The Comedienne Part 59

"But if . . ."

"Go. If she received me, she will receive you all the more readily.

I will be back in about an hour and then we can have a chat." So saying, Wladek left hurriedly.

The counselor wiped his gla.s.ses, fidgeted about nervously, and had not yet made up his mind whether to enter or not, when Wladek turned back and called:

"My dear counselor! Lend me four rubles, will you? I would first have to look for Cabinski to get the money and the medicine is needed here right away. I have taken an unpleasant task upon myself, but what is one going to do when companions.h.i.+p demands it? I will return the money to you this evening, only please don't say anything about this. And pardon my boldness."

The counselor willingly reached for his pocket book and, handing Wladek ten rubles said: "I am glad I can help you. If any more is needed, tell Miss Janina to mention only a word to me and she can have it."

Wladek went off with the money, whistling merrily.

The counselor entered the house, quietly opened the door to Janina's apartment, took off his hat and coat and walked into the room.

Janina was combing her hair and paid no attention to the opening of the door, for she thought that Wladek had returned.

The counselor coughed a few times and approached her with extended hand.

Janina sprang up hastily and threw a scarf over her naked shoulders.

"Mr. Wladyslaw has just told me that you were ill, so I thought it would be a sin not to come to see you," said the counselor, speaking rapidly, adjusting his gla.s.ses and smiling a colorless, ba.n.a.l smile.

Janina stared at him in amazement, for a moment, but when she felt the touch of his cold, clammy hand in her own, she grew red with anger, sprang toward the door so violently that the scarf fell to the floor, revealing the stately lines of her shoulders, and opening the door with an energetic gesture, cried: "Leave the room!"

"But I give you my word of honor that I hadn't even the slightest intention of offending you. As a well-wis.h.i.+ng friend I came here merely to offer you my sympathy. Mr. Wladyslaw . . ."

"Is a scoundrel!"

"To that I'll agree, but you needn't get angry at me and express your indignation in such a drastic manner; that is a trifle too . . ."

"Please leave the room immediately!" cried Janina, trembling with anger.

"A comedienne! A comedienne, upon my word!" whispered the counselor to himself, hastily putting on his overcoat, for he was irritated and offended. He hurried out, angrily slamming the door after him.

"Oh, what a scoundrel! What a scoundrel! and I belong to such a man . . . I! They are jackals, not human beings, jackals! Wherever one turns there is mud and filth!"

And so great grew Janina's indignation, that she cried almost aloud through her tears: "Base wretches! wretches! wretches!"

Soon afterwards, Wladek returned bringing with him the powder, a bottle of whisky and a package of sandwiches. He eyed Janina curiously and looked about the room.

"The counselor was here!" she flung at him harshly.

The actor laughed cynically and exclaimed in a barroom jargon, "I cornered him. Now we can have a little feast."

Janina was about to tell him how base he was, but suddenly there rang in her ears those words: "Be good! Forgive!"

She restrained herself and began to laugh, but so harshly and so long that she fell upon the bed and, tossing about on it, began to repeat amid that dreadful, hysterical laughter: "Be good! Forgive!"

After a week's intermission there began again for Janina her former hard life and an even harder battle, because now it had become a struggle for mere daily bread.

She sang, as before, in the chorus, dressed as a chorus girl, peered through the curtain at the public, whose attendance at the theater was decreasing every day, strayed about the stage and the dressing-rooms during the intermissions, and listened to the whispered conversations, the music, and the quarrels. But how different now were her thoughts and her feelings, how different now and unlike her former self was Janina!

She no longer sought in the eyes of the public enthusiasm and love of art, nor did she cast challenging glances at the front rows of seats, for poverty had taught her how to estimate from the stage the size of the audience and from it to draw deductions as to the proportionate size of her salary. Poverty taught her to take covertly from the storeroom the bread that was often used on the stage and to eat it on the way home; frequently this was her entire daily sustenance. No one admired her now, or escorted her home; nor did she contend with anyone about art.

Kotlicki had completely vanished, the counselor was angry at Janina and kept away from the theater, while Wladek spoke with her only at times and visited her ever more rarely, offering as his excuse his mother's growing weakness and the need of being with her.

Janina knew that he was lying, but she did not contradict him, for he was entirely indifferent to her. She felt a deep contempt for him, but could not break with him entirely because there still lingered deep down in her consciousness a memory of the happy hours they had spent together. She treated him coldly and did not let him kiss her, but she could not tell him outright that he was a scoundrel, for he was, in a way, the last link uniting her strange soul with the world.

Janina had grown frightfully thin. Her complexion became pale and unhealthy, and from her enlarged gla.s.sy eyes there looked forth a dreadful and constant hunger! She walked about the theater like a shadow, apparently quiet and calm, but with that feeling of unceasing hunger mercilessly tearing her within and with despair in her face.

There were whole days when she had not a bite of food, when she felt a painful emptiness in her head and heard only one thing echoing through her brain: "If I could only get something to eat! Something to eat!" Aside from that one desire, everything vanished from her mind and had no importance.

A similar poverty existed throughout the whole company. The women s.h.i.+fted as best they could, but the men, particularly the more honest ones, sold everything they possessed, even their wigs, to save themselves.

With what terror they awaited each evening! "Are we going to play to-night?" This whisper could be heard all over the theater: in the dressing-rooms, behind the scenes, in the restaurant-garden where the autumn wind frolicked, and on the deserted veranda, where the waiters, vainly waiting for guests, repeated it. It was also repeated by Gold, who sat huddled in his box office, s.h.i.+vering with cold.

An oppressive silence reigned in the dressing-rooms. The funniest jokes of Glas could not chase the clouds of worry from the brows of the actors. They became careless in their make-up and none of them learned their roles, for everybody was waiting in dread suspense for the performance and every now and then going to the box office and asking in a whisper: "Are we going to play to-night?"

Cabinski presented a new play every day, but he could not draw the public. He gave The Trip Around Warsaw and The Robbers, and still the house was empty. They played such curtain-raisers as Don Cesar de Bazan, The Statue of the Commander, and The Fortune Teller of La Voisin, but the theater remained as deserted as ever.

"For goodness' sake, what do you want?" the director cried to the public from behind the curtain.

"Do you think they themselves know what they want? If there were three hundred people present, then another three hundred would appear, but when there are only fifty with the addition of cold and rain, then only twenty remain," the editor explained to Cabinski, for of all those numerous acquaintances who used to come behind the scenes he alone remained, the rest having dispersed with the first rains.

"The public is a herd that does not know where it is going to graze on the following day," said Mr. Peter, with animosity.

Oh yes, they hated that public, and yet prayed to it. They cursed it, called it "a herd" and "cattle," threatened it with their fists and spat upon it, but only let that public appear in larger numbers, and they fell upon their faces before it and felt a deep grat.i.tude toward that capricious lady, who had a different humor each day and each day bestowed her favors upon someone else.

"The public is a harlot! a harlot!" whispered Topolski threateningly.

"To-day she is with a monarch, to-morrow with a clown!"

"You have told the truth, but it will not give you even a ruble,"

answered Wawrzecki, whose humor still survived, but had already become sharp and bitter, for Mimi had left the company and gone to join another one at Posen.

Several members of the company had already left, although there still remained a whole week till the end of the season. Especially the choruses had almost entirely dispersed, for they suffered the most from poverty.

The rains continued to fall in the morning, the afternoon, and the evening. The atmosphere at the theater became unbearable. There were draughts in the dressing-rooms, and mud covered the floors, for the roof leaked everywhere. The cold was intense.

To Janina it seemed that this theater was slowly falling apart and burying everyone among its ruins, while that other one on Theatrical Place stood strong and invincible.

Its ponderous walls had grown black from the rains and it appeared even sterner and mightier than before and filled Janina with a pious, unexplainable awe whenever she gazed at it. It sometimes seemed to her that this vast edifice rested its columns on piles of corpses and that it drank the blood, the lives, and the brains of the actors in the smaller theaters and throve and grew mighty on them.

"I shall go mad! I shall go mad!" often whispered Janina, pressing her burning head with her hands, for dreams and hallucinations tormented her even more than hunger.

There was still another thing which made her deathly silent, so that she would sit for whole hours listening within herself, and thinking of those strange, indefinable impressions and feelings which pervaded her ever more frequently. Janina felt that something dreadful was happening within her, that those sudden fits of trembling and weeping which would seize her without any explainable cause, those violently changing moods to which she gave way and those strange sufferings were somehow unnatural and resulted from something about which she feared to think. She had no mother, nor anyone in whom she could confide and who would enlighten her, but there came a moment when with womanly instinct she knew that she was about to become a mother.

Janina wept for a long time after that discovery, but her tears were not tears of despair, but only of tender pity, sensitiveness and shame at the same time. She felt then that death had crouched behind her and was standing so close that it sent a shudder of frenzy through her entire being and cast her into an apathetic indifference. She ceased to think and surrendered herself pa.s.sively, with the fatalism of people who have suffered long or who have been crushed by some overwhelming misfortune, to the wave that bore her on and did not even ask whither it was taking her.

One day, unable to endure any longer the sharp pangs of hunger, Janina began to look around her room for something which she might sell. She began feverishly to rummage in her trunks. She had only a few light theatrical costumes.