The Comedienne Part 32

Your humble servant,

GRZESIKIEWICZ."

"What's going to happen? . . ." thought Janina, dressing hastily.

"What kind of important matter can it be that he writes of?

Concerning my father? . . . Can it be that he is ill and longing for me? . . . Oh no! No!"

She quickly drank her tea, tidied her room and patiently awaited Grzesikiewicz's visit. The thought of seeing, at last some one of her own people from Bukowiec even filled her with a certain joy.

"Perhaps he will propose to me again?" Janina thought to herself.

And she saw his big weather-beaten face, bronzed by the sun, and those blue eyes gazing so mildly from beneath his shock of flaxen hair. She remembered too, his embarra.s.sed shyness.

"A good, honest man!" she said to herself, walking up and down the room; but then the thought occurred to her that his visit was likely to spoil her intended trip to Bielany, and her enthusiasm began to cool. She determined she would speak to him briefly.

"I wonder what he wants of me?" Janina asked herself uneasily, a.s.suming the most impossible things.

"My father must be very sick and wants me to come to him," she answered herself.

She stood in the center of the room almost dazed, with fear that she must return to Bukowiec.

"No, it is impossible! . . . I couldn't stand it there a single week . . . and moreover, he drove me away from home forever . . ."

A chaotic conflict between hate, sorrow, and a quiet, scarcely perceptible feeling of homesickness began to rage in Janina's heart.

The bell rang in the anteroom.

Janina sat down and waited quietly. She heard the door opening, the voices of Grzesikiewicz and Sowinska, and the sound of an overcoat being hung up.

"May I come in?" asked a voice outside.

"Please do," she whispered, choking with trepidation as she arose from her chair.

Grzesikiewicz entered. His face was even more sunburnt than usual and his blue eyes seemed bluer. He walked stiffly and erectly like a petrified block of meat squeezed into a tight surtout with difficulty. He almost threw his hat upon a basket standing near the door and, kissing Janina's hand, said quickly: "Good morning . . ."

He straightened himself, scanned her face with his eyes and sat down heavily in a chair.

"I had a hard time finding you . . ." he began, and suddenly broke off. Then, as if to bolster up his courage, he attempted to shove aside a chair that interfered with his actions but pushed it so hard that it fell over.

He sprang up, all red in the face, and began to apologize.

Janina smiled, so vividly did that impulsive action remind her of their last talk and that unfortunate proposal. And for a moment it seemed to her that it was now that he was to propose and that they were sitting in the quiet parlor at Bukowiec. She could not explain to herself the impression that he made on her with that honest face, worn by suffering, and with those bright blue eyes which seemed to bring with them echoes of those beloved fields and woods, those quiet glens, that golden sunlight and the free and bounteous life of nature. For one fleeting moment her mind dwelt on all this, but at the same time there awoke memories of all her sufferings and her banishment.

She handed him a box of cigarettes and said in an easy tone, breaking the somewhat prolonged silence: "You give proof of no small courage and . . . kindness by visiting me after all that has happened. . . ."

"Do you remember what I told you the last time," he answered, subduing and softening his voice, "that I would never and always! . . . That I would never cease and would always continue to love you!"

Janina moved impatiently, for his deeply sincere accent pained her.

"I beg your pardon . . . if it makes you angry, I will not say another word about myself . . ." he said with resignation.

"What is the news from home?" she asked, raising her eyes to his.

"How can I tell you? . . . It's something that beggars all description. You would not know your father; he has become an impossible autocrat in his official duties, and outside of them he goes hunting, visits his neighbors, whistles to himself . . . but has become so thin and worn that it is hard to recognize him. Worry is eating him away like a canker."

"Why? . . . What is there for my father to worry about?"

"My G.o.d! How can you ask such a question? Are you joking, or haven't you a spark of feeling in you? . . . Why is he worrying? . . .

Because you are away . . . because he, like all of us, is dying with longing for you! . . ."

"And what about Krenska? . . ." Janina asked with apparent calmness, although stirred deeply by what he had told her.

"What has Krenska to do with this? . . . He threw her out the very next day after your departure, afterwards received a few days'

official leave from his duties and left Bukowiec. . . . In about a week he returned so woebegone and haggard that we scarcely recognized him. Even strangers are crying over him, but you had no pity on him and went forth into the world . . . and what kind of world, besides? . . ."

Janina sprang up violently from her chair.

"Yes, you may be angry with me if you will, but I love you, I love you too well, and we all love you too well to be denied the right to speak what we feel. Have me thrown out of here if you will, and I'll not complain, but I'll wait for you at the street door or meet you anywhere else and keep telling you that your father is dying without you and that he is growing sicker and weaker every day! My mother came across him not so long ago in the woods: he was lying in some bushes and crying like a child. You are killing him. Both of you are killing each other with your pride and unrelenting stubbornness. You are the best woman in the world and I feel that you will not leave him alone, that you will return and give up theatrical life. . . .

Aren't you ashamed of a.s.sociating with such a band of scoundrels? . . .

How can you possibly exhibit yourself on the stage! . . ."

He broke off and breathing heavily, wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. Never before had he said so much at one time.

Janina sat with bowed head, her face as pale as a sheet, her lips set tightly and her heart filled with a storm of rebellion and suffering. That sharp voice which she had just heard had in it such a tearful, deep and soul-stirring expression and those words: "Your father is suffering . . . your father is crying . . . your father is longing for you!" penetrated her with so sharp a grief and harried her so painfully, that at moments she wanted to spring up and go to him as quickly as she could; but then again, memories of the past would flood her brain and she would become cool and hardened.

Finally she recalled the theater and became entirely indifferent.

"No! He has driven me away forever. . . . I am alone in the world and will remain alone. I could not live without the theater!" Janina said to herself and there arose in her again that mad desire for theatrical conquest.

Grzesikiewicz also became silent, his eyes clouding mistily. He devoured her with his eyes, and had a great desire to fall on his knees before her, kiss her hands and feet and the hem of her dress and beg her to listen to him . . . Then again, when he remembered the whole tragedy of the situation, he felt like springing up from his chair and smas.h.i.+ng everything that came in his way; or again such a violent grief would convulse him that he could have cried aloud in sheer despair.

He sat and gazed at that beloved face, now pale and worn, on which the feverish night life of the theater had already left its imprint, and he felt that he would give his very life for her, if she would only go back.

Janina finally bent on him eyes that were glowing with irrevocable determination.

"You must know how my father hates me; you must also know that, when I refused to marry you, he drove me out of his house forever . . .

he almost cursed me and drove me out . . ." she repeated with bitterness. "I left because I had to, but I will never return. I will not exchange the freedom of the theater for slavery at home.

Things happened as they did because they had to. My father told me at that time that he had no longer a daughter, and I now answer that I have no longer a father. We have parted and will never be reunited again. I am entirely able to s.h.i.+ft for myself, and art will suffice me for everything."

"So you will not return?" asked Grzesikiewicz, for that was all he understood of her words.

"No! I have no home and I will not forsake the theater!" replied Janina in a calm voice, regarding him coolly, but her pale lips trembled a little and her bosom throbbed violently, convulsed by the conflict within.

"You will kill him . . . he loves you so . . . he will not outlive such a blow . . . ." said Grzesikiewicz gently.

"No, Andrew, my father does not love me. A person whom you love you do not torment for whole years at a time and then drive away from home like the worst. . . . Even a dog does not turn its young ones out . . . even an animal never does what was done to me!"

"I have seen and know how bitterly he regrets those reckless words and how hard it is for him to live without you. I swear that you will make him happy by returning! That you will restore him to life!"

"Did he tell you that he desired me to return to Bukowiec? Perhaps he has given you a letter for me? Please tell me the whole truth!"

she spoke rapidly.