; still upon the trail beside the tracks raced the motor-car Lucinda had been watching when sleep claimed her....

Another car, of course. Nevertheless the coincidence was surprising.

She lay for a little lazily watching it; a powerful, spirited piece of machinery, well-driven, breasting gallantly that long ascent about which the train was making such great ado; drawing abeam, forging ahead, flirting derisively a tail of dust as it vanished from the field commanded by the window.... Bound whither? upon what urgency of life or death? that it must make such frantic haste in the heat of the desert sun!...

Heat was already beginning to make the tiny drawing-room resemble a cubicle in Tophet. Lucinda rose, ransacked her luggage for her flimsiest garments, gave her flesh the sketchy sponging which was all that facilities permitted, dressed, and rang for the porter and a waiter from the dining-car. While her room was being tidied up she ordered breakfast. Before it could be served the porter turned the drawing-room over to her again.

She waited by the window, looking out upon without seeing the few rude buildings that composed a tank town at which the train had made a halt for water. After that brief respite from the scent of roses she was finding reintroduction to its influence overpowering. It took her by the throat and subjugated her, reducing her to a most miserable estate of nostalgic longing....

The waiter was knocking. She started up, hastily dried her eyes, p.r.o.nounced a tremulous "Come in!"

Bel entered, shut the door, dropped upon the red plush seat a duster and cap caked with desert alkali, and stood apprehensive of his welcome, his heart in his eyes.

She fell back to the part.i.tion, breathing his name, her whole body vibrating like a smitten lute-string.

In a choking voice he cried: "Linda! for G.o.d's sake listen to me. I've been up all night, driving against time to overtake you and beg you to listen to this last appeal. I want you to promise me not to go to Reno.

Not yet, at least. Give me a little more time, a little chance to prove to you that you're the only woman in the world for me, that I'm living the life you'd want your husband to live, and have been ever since you left me. Because I want you back, because I'm lost without you, because I want to make you happy ... as you were happy when you first loved me, long ago...."

She lifted shaking hands to him, cried his name again, swayed blindly into his arms.

"Take me back, Bel," she whispered. "Make me happy ... Be kind to me, Bel, be fair...."

THE END