Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/392

 In it was a throat band of small pearls, diamonds, garnets, and turquoise. These once graced Cleo de Merode read the card.

"Who was she?" Lucy asked Vida.

"A famous beauty and courtesan of around 1900—the toast of Paris in her day."

"Just what I need after a crazy day like this," Lucy said trembling as she fumbled the clasp.

That's her first sign of nerves, Vida thought admiringly, and went with Cleo who was not de Merode to get coffee, sandwiches, and fruit juice which, except for the coffee, no one touched. By seven thirty the pilot-lit stage was deserted and dressing rooms were heavy with forebodings despite flowers and telegrams. Ilona returned at eight and disappeared into her dressing room refusing to speak to her girls, who had been on tenterhooks.

"Someone here to see the manager," Pop said to Vida who could not restrain an hysterical laugh at this description of herself.

It was a representative from the union to check the musicians' cards. As only the pianist had a union card, Vida had to disturb Lucy in her making-up for a check to cover union stand-ins for Ilona's eight student musicians. The union regarded the egg beaters as percussion and the siren as a wind instrument. The five harpists, after a hot argument, were finally exempted as actors because they were in costume onstage.

At eight the act curtain and asbestos were lowered and the house was opened to the audience. Complaining toots of taxis echoed through the stagedoor alleyway and the metallic rat-tat-tat of rain up in the black void of the flies where looped rope hung like gallows.

I wouldn't go through this for the world, Vida, alone on the stage, thought shuddering.

At eight thirty Jack the electrician looked through a tormentor peephole. "Only fair, but they are still coming in," he said expressionless, and phoned the box office about going up.

"Hold it, the lobby is packed," was the report.

At ten minutes to nine the curtain rose on a filled house and Vida stifled a sob of relief, blew her nose, and stood next to the curtain man whom she was to cue. Across the stage Mae was peering anxiously from Lucy's dressing room.

The transformation which came over each exhausted performer the moment before passing from the grey-green shadows of the wings to the warm lighted stage amazed Vida.

Ranna in a ceremonial dance, titled appropriately "Invocation," 380