Of a sudden Miss Daley missed her mentor's voice, his counsel and encouragement, and in the middle of a sob ceased to cry precisely as she might have shut off a tap.
In a moment of uncertainty, still confronting the clicking camera, still bathed in that withering blaze, she cast about blankly for her runagate director. Then discovering that he had, just like a man! deserted her in her time of trouble to follow a band, outraged womanhood asserted itself, in a twinkling she cast her passion like a worn-out garment and became no more the broken plaything of man's fickle fancy but once again the spoiled sweetheart of the screen.
As Lucinda saw it, there was something almost uncanny in the swiftness and the radical thoroughness of that transfiguration, the fiery creature who sprang to her feet with flashing eyes and scornful mouth was hardly to be identified with the wretched little thing whom she had seen, only a few seconds since, grovelling and weeping on the floor.
The cameraman stopped cranking and, resting an elbow on his camera, turned with a satiric grin to observe developments. And following a sharp, brief stir of apprehension in the ranks of the professional element, there fell a dead pause of dismay, a complete suspension of all activities other than those of the musicians and their volunteer leader, and of the calloused carpenters, who, as became good union laborers, continued to go noisily to and fro upon their lawful occasions, scornful of the impending storm.
As one who finds the resources of her mother tongue inadequate, Miss Daley in silence fixed with a portentous stare the back of King Laughlin, who, all ignorant of the doom hovering over his devoted head, kept on swaying airily to and fro, smiling his ecstatic smile and measuring the music with fluent hands.
One of the Daley feet began to tap out the devil's tattoo, she set her arms akimbo, her eyes were quick with baleful lightnings, her pretty lips an ominous line; an ensemble that only too clearly foretold:At any minute, now!
With a smothered grunt Mr. Culp heaved out of his chair and lumbered over to his wife, interposing his not negligible bulk between her and the unconscious object of her indignation—and in the very nick of time, or Lucinda was mistaken.
What he said couldn't be heard at that distance, the sour whining of the violin, the lamentations of the 'cello, and the tinkle-tinkle of the tinny piano conspired to preserve inviolate those communications between man and wife which the law holds to be privileged. But Lucinda noticed a backward jerk of the Culp head toward the group of which she made one, and caught a glance askance of the Daley eyes, oddly intent and cool in contrast with the guise of unbridled fury which her features wore. And whatever it was that Mr. Culp found to say, indisputably it proved effectual; for nothing worse came of Miss Daley's wrath, at least publicly, than a shrewish retort inaudible to bystanders, a toss of her head, and a sudden, stormy flight from the scene.
Mr. Culp followed with thoughtful gaze her retreat toward her dressing-room, then looked a question to the cameraman.
"'Sallright," said that one, imperturbable. "Got enough of it."
Mr. Culp nodded in relief, and signed to the electricians. As he made his way back to Lucinda's side the lights sputtered out. And as soon as this happened Mr. King Laughlin, cruelly wrenched out of his dream-land of melody, came down to an earth dangerous with the harsh dissonances of reality.
"What the—where the—what—!" he stammered, looking in vain for the little woman whom he had so heartlessly abandoned in her woe on the living-room set. Then, catching sight of her half-way across the studio, he bleated "Alma!" once in remonstrance, and again in consternation, and set out in panic pursuit.
Before he could overtake her, Miss Daley disappeared round one side of the Palm Room, at which point, beating the air with suppliant hands, Mr. Laughlin disappeared in turn.
"That's the sort of thing you're up against all a time in the fillum business, d'y'see," sighed Mr. Culp with a rueful grin. "A lot of kids, that's what we got to make pitchers with. And audiences all a time kickin' because we don't make 'em better.... A lot of kids!"
He did not, however, appear greatly disheartened, but recounted his tribulations rather as a matter of course, appealing informally to the sympathies of his guests.
"King Laughlin all over, nice a little feller's anybody'd want to work with, but temp'amental, d'y'see, got to show off like a kid every time he gets a chance. And what's the answer? Mrs. Culp gets sore, says she won't do another stroke of work s'long's King's directin'. And here we was tryin' to finish shootin' today, behind on our release date and all, and thirty extra people, d'y'see, gettin' five and seven and maybe ten dollars, been waitin' all day to work on the big set and got to be paid whether they work or not...."
Mr. Culp broke off suddenly, singled out from the attendant cloud of retainers a young man wearing an eyeshade and a badgered expression, and instructed him to send the extra people packing, but to tell them to report for work at eight o'clock the next day.
"'Sno use keepin' 'em any longer, 'safternoon," he explained confidentially. "When that little woman says a thing she means it, d'y'see, so chances are it'll be mornin' before she changes her mind. And if you ladies'll excuse me, I guess I ought to be sittin' in with her and King now. The only things they think I'm any good for, in this studio, is pay salaries and referee battles."
He was affably disposed to waive ceremony under the circumstances, but gave in with good grace when Lontaine insisted on formally presenting him to each of his guests; and thus reminded of the first purpose of their visit, which he seemed to have forgotten altogether, Mr. Culp delayed long enough to recall the worried young man with the eyeshade, whom he made known as Mr. Willing, the assistant director, and charged with supervision of the proposed tests.
And Mr. Willing was to understand that these were to be regular tests and no monkey business; he was to see that someone with plenty of know-how helped the ladies make up; after which he was to shoot the party as a whole in some little scene or other, in addition to making individual close-ups.
If Mr. Willing accepted this commission with more resignation than enthusiasm, he proved to be a modest person with pleasing manners and no perceptible symptoms of temperament. And he was as good as his name. It was his suggestion that a corner of the Palm Room be utilized, as most suitable for the group scene. And while the cameraman was amiably setting up his instrument to command this new location and superintending the moving of the lights, it was Mr. Willing who conducted Lucinda, Nelly, Jean and Fanny to a barn-like dressing-room and hunted up a matronly actress, a recruit from the legitimate theatre, to advise and assist them with their respective make-ups.
Lucinda killed time while waiting for her turn by trying her own hand with grease-paint, powder, and mascaro, with the upshot that, when she presented her face for inspection and revision, the actress refused to change the effect by the addition or subtraction of a single touch, and laughingly declined to believe it had been achieved without experience.
"It's no use, Mrs. Druce, don't tell me you haven't been in the business!"
"On the stage, you mean? But only in the most amateurish way, schoolgirl theatricals."
"No," the woman insisted—"they don't make up like that for a test unless they're camera-wise."
To this she stuck stubbornly; and Lucinda found herself curiously pleased, though she had done no more to deserve commendation than supplement native good taste and an eye for colour with close observation of the Daley make-up and how it had fared under the lights.
Another compliment signalized their return to the studio; nothing less than the presence of Miss Daley—"in person"—composed, agreeable, hospitable, showing every anxiety to make their tests successful and never a sign of the storm that had presumably broken behind the scenes.
But Lucinda reckoned it significant that Mr. King Laughlin was nowhere visible.
"I thought it would be nice if we could all have tea in my dressing-room," Miss Daley explained; "and then Daddy suggested we could have it served here, on the set—make a regular little scene of it, you know, for the camera."
"I'm sure that would be delightful," replied Lucinda, suspended judgment melting into liking even in those first few minutes.
"Oh, Daddy thinks of all the nice things!"
"And I'll see each you ladies gets a print," Culp volunteered benignly, "so's you can get it run through a projectin' machine any time you want, d'y'see, and show your friends how you once acted with Alma Daley."
"Daddy! don't be ridiculous."
Vivacious, by no means unintelligent, and either an excellent actress in private life or else an unpretending body, happy in her success and unashamed of humble beginnings, Miss Daley was tactful enough to make her guests forget themselves and the trial to come, as they took their places—with no prearrangement but much as if they were actually meeting at the Ritz—and were served with tea by actor-waiters in correct livery. All the same, Lucinda noticed that their hostess ingeniously maneuvered to a central position in the foreground, where she sat full-face to the camera; this being by far her best phase. And just before the lights blazed up, the girl launched into a spirited account of her passage-at-arms with King Laughlin, which, recited without malice but with keen flair for the incongruous, carried the amateur players easily over the first minutes, in which otherwise constraint must inevitably have attended camera-consciousness.
"I was so fussed," she concluded, "I swore I'd never act another scene for him. But when I remembered how foolish he looked, posing in front of that awful orchestra like a hypnotized rabbit, I just had to laugh; and I couldn't laugh and be mad at the same time, of course. And then I had to tell King what I was laughing at, and that made him so ashamed he's sulking in his office now and won't come out while any of you are here."
"Then all's serene-o once more, Miss Daley?"
"Oh, sure. You see, Mr. Lontaine, we've simply got to finish this picture tonight, somehow, even if we have to work on till morning; so I accepted his apology and made it up."
"But those extra people Mr. Culp let go——?"
"That's all right," Culp responded from his place beside the camera. "When I see how things was goin', I sent down to the cashier and told him not to pay 'em off, so they didn't any of 'em get away."
At this point, clever actress that she was, Miss Daley extemporized a star part for herself by rising without warning and announcing that she would have to run and change for the scenes to be photographed as soon as the tests had been made.
"I'll hurry and try to get ready before you go," she said, shaking hands all round with charming grace; "but if I don't see you again, it's been just wonderful to meet you all, and I do hope this isn't good-bye forever!"
The general flutter in acknowledgment of her farewells had barely subsided when the bank lights hissed out and the camera stilled its stuttering.
"Nice little scene," Mr. Culp applauded generously, intercepting Lucinda as, with the others, she left the set, clearing it for the individual tests. "Goin' to screen pretty. You'll be surprised."
"Can you really tell, Mr. Culp?"
"How it's goin' to look in the projectin'-room, y'mean? Sure. Not that I'd gamble on my own judgment, I don't pretend to know how to make pitchers; all I know's how to make money makin' 'em, d'y'see. When I say that little scene's goin' to go great on the screen, I'm bankin' on Jack here."
He dropped an affectionate, fat hand on the shoulder of the cameraman. "Excuse me, Mrs. Druce, want to introduce you to Mr. Jack Timilty, best little cameraman ever turned a crank." The cameraman grinned sheepishly and preferred a diffident hand. "No temp'ament, no funny business about Jack, Mrs. Druce, always on the job and deliverin' the goods. And sticks, d'y'see. Take it the way it is nowadays, you don't hardly get time to get to know a director before he stings somebody else for a coupla hundred dollars more'n you're paying him, d'y'see, and quits you cold as soon's he finishes his pitcher. But Jack sticks. That's why y'always can count on good photography and lightin' effects in an Alma Daley production. And when Jack says that little scene took pretty, Iknowit did."
"'Sright, Mrs. Druce," Mr. Timilty averred. "I wouldn't like to say about the others, but you and that other little blonde lady——"
"Mrs. Lontaine."
"Guess so, ma'm, didn't catch her name. Her and you registered like a million dollars."
"It's awfully nice of you to tell me so, Mr. Timilty——"
"Jack wouldn't pass you a compliment unless he meant it, Mrs. Druce. He's no kidder."
"Anyway I guess it ain't the first time anybody's told you that, ma'm. It's easy to see you've been camera-broke."
"But I haven't," Lucinda protested, laughing. "Really, I assure you——"
At this juncture Mr. Willing called for Mr. Timilty's co-operation in taking the test of Jean Sedley. So Lucinda stood aside and watched and wondered if it were really true that she had shown any evidences of ability out of the ordinary.
Not that it mattered.
Nevertheless the little fillip administered to her self-esteem made her feel more contented; into the bargain, it deepened her interest in the business in hand.
Mr. Willing seemed to be taking a deal of pains to make fair and thorough tests. For each of the four women he improvised brief but effective solo scenes to bring out their best points, if nothing that made severe demands upon the ability of the subject or the invention of the director.
Lucinda, for example, was discovered to the camera arranging flowers in a vase. A servant entered, delivered a letter, retired. Lucinda recognized the handwriting, and (the word was new to her in this application) "registered" delight, then—as, smiling, she opened and read the letter—bewilderment, misgivings, and a shock of cruel revelation which strangled all joy of living in her, struck her down, and left her crushed and cringing in a chair.
Despite a natural feeling that she was making herself ridiculous, Lucinda executed to the best of her ability the gestures prescribed and tried to impart to them some colour of sincerity. As a matter of fact, she was singularly (and stupidly, she assured herself) anxious to deserve the further commendation of Mr. Culp's cameraman.
But it was at best a trying task and, when it came to posing for the close-up with a wall of blinding incandescence only a few feet from her eyes, a true ordeal. She was glad when it was over, and quite satisfied that she wouldn't care to repeat the experience, in spite of Mr. Timilty's encouraging "Pretty work, Mrs. Druce!"—whose source she could only surmise, since in her bedazzled vision everything remained a blur for some time after she had been delivered from the torture of the lights.
When at length that cloud of blindness cleared, Mr. Culp was nowhere to be seen. Nor did he show up again until the last test had been made and the party, once more shepherded by Mr. Lane, was on the point of leaving. Then Culp put in a hasty reappearance, coming from the direction of the dressing-rooms, nominated an hour for projecting the tests at the studio the next afternoon, bade a hearty good-bye to each of his guests, and insisted on escorting Lucinda to the door.
On the way, however, he managed to detain her and let the others draw ahead and out of hearing.
"Lis'n, Mrs. Druce," he abruptly volunteered: "Jack says your test's going to turn out great. That's just what he said—'like a million dollars.' And I been thinkin' ... I was speakin' it over with Mrs. Culp in her dressing-room, d'y'see, and she's strong for it, says she'd be tickled to pieces. She's a wonderful little woman, Mrs. Culp is, she ain't never yet made any mistake about nobody, d'y'see, and she's took the biggest kind a fancy to you, and says tell you she's sure you'll never regret it——"
"Please, please, Mr. Culp! You are too good, and it makes me most happy to know Mrs. Culp thinks well of me. But what," Lucinda laughed—"whatareyou talking about?"
"Why," said Culp in some surprise—"I was thinkin' maybe you'd like to try goin' into pitchers. You got everythin', d'y'see, looks and style and all, everythin' but experience; and that's somethin' you can get right here in this studio, workin' with Mrs. Culp. I got a good part for you in her next pitcher you could try out in, and——"
"It's awfully kind of you," Lucinda interrupted, "and I'm truly appreciative, Mr. Culp; but really I couldn't think of it."
"That right?" Culp seemed to be genuinely dashed. "'Sfunny," he observed dejectedly. "I s'pose you know best what you want to do, but it'd be great little experience for you, take it from me, Mrs. Druce."
"I'm sure it would."
"And I got a hunch you'd make good all the way. You've got things nobody else on the screen's got but my little woman, d'y'see, and it wouldn't be no time at all, maybe, before you'd be a star with your own company. I'll take care of that, you wouldn't have to worry about the money end of it at all, d'y'see——"
"But what if I don'twantto be a motion-picture actress, Mr. Culp?"
"Well, of course, if you don't, that's different." He pondered gloomily this incomprehensible freak. "Lis'n," he suggested, brightening: "Tell you what, Mrs. Druce: you go home and think it over. You got all night and most of tomorrow—you won't be comin' here to look at the tests till five o'clock, d'y'see—and if you should want to change your mind, I stand back of all I said. All you got to do is say yes, and walk right into a nice part, fit you like a glove, in the next Alma Daley pitcher——"
"Seriously, Mr. Culp; if I should think it over for a month, my decision would be the same. But thank you ever so much—and please thank Mrs. Culp for me, too."
"Well," Culp said reluctantly, holding the street door, "if that's the way you feel about it ... well, of course.... G'dnight, Mrs. Druce, and pleas't'meet you."
The street was dark with a gentle darkness kind to eyes that still ached and smarted. And the frosty air was grateful to one coming from the close atmosphere of the studio, heavy with its composite smell of steam-heated paint and dust and flesh.
And crossing to her car, Lucinda experienced a vagary of vivid reminiscence. Just for an instant the clock was turned back for her a dozen years and more, she was again a little girl, a child bringing dazed eyes of dream from the warm and scented romance of a matineé, her thrilled perceptions groping mutinously toward reconciliation with the mysterious verities of streets mantled in blue twilight.
That passed too quickly, too soon she was Lucinda Druce once more, grown up and married, disillusioned....
And with a shiver of pain Lucinda realized anew what the afternoon with its unsought boons of novelty and diversion had made her for hours on end forget, the secret dolour of her heart.
Notwithstanding that she drove directly home, or paused only to drop Daubeney at his club and the Lontaines at their hotel, it was after seven when Lucinda regained her rooms and was free at last to be once more her simple self, disembarrassed of the pride and circumstance that stayed the public personality of Mrs. Bellamy Druce.
Out of that social character she stepped as naturally as out of her gown, and with much the same sense of relief, in the easing of that tension to which she had been keyed all afternoon. Even at the studio, when interest in that quaint, ephemeral environment of other lives had rendered her forgetful of both self and the passage of time, subconsciously the strain of keeping up appearances had been still constant and made unremitting demands upon her stores of fortitude and nervous energy.
But she counted that cost not exorbitant, seeing the immunity it had purchased.
Dobbin alone had not been taken in....
She began to be a bit afraid of Dobbin. A danger signal she had the wit to apprehend in its right value. The woman who pretends to be afraid is setting a snare, but she who is truly afraid is herself already in the toils.
Dobbin saw too much, too deeply and clearly, and let her know it in a way that not only disarmed resentment but made her strangely willing to let him see more. She to whom reserve was as an article of faith! But if the woman in love with her husband knew she had no right to foster an intimacy, however innocent, with any other man, the woman harassed and half-distracted was too hungry for sympathetic understanding not to be tempted when it offered, grateful for it and disinclined to pass it by.
This common life is unending quest for spiritual companionship—and love is the delusion that one has found it.
At twenty-six Lucinda was learning what life often takes twice that tale to teach, that though flesh must cleave unto flesh, the soul is lost unless it walk alone, creature and creator in one of its own bleak isolation.
In a moment of clear vision she promised herself to go warily with Dobbin....
And in the next, the telephone rang in the boudoir. Lucinda was in her bath, so her maid answered for her, and presently came to report: Mr. Druce had called up to say he wouldn't be dining at home that night, he was detained by a "conference."
Without looking, Lucinda knew that the woman's eyes were demure, her lips twitching.
Her just anger of that afternoon recurred with strength redoubled.
Not that she had been looking forward with any eagerness to the evening, the "quiet" dinner during which Bel would defiantly continue his tippling, the subsequent hours at the opera poisoned by forebodings, the homeward drive in antagonized silence, finally the trite old scene behind closed doors, of the piqued wife and the peccant husband, with its threadbare business of lies, aggrieved innocence, attempts at self-extenuation, ultimate collapse and confession, tears of penitence and empty promises ... and her own spirit failing and in the end yielding to Bel's importunity, out of sheer weariness and want of hope.
It had been sad enough to have all that to anticipate. To be left in this fashion, at loose ends, not knowing what to expect, except the worst, was too much.
On leaving her bath Lucinda delayed only long enough to shrug into a dressing-gown before going to the telephone.
The voice that responded to her call said it thought Mr. Daubeney had just left the club, but if madame would hold the wire it would make sure.
She knew a moment of pure exasperation with the evident conspiracy of every circumstance in her despite.
Then the apparatus at her ear pronounced in crisp impatience: "Yes? This is Mr. Daubeney. Who wants him, please?"
"Oh, Dobbin! I'm so glad."
"You, Cinda!" The instantaneous change of tone would have been laughable if it hadn't been worse, the cause of a little flutter of forbidden delight. "Why, bless your soul! I'm glad I came back. They barely caught me at the door."
"Were you in a hurry to get on somewhere, Dobbin? I mean, am I detaining you?"
"Not a bit. Foolishly staggering out to try to find some place where the cooking was less perfunctory than here at the club."
"Sure you've got nothing important on?"
"If you must know, I was wondering what to do with a lonely evening."
"Then that makes two of us. Why can't we join forces and be miserable together?"
"With you? I'll do my best, but I don't promise.... What's up?"
"Oh, everything, more or less. I'm in a villainous temper, Dobbin, and you'll be a dear if you'll come and dine with me—Bel's telephoned he won't be home—talk me into a decent humour and take me to the opera. And then—I don't care what we do!"
"Well, if you're half as reckless as you try to make out, you certainly need somebody to keep you from kicking over the traces."
"Then you will come?"
"Stop pretending to be stupid. When?"
"As soon as you like."
Later, seated at her dressing-table, adding those deft touches whose secret one woman in ten thousand knows, touches which lift an evening toilette out of the ruck of commonplace prettiness and render it wholly sorcerous, Lucinda caught in her mirror an odd look of dubious speculation on the face of the maid who waited by her shoulder.
Half an hour earlier such a look would have irritated, now its impertinence had no more effect than to make Lucinda smile illegibly at her image in the glass. What did it matter what questions might be taking form in that shallow mind? If Bel could afford to ignore the gossip of servants, that had its source in knowledge of his escapades no doubt infinitely more detailed and precise than she might ever hope or fear to gain—why, so could Bel's wife afford to go her own way and let this scandal-mongering world go hang.
Whether or not she could afford it, she meant henceforward to make her own life—as Bel did, as everybody did—and an end to this drifting with the winds of forlorn and fading hopes. She was too young, too proud, too richly warmed by ardent wine of life, to accept without a murmur affronts and slights such as were now her daily portion, without a struggle reconcile herself to the estate of the outworn wife, tolerated mainly as an ornamental prop to the dignity of the house of Druce.
Bel should learn....
Poised lightly before the cheval-glass for the final inspection from head to foot, she perceived that she had never made herself lovelier for Bel; and Dobbin's spontaneous tribute as she entered the drawing-room agreeably confirmed this judgment.
"Heavens, Cinda! how do you do it?"
"Like the way I look tonight?"
"Like! It's unfair, it's premeditated cruelty, monstrous! You ought to be ashamed of yourself to look like that to a man who's having a tough-enough fight with himself as it is."
"Fraud," Lucinda commented coolly. "You know you fancy yourself no end in the rôle of the luckless lover, you'd be scared silly if I gave you any reason to fear you'd ever have another part to play."
"Try me and see."
"No fear. I like you too well as you are. The part fits you to perfection, you do play it beautifully. Please don't ever stop: I love it."
"Imp! You need a good shaking. Don't you know you're flirting with me?"
"Do you mind?"
"Oh, no. Not if it amuses you. Not if you'll play fair."
"What do you call unfair?"
"For one thing, the way you've turned yourself out tonight."
"But only a moment ago you were leading me to believe I'd turned out at least passing fair." Lucinda affected a sigh. "And I was so happy to think I'd found favour!"
"I presume the intellectual level would be lowered if I were to say with What's-his-name, 'If she be not fair to me, what care I how fair she be'?"
But Lucinda, in a pensive turn, shook her head and, eyeing him gravely, murmured: "I wonder...."
"What do you wonder, Cinda?"
"What you told me last night.... Was it true?"
"That I had never stopped being in love with you? God help me! that was true enough, too true."
"Then I wonder if it's fair to you, and to me, the way we're going. I mean...." She faltered, with a sign of petulance. "Be patient with me, Dobbin. It isn't easy to figure some things out, you know. I mean, if youarein love with me——"
"Forget the 'if'."
"And Bel is not.... Oh, no, he isn't! He's in love with the figure he cuts as my lord and master and the dashing beau of every other pretty woman—not with me. Well! since you are and he isn't, and I'm discontented, and so fond of you, Dobbin:isit fair to either of us—because I'm bound to think of you, you know, and can't very well think of you dispassionately...." She concluded with a little shrug and a deprecating smile. "I don't know, Dobbin, I really don't know!"
"It isn't fair," he said—"of course—unless—"
She nodded seriously: "That's just it."
"I can only say, Cinda, whatever you do or say or think is right. It's all for you to decide."
"And I'm afraid I can't—not yet, at least. And when I do, I ought to warn you, the chances are I shan't decide the way you want me to."
"I know. But don't worry about me. I can take punishment, I've proved that, I think. So do what seems best to you. I'll faithfully follow your lead. I only want to play the game."
"And I.... But we both want to be sure it's worth the scandal, don't we, Dobbin?"
"You joke about what's life and death to me!"
"I did it on purpose, old dear." Lucinda tapped his arm intimately with her fan. "Yes, I did. I don't want you to think, afterwards—if it turns out so you'd be tempted to think it—that I didn't, as you say, play fair. So it's only fair to let you find out as soon as possible that I'm an incurably frivolous person, Dobbin, vain, trifling, flippant, and—I'm afraid—a flirt."
"Not you!"
"Truly. Haven't I been letting you believe I made myself pretty tonight for your sake? It isn't true, at least not all true. It was for my own sake, really, because we're going to the opera, and everybody I know will see me there, and I want them to know what Bel neglects for his—other women!"
From the doorway an unctuous voice announced: "Dinner is served, madam."
In this newest phase of that day's protean gamut, in this temper of reckless yet cool determination to avenge her pride and coerce life into rendering up all that it had of late withheld, she put every curbing consideration behind, and resolutely set herself for that night at least to live only for the moment and wring from each its ultimate drop of pleasure, to be amused and to be amusing, to make fête and to be fêted.
Daubeney, wanting whom all her efforts must have been wasted, for whether she love him or not a woman needs a man in love with her at hand to be at her best—Dobbin was fairly dazzled, not so much by charms of person never more witching as by gay spirits the gayer for this sudden indulgence after long inhibition, by delicate audacity, wit swift, mutable and pungent, and passages of sheer bravura in Lucinda's exposition of the arts of coquetry.
The way she flirted with him was something shameful. For the matter of that, never a masculine moth blundered into the Druce box during the entr'actes but flopped dazedly away, wondering what the deuce was the matter with old Bellamy, had he gone absolutely balmy. But Dobbin in his capacity of cavalier servente suffered more than anybody, for she took an impish delight in luring him beyond his depth and then leaving him to flounder out as best he might.
"See here!" he reminded her indignantly as the curtain rose on the last act ofLouise—"you promised to play fair." Lucinda arched mocking brows above round eyes. "Don't call this sort of thing keeping your word, do you?"
"Aren't you having a good time, Dobbin dear?" In the half-light of the box Lucinda leaned slightly toward him, and her delicious voice dripped sympathy. "I'm so sorry, I've been trying so hard not to bore you."
"I didn't say I was bored. I ain't—I'm being plagued by a heartless young she-devil that ought to be spanked and sent to bed. Damn it, Cinda! you not only ought to, you do know better. You knowItake it seriously. But you—you're merely playing."
"But with fire—eh, Dobbin?"
"You know that, too."
"And you're warning me lest I get singed?" Lucinda contrived to look a little awed. "How thoughtful!"
"Don't make me out a greater dunce than I am."
"Meaning you don't think I'm in any danger of getting scorched, carrying on with you?"
"Worse luck!"
"Dobbin: have you been deceiving me, aren't you the least bit inflammable, after all?"
"You know jolly well I took fire years ago and have never since managed to get the conflagration under control. Isn't ladylike to put the bellows to flames you don't mean to quench."
"How appallingly technical! But you do sputter so entertainingly, Dobbin—burning under forced draught, I presume you'd say, with your passion for riding a metaphor till it flounders—I'm not sure I'd care to see you quenched; I hate to think of you being put out with me."
"You play with words precisely as you play with me."
"You think so? Well, perhaps, but—Dobbin—don't be too sure. Think how sad it would be if you were to find out, too late, you'd been mistaken, you'd meant more to me than words could tell, more than you knew."
Over this equivoque Dobbin shook a baffled head; and Lucinda laughed, glanced carelessly toward the stage to make sure that the act still was young, and offered to rise.
"Let's not stay any longer, Dobbin, or we'll be caught in the carriage jam. Let's trot along and have a good time."
"What's the next jump?"
"To the Palais Royal." Dobbin uttered an involuntary sound of dissent. "Why not? Julie Allingham wants us to join her party—says everybody goes there nowadays, and it's desperately rowdy and loads of fun—said to ask for her box and make ourselves at home if we got there before she did."
Mrs. Allingham was not one of Daubeney's favorites. A persevering body, with a genius for trading in last season's husband for the latest model, gifted likewise with incurable impudence and poverty of tact, both of which she was clever enough to veneer with vivacity and exploit as whimsical idiosyncrasies, she failed to measure up to his notion of the type of woman with whom Lucinda ought to be seen. He had been civil, no more, when she had danced into the box during the first entr'acte to make a public fuss over her darling Cindy, and then—engaged in small-talk by Julie's satellites, two sleek but otherwise featureless bloods—had failed to hear her invitation; and Julie had carefully forgotten to remind him of it on taking her leave.
So Daubeney wasn't pleased as he helped Lucinda with her wraps; and she read disgruntlement in his silence and constraint.
"You don't want to go, Dobbin? With me? Why?"
"With you, anywhere. But...." He mustered an unconvincing grin. "Oh, it's all right, of course. But Julie Allingham—you know—really!"
Lucinda's mouth tightened, for an instant her eyes held a sullen light. "How tiresome! You sound just like Bel. How often have I heard him use almost the same words: 'Julie Allingham—you know—really!'"
"Sorry," Dobbin said stiffly.
"What's the matter with Julie Allingham?" Lucinda demanded in a pet. "She's amusing, I like her."
"Then there's nothing more to be said."
"Oh, you're all alike, you, Bel, and all the rest of you!"
"Think so?"
"What if Julie has made history of a few husbands? At least, she's been honest about her changes of heart; when she tired of one, she got rid of him legally before taking on another. I call that more decent treatment than most men give their wives."
"Never having had a wife, can't argue."
"Oh, you sound more like Bel every minute! Do come along."
All at once her succès had evaporated into thin air, the flavour of it, that had been so sweet, had gone flat, like champagne too long uncorked. And all (she thought) because Dobbin with his stupid prejudices had reminded her of Bel!
It began to seem as if there might have been more truth than she had guessed in her assertion that men were all alike in their attitude toward women, toward their wives and toward—the others.
But if that were so (surely she wasn't the first to glimpse an immortal truth) why did women ever marry?
And why, in the name of reason! having once worried through the ordeal of having a husband, did any woman ever repeat an experiment which experience should have taught her was predestined to prove a failure?
She emerged from a brown study to find herself in the car, with Dobbin at her side watching her thoughtfully.
"Cross with me, Cinda?"
With an effort Lucinda shrugged out of her ill-humour.
"No, of course not. With myself, rather, for being a silly. Dobbin: you're a dear."
"I know," he agreed with comic complacence; "but it doesn't get me anywhere."
"You're not very flattering. I don't tell every man he's a dear."
"I'm wondering what the term means to you."
"It means a great deal."
"But what are the privileges and appurtenances of a dear's estate in your esteem? Does it carry the right to take liberties?"
"It might be worth your while to try and find out."
"Well.... It's been a question in my mind ever since last night, and something you said just now.... Is the inference justified, you and Druce aren't getting along too well?"
"Oh, do stop reminding me of Bel! I do so want to forget him for tonight."
"Then it's worse than I thought."
"It's worse than anybody thinks that doesn't know, Dobbin."
"So he hasn't changed...."
"How do you mean?"
"Why, I used to know Bellamy pretty well, pal around with him and that sort of thing...."
"No," said Lucinda slowly, eyes straight ahead—"if you mean what I mean, Bel hasn't changed."
"Then...." Daubeney found a hand which Lucinda resigned to his without a struggle. "As a man who truly loves you, dear, and always has, I think the right is mine to ask yet another question: What are you going to do?"
She shook her head dolefully: "I don't know yet."
"You said last night you were still in love...."
"Last night it was true."
"But today——?"
"I don't know."
"I won't ask you what has happened, Cinda——"
"Please don't. I don't want to talk about it."
"Only I must know one thing: Is there anyone else—with you, I mean?"
Lucinda met those devoted eyes honestly. "No, Dobbin, I'm sorry—not even you...."
"Then that's all right. No need for either of us to worry. You'll come through with flying colours. Only, don't do anything in haste, and right or wrong, count on me."
Lucinda gave his fingers a friendly pressure and disengaged her hand. "Dear Dobbin," she said gently.
The car was pulling in toward a corner.
Though they had left the Metropolitan long before the final curtain, on Broadway the midnight tidal bore of motor traffic was even then gathering way and volume, the first waves of after-theatre patrons were washing the doorsteps of those sturdy restaurants which had withstood the blast of Prohibition, the foyer of the Palais Royal already held a throng of some proportions. In this omnium-gatherum of confirmed New Yorkers and self-determined suburbicides, arrayed in every graduation of formal, semi-formal and informal dress, and drawn together by the happy coup of that year's press-agent in heralding the establishment as a favorite resort of what the Four Million still styles its Four Hundred, the women stood grouped in their wraps and wistfully watching their men-folk importune a headwaiter who was heroically holding the staircase against all-comers, passing only the fore-handed in the matter of reservations, and putting all others to ignominious rout with the standardized statement that there was not a table upstairs left untaken.
At first glance, the huge main room on the second story, with its serried semicircles of tables and its flamboyant colour scheme, seemed less frequented by clients than by waiters; but the influx of the former was constant, and when, shortly after Lucinda and Daubeney had been seated, a gang of incurable melomaniacs crashed, blared and whanged into a jazz fox-trot, the oval dance floor was quickly hidden by swaying couples.
For some minutes Lucinda sat looking out over without seeing these herded dancers, only aware of the shifting swirl of colour and the hypnotic influence of savage music, her thoughts far from this decadent adaptation of jungle orgies which she had come to witness. And presently a smile began to flicker in the depths of her eyes.
"Oh!" she said, rousing when Daubeney uttered a note of interrogation—"I was thinking about this afternoon, remembering that funny little man moping and mowing in his magnificent delusion that he was conducting an orchestra."
"It was amusing, illuminating, too. One begins to understand why the movies are what they are. If I'm not mistaken, the author of that asinine exhibition is rated as one of the ablest directors in the business."
Lucinda quoted Mr. Lane's eulogy of King Laughlin.
"Well, there you are," Dobbin commented. "I presume genius must be humoured in its poses; even so, I saw nothing in Laughlin's directing to offset the silliness of his performance with the orchestra. I should say the business is poorly organized that permits men of his calibre, with so little sense of balance, to hold positions of absolute authority."
"You don't think Mr. Lane may have exaggerated Mr. Laughlin's importance——"
"Perhaps; though he was honoured with suspicious reverence by everybody present."
"Except Mr. Culp."
"Well, yes; Culp didn't seem so much overpowered. All the same, I noticed he didn't attempt to call Laughlin to order."
"But possibly the manisa genius. He seemed to know what he was about when he was showing them how to play that scene."
"I'll admit his grasp of primary mechanics; but the scene as he built it would have been ridiculous in the theatre."
"But it wasn't for a theatre, it was for the movies."
"Precisely my point. Why should motion-picture plays be less plausibly done than plays on the stage? The American theatre outgrew 'Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model' long before motion-pictures were seriously thought of; I mean, American audiences outgrew such trash. Yet today our movies are shaped on identically the lines of the popular melodrama that was laughed off the boards a generation ago. There's something wrong."
For some reason which Lucinda didn't stop to analyze, Daubeney's arguments stirred up a spirit of contentiousness.
"At all events, Mr. and Mrs. Culp seemed satisfied."
"Two people who have made a huge lot of money in an astonishingly short time: it isn't likely they'd be disposed to interfere with the system that enriched them, even allowing that they are sensible of its defects."
Lucinda caught herself frowning, then had the grace to laugh. "Can't make me believe they're lacking in artistic appreciation, Dobbin."
"Why not?"
"You don't know about the handsome offer Mr. Culp made me, with his wife's approval, just as we were going away."
It was Dobbin's turn to frown. "What kind of an offer?" he demanded shortly.
"To become a movie actress under the Culp banner, a sister-in-art to Alma Daley."
Daubeney ejaculated "What for?" with an expression of such utter dumbfounderment that Lucinda gasped with stifled mirth, then gave way to outright laughter.
"You're awfully funny, Dobbin! And they thought they were paying me a compliment."
But Daubeney would not see the fun of it.
"Do you mean to tell me that fellow Culp actually had the impertinence——"
"Oh, come!" Lucinda's amusement subsided. "It wasn't so bad as all that. Mr. Culp was most kind, at least he meant to be. He said he, his wife and his cameraman—whose opinion he values more highly than any director's—all agreed I had shown a great deal of promise; and that, if I cared to try it on, he'd be glad to give me a good part in Miss Daley's next picture, and if I made good in that he'd form a company to star me."
"What rot!"
"Dobbin!"
"They're trying to work you——"
"But, my dear! isn't it barely possible Mr. Culp was sincere?"
"The thing's absurd on the face of it."
"Isn't that a matter of opinion?"
"It's a characteristic scheme to exploit you to Alma Daley's profit, to get her a lot of publicity on the cheap by letting the newspapers announce that Mrs. Bellamy Druce is going to act in her support."
"You won't admit, then," Lucinda persisted, nettled, "I may possibly have some latent ability as a motion-picture actress?"
"It doesn't matter. The proposition is a piece of—of preposterous impudence. What did you say to Culp?"
With countenance half averted, Lucinda said coldly: "My dear Dobbin: do you realize you're being rude?"
He was all contrition. "Oh, I'm sorry, Cinda, if I let my indignation on your behalf——"
"Gratuitous, you'll admit."
Daubeney reddened and swallowed hard. "I repeat: I didn't mean to offend. I apologize."
"Very well, Dobbin. Let's say no more about it."
But Lucinda's tone lacked friendliness, and the eyes were visibly sulky that, refusing to recognize his pleading, blindly surveyed the milling riot of dancers.
The silence that fell between them, like a curtain of muffling folds, was presently emphasized by an abrupt suspension of the music. When Daubeney could endure it no longer, he broke it with a question, the most impolitic conceivable: "You didn't tell me what answer you gave Culp, Cinda?"
"Didn't I? But I'm sure it doesn't matter."
To himself, but half-aloud, Dobbin groaned: "Oh, the devil!"
But his manifest penitence earned him no more than a show of restoration to favour. The heart in Lucinda's bosom felt hot and hard and heavy with chagrin, she had banked so confidently on Dobbin's sympathy.... He might be truly in love with her, she hadn't much doubt that he was, but the understanding she had counted on was denied her, the sense of security in his affection was no more. She felt cruelly bereft, more desolate than at any time since the breach with Bel had begun to seem unbridgeable.
It made no difference that she knew this feeling was unfair to both, that its childishness was clear to her whom it victimized the most. The day-long drain upon her emotions was inexorably exacting its due. With no more provocation than a sting of puerile pique, she had lost her temper, and all her efforts to retrieve it seemed unavailing. She felt broken, beaten, and very tired, she wanted to creep away to bed and cry herself asleep. Yet she must somehow find strength to hold up, or forfeit self-respect, she dared not confess the stuff of her spirit as mean as her heart's. She shook herself impatiently....
At the same time the band rewarded tireless hand-clapping by again breaking loose in blasts of delirious cacophony, and Lucinda pushed back her chair.
"Don't let's talk any more for a while, Dobbin—I'd rather dance."
Descending the several steps from the box level to the common, they threaded their way through a jam of tables to the fringe of the dance-mad mob, in whose closely-packed, rocking and surging rout considerable imagination and ingenuity were required to find room. Nevertheless Daubeney adroitly created a space where none had been, and swinging smoothly away, they became one with and lost in the crush, their progress of necessity slow but amazingly easy, for Daubeney led with grace and skill.
Lucinda tried to forget her vexation in watching the faces of their fellow dancers and their styles, a diversion which seldom failed to flood her being, even when she was saddest, with sweetness and light.
All about them couples were practising every conceivable variety of step that could be executed to the rhythm beaten out by tireless drums whose timbre had all the grim and weirdly stimulating monotony of African tom-toms. Many contented themselves with a solemn, wellnigh ritualistic jigging by means of which they traversed the floor crab-wise, inch by inch. Others charged short distances at headlong speed, checked short, whirled madly, darted and swooped again with incredible agility, in a sort of corybantic frenzy. Still others favoured a tedious twirling, like amorous dervishes. Yet there were strangely few collisions....
Young things drifted by with faces buried in the shoulders of their partners, whether for shame or in somnambulism it was impossible to say. Those who are always with us, locked as in a death-grapple, ploughed doggedly along with tense mouths and rapt eyes. Couples whose mutual passion was stronger than feminine regard for the most carefully composed complexion, moved as one, her cheek glued to his. Portly and bedizened dowagers wore set smiles on lips that moved to inaudible counting, and their paid partners, professional young male dancers, that patient yet abstracted expression that tells of bandaged, swollen feet. Little girls who apparently should have been at home, getting a good night's rest in preparation for a long school-day tomorrow, lifted up unformed, flower faces breathlessly to the hard, mature faces of the vulpine men who held them.
Lucinda saw those to whom this was adventure, those to whom it was romance, those to whom it was physical agony, and those to whom it was a source of soul-destroying ennui. She smelt the breath of sticky bodies and the cloying perfumes in which the optimistic reposed mistaken faith.
And all her movements were, like theirs, measured by the swing of that giggling, grunting, whistling, clanging, moaning band....
Suddenly she knew she had had enough.
"It's too crowded," she told Dobbin; and he nodded agreement. "Shall we stop when we get around to our box?"
Without warning more than a smothered cry of alarm in a woman's voice, Lucinda was struck by a wildly careering body with such force that she lost footing altogether and must have fallen but for Dobbin, who instantly tightened his hold and braced himself against the dead drag of her weight, this though the shock of collision almost carried him off his own feet.
Simultaneously the floor shook with the impact of two heavy falls. And clinging to Dobbin, a little dazed, Lucinda saw a strikingly pretty young woman, stunningly undressed, sprawling at her feet, and at a yard's distance a man in similar plight.
Derisive cackles and guffaws of clowns broke out on all sides, a space was cleared round the unfortunates.
"Are you all right, Cinda?" Dobbin asked. She nodded and tried to smile. "Sure you're not hurt?"
She shook her head vigorously, and by way of proof stood out of his arms, but swayed dizzily and, with a little apologetic laugh, caught at one of them again.
"All right," Dobbin said hastily. "Let's get out of this."
"No—wait!" Lucinda insisted. "Perhaps she's hurt."
She brushed his arm aside, only to discover that the overthrown woman had regained her feet, and now stood watching her partner in shrewish fury as, grinning foolishly, he scrambled up.
"You clumsy dumb-bell!" she stormed in a rasping voice that must have carried clearly half across the room. "I hope to Gawd I got enough sense not to dance with you again when you're pickled!"
And catching her first glimpse of the man's crimson face, Lucinda yielded all at once to Daubeney's insistence.
But she never quite knew how they got back to their table.
But even with the three sides of the box affording their false show of privacy, it never entered Lucinda's head to sit down and pretend nothing had happened, the instinct to fly at once from this theatre of disgrace was still predominant. Only for a moment she rested standing, while her eyes, darkly dilate, sought Daubeney's, which held a look of such heart-broken regret that they won a compassionate smile even in her hour of affliction, and somehow helped Lucinda pull together the rent and draggled garment of her dignity.
"At least," she said quietly, "Julie Allingham isn't here—thank Heaven for that! You saw him, of course?"
Dobbin made a vague gesture of sympathy: "Frightfully sorry...."
Lucinda shrugged. "Don't be. It wasn't your fault, it was I who insisted on coming here."
Her gaze veered to the floor; but the dancers had already swarmed over and abolished the break in their ranks, and though she looked beyond the sea of bobbing heads, to right and left, reviewing all she could see of the room, Bellamy was nowhere in sight.
"I presume we couldn't have been mistaken...." Dobbin ventured half-heartedly.
"No: it was Bel."
"Hoped we might have been misled by a resemblance. Somehow the poor devil didn't look quite like Bellamy."
"He's apt to look not quite like himself when he is—as the pretty lady with him so delicately put it—'pickled.'"
"Think he knew you?"
"Oh, yes; I saw him look directly at me just before we turned away." Lucinda took up her wrap. "If you'll help me with this, Dobbin, I think I'd like to go."
"Afraid I'll have to ask you to wait a minute or two. I've got these to pay for...." Daubeney indicated the untasted glasses of lemonade they had ordered. "I've sent for our waiter."
"Then if you don't mind, I'll go ahead. Let me have the carriage check, and I'll wait in the car."
Daubeney surrendered the pasteboard slip, and Lucinda went out. The passageway behind the boxes enabled her to gain the entrance without running the gauntlet of the floor, and she descended the stairs with her head slightly lowered, in panic hope that she might thereby escape recognition if bad luck would have it that she must meet Julie Allingham. But she was spared that misfortune.
At the street door she gave the attendant the carriage-check together with a coin. "And hurry, please!" The man saluted respectfully and vanished.
She waited restlessly just inside the glass doors till the reflection that every second was making an encounter with the Allingham woman more certain drove her out to the street; a move which she found immediate reason to repent. Only a few feet away Bellamy stood with an affectionate arm round the shoulder of the door-porter, greatly to the seeming embarrassment of that monumental personage and the amusement of the street. A knot of grinning bystanders had already begun to gather.
Bel's derby was perilously perched, his overcoat, donned in haste, was poorly settled on his shoulders, though he had contrived to worry two buttons through the wrong buttonholes, and he was explaining, unconsciously to everybody within a wide radius, the personal service he required in return for the ten-dollar bill which he was waving beneath the porter's nose.
"Now, lishn, Jim.... Do' mind my callin' you Jim, do you, ol' scout?... Get thish straight: M'wife's here t'night 'nd I don' want her know I wash here, shee? If she don' know I wash here, she's got nothin' on me, nothin' 'tall, shee? So you don' know me, you never heard of me, shee?"
"Yes, Mr. Druce."
"'Caush it's this way: if she's got nothin' on me, I'm all right, 'nd I got somethin' on her. Believe me, Jim, I got good 'nd plenty on her t'night. She's here with man I know and don' like, man I got no ush for at all—shee?—no ush whatever. Ain't that limit, jush like woman? Insist you gotta walk chalk-mark, but minute your back'sh turned, what they do? Go off on private lil parties all their own, that'sh sort of thing they do!..."
Panting and sick with mortification, Lucinda turned from the sound of that babbling voice of a fool—and heard her own name pronounced.
"The car is here, Mrs. Druce."
In a wild stare she identified the face of her chauffeur, saw that he understood the situation and was anxious to be helpful.
"Wait," she quavered.
And then by a miracle of will-power she managed to master her nerves and, putting aside her horror and humiliation, took thought quickly and clearly.
"All I wan' you to do ish remember, if Mishish Druce asks if you've seen me, you never heard of me, don' know me 'tall—shee, Jim, shee what I mean?"
As Lucinda drew near the porter must have guessed who she was, for he spoke to Bellamy in a low voice, and the latter swung round with startled eyes and a dropping jaw. She closed her fingers on his wrist and put all her strength into their grasp.
"Come, Bel," she said clearly and not unkindly. "Please don't keep me waiting. The car is here, we're going home."
For a moment the balance wavered, then Bel's eyes fell, and she knew she had won.
"Oh, a'right," he mumbled with strange docility. "Didn' know you were waitin', Linda. Get ri' in the car—be with you in jush a minute."
"No," she said firmly—"you're coming with me now."
She drew him away. He yielded without remonstrance, permitted her to lead him to the door of the car, stumbled in on his knees, and crawled up to the seat. Lucinda followed, the door closed behind her with a clap sweeter than music in her hearing, and with purring gears the car shot out of range of those leering faces.
Lucinda had forgotten Dobbin as utterly as if she had never known him.
Bellamy lay in a loose slouch, breathing heavily. The passing lights revealed the stupidity of his congested features. His eyes were half-closed, he seemed to be asleep.
Cringing as far away from him as she could, Lucinda dug nails into her palms to keep from giving over body and mind to the dominion of hysteria. She saw nothing of the streets through which they passed, knew no thought other than to preserve her self-control.
When at length the car stopped, she jumped out and, leaving Bellamy to the care of the chauffeur and footman, ran up to her room. The maid waiting there she dismissed for the night in half a dozen words whose decision sent the woman from her in astonishment.
Alone, her first move was to secure the door communicating with Bel's rooms. Then she threw herself upon the bed and lay listening to the noise on the stairway of voices and stumbling feet. The door between the hall and Bel's rooms banged. She heard him maundering incoherently to his valet for a time, a long time; the valet seemed to be trying to make him listen to reason and failing in the end. The neck of a decanter chattered against the rim of a glass, there was a lull in the murmur of voices, then a thick cry and the thud of a fall. After that the quiet was little disturbed by the valet's labours with the body of the drunkard. Eventually the man went out and closed the door. In the subsequent silence the clock downstairs chimed twelve.
Lucinda rose then, and changed to her simplest street suit.
For half an hour or so she was busy at desk and dressing-table, packing a checque book and her jewels with other belongings in a small handbag. She did not falter once or waste a single move through indecision. Indeed, it did not once occur to her that there was anything to be done but what she meant to do.
Shortly after one o'clock she left Bel snoring, crept down the stairs and with infinite stealth let herself out to the street.
Nobody saw her go, neither did she hesitate as she turned her back upon the home that had till then held for her every precious thing in life.