Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/222

 "Isn't it? I always thought the Bronx began at Columbus Circle. Damon, see what you can find out about the Manhattan. What we'll do is tear out the orchestra seats and put in rugs and cushions."

"That's silly," objected Lucy impatiently, "the audience won't be able to see."

"Lucy's right, Figente, that wouldn't be practical," Damon said seriously.

"Perhaps it would be better to clear the orchestra floor where the populace can stand. We will have divans in the boxes for a special group whom we will first invite to buy stock. Susan, you shall assemble our patrons and start by making out a big fat check yourself."

Mrs. Custerd, frightened at what her daughter and son-in-law would say in view of their already expressed outrage at what she had thus far spent on Ranna, was relieved to hear the ballet dancer object.

"Figente, if you're really serious you'll have to have popular orchestra seats and not just drapes over the balcony. Joe Samuels says the orchestra floor pays for the show and the balcony is the profit—if it's a hit. Boxes don't count, they're usually papered anyway, and what I want to know is what are you actually going to do to help?"

Figente, hurt, said, "My dear, I am the impresario, the Diaghilev!"

Damon St. John was dazzled by the prospect of designing a production, unhindered by the compromises of commercial theatre, with the freedom of a Bakst. "Figente is essentially right. I'm certain we could prove an artistic venture can pay for itself."

"One has to wish for it sufficiently and it will come to pass," Ranna intoned dreamily in a liquid oddly gurgling British accent, addressing himself to Lucy.

"Last summer there was a Mrs. Cornwallis with an absolute genius for making things work," Mrs. Custerd remembered. "She was visiting the Baroness Irma von Hauptstengel. It was Irma's first season in France since the war and she told me this American, Mrs. Cornwallis, whom she had met in Berlin, had encouraged her to come. Well, as you know, Raymond, there's never much to do in Biarritz and this Mrs. Cornwallis had Irma give a masked bal nègre. We all threw ourselves into the spirit of the thing and masked as Negroes except one couple who wore white funny faces. They turned out to be a Negro prizefighter and Clara belle Lee, the Bal Tabarin Negress star. The ball was a sensation and broke the ice for Irma, 210