The Comedienne Part 54

He sat down in an ill humor, began to rub his knee and tossed about angrily in his chair.

Janina noticed his mood and, forgetting about herself, inquired: "What is the matter with you? Are you ill?"

"There is nothing the matter with me, only I owe someone a few rubles and am unable to pay them back. I can't ask my mother for the money, for she is sick again and it would only finish her! Cabinski will not give it to me either, and I am at my wit's end!"

He was, of course, lying, for he had been playing cards the whole night long and had lost all he had. Janina remembered the help she had received from Glogowski, so without hesitation she took off her gold watch and chain and laid it before Wladek.

"I have no money. Take this and p.a.w.n it and pay your debt and what you have left over bring me back, for I also have nothing," she said heartily.

"No, I shall not take it! What do you want to do that for? I really don't need it. . . . My dear child! . . ." remonstrated Wladek in his first impulse of honesty.

"Please take it. . . . If you love me you will take it."

Wladek demurred a little while yet, but the thought struck him that with the money he might play again to win back what he had lost.

"No! What would that look like!" he whispered, his resistance growing ever weaker.

"Go right away and on your way back stop in for me and we shall have breakfast together," urged Janina.

Wladek kissed her, as though he were embarra.s.sed, muttered something about grat.i.tude, but finally took the watch and went to p.a.w.n it.

He returned quickly with thirty rubles. He immediately borrowed twenty from Janina and wanted even to give her a receipt for them, but she became so angry that he had to apologize to her. Then they went out to breakfast.

Thenceforward they lived together. At the theater everyone knew about their relation, but it was such a usual thing, that no one paid attention to it. Only Sowinska would sometimes taunt Janina on the score and slight her and, whereas not so long ago she had done nothing but praise Wladek, she now told the vilest sort of tales about him. She delighted in tormenting Janina in this manner, and avenged herself in this way for the loss of her son's love.

At last it was announced that stage rehearsals of Doctor Robin were to begin. Wladek brought this information to Janina, because for a few days she had been very weak and had not left her home at all.

She felt an oppressive drowsiness and exhaustion and an unbearable pain in her back. Then again such a feeling of helplessness and discouragement would possess her that she wanted to cry and had no desire to stir from her bed, but lay for whole days, gazing blankly at the ceiling. The humming sensation in her head returned and she suffered such a burning thirst that nothing could quench it.

However, on hearing that she was to take part in the play, Janina immediately felt well and strong again.

She went to the rehearsal, trembling with fear, but on seeing the person who was to play "Garrick," she quickly mastered herself. This amateur was hardly more than a boy, skinny, awkward, and simple-minded. He lisped and waddled about like a duck, but since he was the cousin of one of the influential journalists who backed him, he regarded everybody at the theater with a haughty expression and treated them with an air of condescension. The members of the company delicately ridiculed him to his face and laughed loudly at him behind his back.

Everybody was present at the rehearsal, as though they had all agreed upon it beforehand.

No sooner did Janina enter upon the stage than Majkowska ostentatiously withdrew behind the scenes, while Topolski did not so much as nod his head to her in greeting. Janina realized that relations with them were severed for good, but she had no time to think about it, for the rehearsal began immediately. Despite the fact that she had at first intended merely to recite her role, Janina could not now refrain from marking it, at least in its broad outlines.

She was irritated by the fact that everyone was looking at her and that from all directions numerous eyes were fixed upon her. It seemed to her that she saw ridicule in their glances and derision on all those lips, so at moments she would start nervously and break out with all the force of her temperament, or again, she would speak too softly.

Majkowska stood there hissing and laughing together with Zarnecka and loudly voicing her opinion of Janina's acting. Topolski, the stage-manager, made her leave and reenter the stage several times, for in her excitement, she did not enter properly.

Janina knew what they were doing, so she did not take very much to heart Mela's ridicule or Topolski's pedantic instructions. She played on and rendered her role forcibly, if a little unevenly.

There followed a characteristic silence; n.o.body laughed nor jested loudly.

The stage-director walked up and down behind the scenes contentedly rubbing his hands and grunting: "Good, good, but she does not yet put enough pathos into it!"

"Why, don't you hear she is already shouting, not speaking!"

Majkowska jeered at him.

"My dear madame! You go into convulsions on the stage, and none of us, out of politeness, blames you for it," answered Stanislawski for his friend.

"Not that way! Who waves his arms in that manner? Are you trying to make a windmill of yourself?" cried Topolski.

"Don't discourage her, remember it is her first rehearsal!" cried Cabinska from the seats.

"You walk about the stage like a goose!" again remarked the irritated Topolski to Janina.

"She wouldn't be at all bad as a washerwoman!" hissed Mela.

In spite of all, although she felt tears of wrath rising to her eyes, Janina played on, without letting herself be confused and never for a moment losing her presence of mind.

When she had finished, Cabinska ostentatiously kissed her and began to praise her aloud so that Majkowska could hear: "I congratulate you and have no doubt that you will play the part excellently!"

"Work out the details a little better," Stanislawski advised her.

"Why, this is merely a rehearsal! I already have the entire character worked out in my head."

"We shall now have a real heroine, for one that is beautiful and talented at the same time!" cried Rosinska in a very loud voice.

Majkowska glared at her furiously, but did not reply.

Janina felt so happy that she had a desire to kiss everybody.

In two days the performance was to take place. That interval was like one immense vista of light in which Janina seemed eagerly absorbed. It seemed to her that she was entirely satisfied.

"At last! At last! Now, all my poverty and humiliation will end!"

Janina whispered rapturously to herself. She thought that a repertory of roles would immediately be a.s.signed to her. She gave free reign to her imagination and already saw herself upon some pinnacle. She was already in that promised land of powerful emotions about which she dreamed every day in that realm that swarmed before her eyes with a stately throng of heroic figures, superhuman pa.s.sions, and dazzling beauty, a realm in which there reigned a perfect harmony between dreams and reality.

Janina smiled with pity at those days of want and poverty, as though she were bidding farewell to them forever. Everything that surrounded her, even Wladek, paled into insignificance before her fascinated eyes.

A thousand times she repeated the role of "Mary." She sat for hours at a time before the mirror, practicing the appropriate facial expression and became feverish with impatience while awaiting the arrival of the momentous day. At night, Janina would sit half asleep in her bed and gaze before her. It seemed to her that she saw the crowded theater and the representatives of the press, that she heard the quiet murmurs of the public, saw their enraptured glances, and that she entered the stage and played. . . . Half unconsciously she would repeat the words of her role, kindle with ardor, declaim them with exaltation. Then, overcome by drowsiness again, she would smile through tears of happiness for she heard most distinctly that well-known and thrilling thunder of applause and cries of: "Orlowska! Orlowska!" And with that smile on her face she would fall asleep and wake again to continue her dreams.

Janina sold whatever she could to buy the appropriate costume for her part. With a smile of contentment she would drive away Wladek so that he might not interfere with her.

On that day which was to be for her so important and decisive, Cabinski, before the general rehearsal, took away her part and gave it to Majkowska.

Intrigue and envy had gained their end. Cabinski was forced to yield, for Topolski had threatened to leave the company immediately unless he took away the role from Janina and gave it to Majkowska.

It was the way he chose to avenge himself because of Janina's refusal to go to Kotlicki.

Struck to the very heart, Janina almost lost her reason under this blow. She began to stagger on her feet and felt that the whole theater was whirling about her and that everything was sinking with her into a bottomless darkness. She cast a glance of unspeakable grief at all those about her, as though seeking for help, but on the faces of most of the members of the company there was an expression of merriment over what they thought was a splendid joke, and the beastly joy of cretins at the suppression of talent. They mocked the defeated aspirant with their glances; burning taunts and jibes began to fall from all sides like stones upon her soul crushed by an unexpected blow. Brutal laughs arose, scourging her as with a whip and all the baseness of human delight in the pain of others found its object and outlet.

And Janina stood there without a word or motion, with that dreadful pain in her heart in which it seemed as though all the arteries had been torn open and were flooding it with the blood of despair.

She collected enough strength to ask: "Why may I not play the part?"

"Because you may not and that settles it!" answered Cabinski curtly.

And he immediately left the theater, because he dreaded a scene and felt a trifle sorry for Janina.

She remained standing behind the scenes with that overwhelming and sharp pain of disappointment tearing at her soul. She felt such an emptiness and loneliness that at moments it seemed to her as though she were all alone in the world and that something had pinned her to the earth with an immense weight and was crus.h.i.+ng her down, that she was falling with lightning speed to the bottom of some deep abyss where a grayish-green whirlpool was dimly roaring.