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"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 "what are you 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't want to 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.
X
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.