Linda Lee, Incorporated Part 46

But when, the next day, she sat with Nolan in the projection-room, reviewing the rushes, this is what the screen revealed to her astounded eyes:

She saw first a stripling fas.h.i.+onable, an admirer of hers in the story, stroll down a section of sidewalk in the Los Angeles shopping district (which Nolan a.s.serted was "Fifth Avenue to a T") enter a florist's shop, select roses, and scribble a card to accompany them, while the florist summoned an errand boy, a repulsive white slug of a child, eight or nine years of age, heavy with unwholesome fat and wearing an habitual look of hopeless vacuity, whom Lucinda had several times noticed, not without wonder, as he loitered drearily about the stage.

As she now saw him, the boy had been heartlessly shoe-horned into the bra.s.s-bound livery of a page, and wore upon his feet a brace of leathern wrecks which even the broad charity of a Charlie Chaplin would have hesitated to call shoes.

Waiting for the card to be written, this bleached sausage of a child restlessly shuffled his tragic feet, and again and again wiped them on each other. To make sure that nothing of the fine Comedy of the business would be overlooked, the feet were isolated in an heroic close-up.

She saw the boy take the box of roses and leave the shop to deliver them. As he emerged to the street the fiendish camera pounced upon his feet and again held them up to derision in a close-up wherein they resembled more than anything else abnormal vegetable growths uncannily animate. Nor was this enough. With the savage elemental humour of a Yahoo the camera hounded those fungoid feet as they clumped and dragged and faltered along the sidewalk, their monstrosity painfully stressed by contrast with the trim legs and dainty feet of feminine pa.s.sers-by, the decently shod feet of men.

When unstinted quant.i.ties of film had been squandered in this delectable pursuit, the Comedy Feet were shown performing a side-splitting stumble over the threshold to the supper club establishment.

The close-up of Lucinda's feet with her dancing partner's was then disclosed; and the camera s.h.i.+fted its intimate attentions to another pair of feet disgracefully clad, which were discovered in the act of pressing the pedals of a piano and appeared to belong to a low comedy stage mother whom Nolan had foisted upon Lucinda in his version of the continuity. These last the camera followed as they left the piano and shuffled across the floor to meet the feet of the errand-boy, then as they crossed to halt near the feet of Lucinda.

Followed the ascent of the close-up to frame on Lucinda's face as she smiled down at her armful of roses.

The film ran out then, darkness fell, the ceiling light came on, and Nolan, who had the chair immediately in front of Lucinda's, twisted round with a bright, expectant grin to study her face for the glow of glad appreciation which he felt his ingenuity had earned.

She managed a wan little smile for him, but her eyes held still a look of bewilderment too deep to be readily erased, too despairing to be misread. Nolan flushed, but wasn't ready to admit defeat.

"I'll tell the world," he declared defiantly, "the screen never seen an introduction like that before!"

Anxious to avoid a repet.i.tion of their former squabble, Lucinda sought vainly for some equivocal phrase that would content the man's stupendous vanity. But, inconceivably inane as it sounds, the business of the Comedy Feet has been here set forth without the faintest colour of exaggeration; and her wits were numb from the impact of its wanton stupidity.

"Well!" Nolan sneered in an effort to rea.s.sert his authority--"I can see it didn't make a whale of a hit with you, Miss Lee, but believe me, the audiences will eat that stuff up, simply eat it up!"

"Don't you think," Lucinda ventured--"perhaps it's a little long, Mr.

Nolan?"

"Oh, maybe a little tr.i.m.m.i.n.g here and there won't do any harm. But it can't come down a whole lot without hurting the Comedy effect."

"But--I don't like to seem hypercritical--but that's what's troubling me. You see, it doesn't seem terribly amusing to me."

Nolan's eyes snapped, but as yet he had his temper under fair control.

"I'd like to know why not," he replied with more civility than the bare words as quoted can convey.

"If you'll be patient with me, I'll try to explain. It seems to me in a story of this sort, about real people struggling with real emotions, whatever comedy is introduced ought to be in character or consistent with the general tone of the picture."

"Well?" Nolan drawled wearily.

"Well--a.s.suming there's really something funny about that child's pitiful feet--it's utterly at odds with probability to place him, dressed as he is, in the shop of a Fifth avenue florist. No such establishment would dream of employing such a caricature of an errand boy.... Don't you see?"

"No," Nolan replied with an offensive echo of her inflection--"no, I don't _see_. It's Comedy, audiences are always howling for Comedy, and if anything on G.o.d's green earth can save this rotten picture it'll be the Comedy I'm sticking into it."

"Then I'm afraid it's hopeless."

"But I'll tell you what I do see." Nolan leaned over the back of his chair and grinned mirthlessly into Lucinda's face. "I see what I've seen all along, and that is there's no pleasing you, Miss Lee! Ever since I started on this picture you've had the old harpoon out for everything I did, and this, what you're saying today about this introduction I invented for you, is all of a piece with the way you've been acting all along."

"But, please, Mr. Nolan!"--Lucinda was trying her best to be temperate--"surely this isn't a reasonable att.i.tude to take, surely you can make allowances for honest difference of opinion."

"Ah, it ain't your fault!" Nolan jerked angrily out of his chair and turned to the door, but delayed long enough to deliver a valedictory: "And I'm a sap to let anybody that knows as little about pictures get my goat like you do. Have it your own way--chuck the whole sequence out, if you don't like this introduction I framed special for you. It's your picture, I should worry what the piece of junk looks like when you're through with it. But I tell you one thing: If that introduction don't stand, my name can't go on the picture as its director. And that's flat, my lady!"

And before Lucinda could take advantage of this wide invitation to a withering retort, the door slammed on Nolan's impa.s.sioned exit.

x.x.xV

The day of the Last Stand in the Living-Room Doorway began auspiciously enough with receipt of a night-letter from Harford Willis stating that money matters had been arranged in conformance with Lucinda's wishes, and adding that Willis hoped before long to give himself the pleasure of calling on her in person; the business of another client was requiring his supervision in San Francisco, on the way out he could readily stop over in Los Angeles for a day or two, he was leaving New York the day he telegraphed.

Not a little to her own wonder, Lucinda found herself pleasantly excited by the thought that she was to see this old friend so soon again. Had his telegram come a week or so earlier, she must have been quite as much annoyed, have deemed its implicit promise of meddling in her affairs an inexcusable impertinence. But a week or so ago, at least up to the time of Bellamy's reappearance, she had been comparatively serene, smug with self-contentment because of the semblance of success which had thus far attended the rather off-hand measures she had adopted in dealing with the larger issues of her life. Now, however, she knew no more peace of mind, in the last fortnight the pressure of perplexities had grown so heavy that she found herself eagerly looking forward to the arrival of one in whom she could confide, of whom she could ask counsel, without fearing to hear self-interest sound in his responses.

Harford Willis might disapprove the roads she chose to go, but so long as she kept within certain bounds, which she herself would never dream of overstepping, he wouldn't censure; and if she found the going rough in the ways of wilfulness, his sympathy would none the less be constant, he'd never say, "I told you so;" and never would he be guilty of advising any course of action to the end that he himself might profit.

Take him for what he was, there was n.o.body like him, n.o.body else whom she could so trust ... not even Lynn....

Not even Lynn! A bitter thought to have to think, but a true, and one it were not the part of wisdom to ignore, that she couldn't look to the man she loved with all her heart, and who loved her well in his way, she knew, for sympathy in her trials and for unselfish advice, as she could to another in whose consideration she was merely a pretty, headstrong girl whom he had known since she was little, the daughter of an old friend.

For the truth was (idle to deny it longer or hope against hope that one might be mistaken) Lynn was changed, had ceased to be the light-hearted and irresponsible but tender lover of the days before Bellamy had come back to play skeleton at their feast, of late had grown irritable in a fas.h.i.+on new to Lucinda's knowledge of him, somewhat sulky and suspicious of temper, impatient of Lucinda's troubles when she wanted condolence and soothing, and over-ready to remind her he had troubles of his own.

She wasn't disposed to quarrel with him on that account, she was too fair-minded to deny him his grievances or the right to nurse them.

Surely the situation in which Lynn now newly found himself was one to play the deuce with the sunniest of dispositions--to be an accepted lover and have a husband continually if with pretended playfulness snapping at one's heels, or else circling watchfully in the not too remote distance and showing his teeth, every time one looked his way, in a grin as malicious as it was brilliant.

Then there was that trouble with Lynn's foot, something that had turned out, rather to Lucinda's astonishment, to be a real injury, no make-believe feigned for an occasion. At the studio second-hand accounts came to her, of how Summerlad's foot had slipped, while he was doing "river stuff," and had been severely pinched between two logs. It hadn't seemed much of a hurt at the time, and Summerlad had made light of it, just as today he made light of it; but it had been slow to mend, and even now, though he usually managed to get through his work for the camera without registering the injury, there were days when he walked with a noticeable limp, when inability to get about with comfort interfered seriously with the amus.e.m.e.nts he had been accustomed to share with Lucinda.

So she wasn't seeing so much of him as aforetime, and when she did, what with natural preoccupation in their respective afflictions, to say nothing of the greater annoyance that afflicted them in common, the old unconstraint was grievously missed.

But nothing in this life lasts (Lucinda insisted on iterating, in a temper doggedly philosophic) and even as that earlier time of ecstasies had pa.s.sed, this time of trial would pa.s.s, the day would come when, her picture finished, she would be free to leave the studio and forget Bellamy's existence, go on to Reno and get her freedom, when Lynn would be hers alone and they two could look back at this time and laugh to think how it had galled them.

Busy with such reflections, and with the pleasing prospect of soon having a willing audience for her complaints, Lucinda made nothing of the fact that Lontaine showed the whites of his eyes and s.h.i.+ed back like a skittish cob from the telegram which she submitted to his inspection, and was even not much tranquillized by the cheque which, at the same time, she gave him for the replenishment of the company's coffers. And in her most amiable temper she hurried from his office to her dressing-room, into the newest, prettiest and most becoming dance frock she had ever owned, who had owned so many, and then out to the stage.

The company was waiting, the cameras were waiting, Nolan with an air of n.o.blest patience was waiting. All of which was quite needless, for there was other work in abundance that could have been attended to, there were scenes in the same sequence in which she didn't appear and which might easily have been rehea.r.s.ed if not photographed even though Lucinda was a bit tardy. But that wouldn't have suited Nolan's little book: having told Lucinda when he would want her at a fixed hour, he was determined that nothing should go forward till she showed up. That wasn't the Nolan method in dealing with women, to let them play fast and loose with his mandates and pretend it didn't matter. Was he not Barry Nolan, well-known for his success in taming temperamental actresses? A reputation honestly earned and of which he proposed that Lucinda should now be reminded in no uncertain accents. And if one had ventured to question his policy, he would have pointed out that company morale was bound to suffer if the director neglected to "go to the mat with" his star every so often. The success of every human undertaking depended on undisputed authority vesting in one and only one directing head--in moving-pictures, the director's. A lesson every star needed to be taught upon occasion. You had to keep hammering it into the poor dumb-bells, or they got the swelled head--and then where were you?

In point of sober fact, Nolan was enjoying himself tremendously, though to have admitted as much, even to his private conscience, would have spoiled the fun entirely. He couldn't possibly have been having such a good time if he hadn't been in such a vile temper.

Up to the moment of Lucinda's appearance, he had been whiling away the Wait by delivering a monologue of spontaneous generation, a discourse having for its subject the habits of stars in general and of self-made feminine stars in especial, studiously impersonal in phrasing but mordant of wit, and delivered with an air of gentle and melancholy detachment which took no perceptible account of the snickerings of his henchmen and the ill-hidden smiles of actors who, in the absence of Lucinda, were hazarding no guesses as to which side their bread was b.u.t.tered on.

As Lucinda drew near, Nolan hoisted himself out of the basket-chair in which he had been lounging, with something more than a suggestion of limbs cramped by prolonged inactivity, and bowed politely, too politely.

But Lucinda was feeling much too kindly minded toward all the world, that morning, to resent his nonsense, though by no means unaware of its cause and aim. And with every intention of keeping the peace she returned a brief but good-natured nod and smile.

"Sorry if I've kept you waiting, Mr. Nolan, but I had some business with Mr. Lontaine we couldn't put off."

"No matter at all, Miss Lee, I a.s.sure you--no matter a-tall! My time is yours, the company's time is yours, all the time there _is_ is yours, to use or waste, just as you think best."

Lucinda couldn't very well let offensiveness so pointed pa.s.s without comment. She stopped, turned squarely to face Nolan, with a keen smile, looked him deliberately up and down, a movement of shoulders summing up clearly enough the substance of her impressions.

"Thank you for telling me," she said sweetly. "And now _that_ is understood, suppose we try to make up for the time I've wasted, if possible, by getting to work at once...."