Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/369

 They are not lovers yet, Vida thought, appalled that she could feel exultation about that in her present state.

"What are you so upset about? Is it Ranna? Aren't the rehearsals going well? I meant to get to Ilona's while you were there this week but just couldn't get away from Figente's."

"It's everything! I don't know how it happened but I feel I've done everything wrong. Still, when I try to figure it out, I don't know why. I know what I want but I don't seem to know the right way to get it." She ended on an hysterical sob.

"Stop it! Stop it! And sit down and tell me," Vida ordered, galvanized by a Lucy without self-control. This was a Lucy she never had seen, one without confidence and afraid.

"I'll tell you, but first I'm going to open some champagne, it will do us good," she said, trying to compose herself.

"I'm all right," Vida repeated hollowly, "I'm just fine."

"It settles the stomach," Lucy said, handing her a glass, and they sipped silently, preoccupied with individual worries.

A long minute passed before Lucy spoke. "It's like this," Lucy finally said with a deep sigh. "You know the recital is planned for the week after Easter. Beman's show was supposed to run until June but the blizzard and now Lent killed business and the two weeks' closing notice was posted last Saturday. It hit the chorus and bit players harder than us leads and what with a small audience the show didn't have much pep anyway and we rang down three minutes early because we didn't get much applause or many curtains. As I said, I didn't care much because I made that extra money on the stock market on a tip from that broker I let rush me a while and I thought now I can concentrate on the recital. Well, after the show Beman told us he wasn't sending out a second company but that we would go instead, opening in Chicago Easter Monday. That knocked me for a loop. I went to see him Monday and said I couldn't go because of the recital. He was furious. Said I was being amateur and that made me mad. I told him I didn't want to spend my life doing the same old specialties and he ought to understand because of saying all the time he was interested in the art of the theatre. He said if I didn't go it would mean on Broadway I wasn't reliable, and that he always suspected I never would come across when it was important. What he meant was that I could have got Lyle to back that play about a dancer because he began raving about my kidding around and wasting my time with chorus boys. Rh