Linda Lee, Incorporated Part 3

"f.a.n.n.y Lontaine?" Needless to ask which he meant, the other women were fixtures of their immediate circle. Lucinda laughed. "Nothing of the sort. f.a.n.n.y was at school with me--Frances Worth----"

"Chicago people?" Bellamy put in with symptoms of approval. "Not a bad lot. Old man Worth--'Terror of the Wheat Pit', they called him--died not long ago in the odour of iniquity, leaving eighty millions or so. Your little schoolmate ought to be fairly well-fixed."

"I don't know, I'm sure. I believe it's something to do with the will that brought them over. f.a.n.n.y's father disliked Harry Lontaine, so f.a.n.n.y had to run away to marry him and was duly excommunicated by the family.

She's lived in England ever since; her husband's an Englishman."

"I see: another of your charity cases."

"Hardly. They're stopping at the Ritz, that's where I met f.a.n.n.y the other day."

"Anybody can stop there, but not everybody can get away."

"Does it matter?"

"It's only I don't like seeing you made use of, Linda. Your name makes you fair game for every climber and fortune-hunter who can claim or sc.r.a.pe acquaintance with you."

"But my friends----"

"Oh, you're forever being too friendly with stray cats. Why did you ask Nelly and Jean to meet this woman if it wasn't in the hope they'd take her up, too?"

Lucinda shrugged. "Come to my luncheon and see for yourself. Not that I think you'd care for f.a.n.n.y, though she is pretty to death."

"Why not, if you like her so much?"

"She's not at all the type you seem to find most attractive. Why is it, I've often wondered, the women you lose your head about are almost always a bit--well----!"

Bellamy flushed sullenly. It was one of his crosses that he seemed never to have the right answer ready for Lucinda when she took that line.

After all, there is only one salvation for a man married to a woman cleverer than himself: to do no wrong.

"Oh, if you're going to rake up ancient history----!"

But Lucinda pursued pensively, as if she hadn't heard: "I presume you've got to run after that sort, Bel, because they don't know you as well as I do--can't."

Even a slow man may have wit enough not to try to answer the unanswerable. Bellamy got stiffly to his feet.

"I'll drop in at the Ritz if I can make it."

"Do, dear ... And Bel!" Lucinda rose impulsively and ran to him. "I'm sorry, Bel, I was so catty just now. Only, you know, there are some things one can't help feeling keenly. Dear!"

She clung to him, lifting to his lips a face tempting beyond all telling. Insensibly his temper yielded, and catching her to him, he kissed her with a warmth that had long been missing in his caresses.

"Linda: you're a witch!"

"I wish I were ... enough of a witch, at least, to make you realize n.o.body cares for you as I do, nor ever will. Bel: don't go yet. There's something I want to ask you...."

"Yes?" He held her close, smiling down magnanimously at that pretty, intent face. As long as she loved him so, couldn't do without him, all was well, he could do pretty much as he liked--within reasonable limits, of course, bounds dictated by ordinary discretion. "What's on the busy mind?"

"I've been wondering if we couldn't go away together somewhere this Winter." Lucinda divined hostility in the tensing of the arm round her waist. "We're not really happy here, dearest----"

"But you were in Europe all Summer."

"Not with you, except for a few weeks. You took me over but left me to come back to business affairs that could have got along perfectly without you. And while you were with me, what was different from our life here? Nothing but the geography of our environment. Meeting the same people, doing the same things, living in the self-same groove abroad as at home--that sort of thing's no good for us, Bel."

"What's wrong with the way we live?"

"Its desperate sameness wears on us till we turn for distraction to foolish things, things we wouldn't dream of doing if we weren't bored.

Look through my calendar there; you'll find I'm booked up for weeks ahead, and week in and week out the same old round. And so with you.

Consciously or unconsciously you resent it, dear, you're driven to look for something different, some excitement to lift you out of the deadly rut. As for me ... Would you like it if I took a lover simply because I was bored silly, too?"

"Linda!"

"But don't you see that's what we're coming to, that is how it's bound to end with us if we go on this way, all the time drifting a little farther apart? Why can't we run away from it all for a while, you and I, forget it, and find ourselves again? Take me to Egypt, India, any place where we won't see the same people all the time and do the same things every day. I feel as if I'd lost you already----"

"What nonsense!"

"Oh, perhaps not altogether yet. But slowly and surely I am losing you.

Bel: I want my husband and--he needs me. Give me a chance to find him again and prove to him I'm something better than--than a boutonniere to a man of fas.h.i.+on."

"Boutonniere?"

"A neglected wife, the finis.h.i.+ng touch."

Bellamy laughed outright, and Lucinda's earnestness melted into an answering smile. "What a notion! How did you get it, Linda?"

"Thought it up all out of my own head, strange as it may appear. You see--this is the danger of it all--you make me think, dear. And if you keep that up, first thing you know I'll be all mental--and that would be too awful!"

Bel laughed again, more briefly, and slackened his embrace; and she understood from this that, if she had not actually lost, she had gained nothing.

"Perhaps you're right. At all events, it's worth thinking about."

"You will think it over, Bel--promise?"

"Word of honour. But now--late for an appointment--must run."

Against the better counsel of her instinct, Lucinda put all she had left unsaid into her parting kiss--and felt that his response was forced.

In chagrin she wandered to a window and stood gazing blankly out till recalled by a new voice: "Good morning, Mrs. Druce."

Lucinda wadded the handkerchief into her palm and turned to her secretary, an unruffled countenance.

"Good morning, Elena."

Elena Fiske was conscientiously unalluring in the livery affected by intellect in reduced circ.u.mstances. Thanks to a cultivated contempt for powder, her good features wore an honest polish. She walked with a stride and looked you in the eye. Erroneously she conceived her opinion of Lucinda to be privately entertained.

"If you're ready for me," she suggested with perfect poise.

"Yes, quite ready."

Elena consulted a sensible note-book. "I was to remind you to telephone Mrs. Rossiter Wade."