The Comedienne Part 2

Janina grew up rapidly, and her mental and physical development were of the best, but having been conceived, born, and reared in an environment of continual hatred and quarrels and nursed with the tears and complaints of her mother at her father's brutality, she naturally disliked him and feared his scorn. This developed in her secretiveness and resentment. She rebelled against his despotism and n.i.g.g.ardliness.

Janina inherited a few thousand rubles from her mother, and her father told her plainly that the interest on that sum would have to suffice her, for he did not intend to give her a single kopeck. She attended a first-cla.s.s boarding-school, but after paying her fees and, later, her expenses at the academy she had so little left for her immediate needs that she had to continually think of how to make ends meet and to feel ashamed because of her worn shoes and dresses.

In a few years her cla.s.smates began to fear her, even the teachers often gave way to her, for she had her father's violent character and brooked no restraint. She never wept nor complained, but she was ever ready to avenge her wrongs with her fists, irrespective of what might happen to her. At the same time she was always one of the brightest scholars in her cla.s.s.

All sincerely disliked her, but had to grant her supremacy. She herself became conscious of her superiority over the throng of her cla.s.smates, who treated her with aloofness, laughed at her shabby dresses and shoes, and barred her from all intimacy with them. Later she paid them back with unrelenting vengeance.

There were times when Orlowski was proud of Janina and warmly defended her before his friends, for the whole neighborhood was shocked at her tomboyish adventures. She would tramp through the woods late at night and in all kinds of weather, alone, like a young wild-boar separated from the herd. She was not a bit ashamed of climbing up trees for birds' nests, nor of riding astride in horse-races with the peasant lads on the pasturage. To avoid her father she would stay away from home for whole days at a time, dreaming of her return to school, while at school she would again dream of returning to the solitude of her home.

Such was Janina up to about the eighteenth year of her life when she graduated from high school and returned home for good. In her outward life she quieted down, but inwardly she became even more restless than before.

With her friend, Helen Walder, ideally beautiful and day dreaming of the emanc.i.p.ation of woman, she had parted. Helen went to Paris to study science. Janina had no desire to go, for she didn't feel the need of any knowledge of an abstract nature. She yearned for something that would exert a more potent influence upon her temperament something that would absorb her whole being for all time.

Men, Janina avoided almost entirely, for they angered her with their impudence; the women bored her with their everlasting repet.i.tion of gossip, troubles, and intrigues. People in general seemed to keep aloof from her. All sorts of stories about her, more or less false, were circulated in the neighborhood.

She was a puzzle to all who knew her. Meanwhile, in her own soul she was waging a battle with her desires, to which she knew not how to give a definite form. She asked herself why she lived. She buried herself in books, but found no comfort there. She felt that she must find something that would absorb and thrill her entire being, felt that she would find it sooner or later, but in the meanwhile the agony of waiting almost drove her mad.

Zielenkiewicz, the owner of a heavily mortgaged village, proposed to her. Janina laughed outright at him and told him to his face that she did not intend to pay his debts with her dower.

She had reached her twenty-first year and was beginning to lose patience, when a commonplace occurrence decided her whole future.

In a nearby town an amateur theatrical was being arranged. Three one-act plays were selected and the parts had already been a.s.signed, when there came a hitch: no one wanted to accept the role of Pawlowa in Blizinski's The March Bachelor.

The dramatic coach insisted on presenting this play, for he wanted to twit a certain neighbor with it, but none of the ladies would play the parts of Pawlowa or Eulalia.

Someone proposed that they request Janina Orlowska to take the part of Pawlowa, for they knew that she dared anything. She accepted it rather indifferently, and Mrs. Krenska, in whom memories of her histrionic past had suddenly awakened, induced Orlowski to announce that an amateur had also been found for the part of Eulalia.

The rehearsals lasted for about three months, for the cast of the players was changed several times--the usual fuss and confusion of provincial theaters where none of the ladies want to a.s.sume the part of an old, quarrelsome, or shady character, or that of a maid, but all wish to be heroines.

Krenska, whom Janina kept at a respectful distance from herself, never confiding anything to her nor asking her advice, found a good reason in the play for approaching her. She began to give her lessons in the art of acting, untiringly.

So absorbed did she become with her part, so deeply did she enter into the character, and so well did it fit her that she gave a very creditable presentation. She was every inch a peasant woman, a genuine Pawlowa, and received a clamorous ovation at the end of the play. This momentary triumph and the consciousness of her power filled her with a wild and unrestrained joy. It was with a feeling of intense regret that she saw the final curtain fall.

Krenska also created quite a furore. It was a role that she had often played with great success on the real stage. During the intermissions everyone was speaking only of her and of Janina.

"A comedienne! A born actress!" whispered the ladies, regarding Janina with a sort of contemptuous pity.

Orlowski, whom they thanked and congratulated for having so talented a daughter and companion, shrugged his shoulders. He was, however, satisfied, for he went behind the scenes, petted Janina, and kissed Krenska's hand.

"Good, good! . . . Nothing extraordinary, but at least I don't have to feel ashamed of you," was all the praise that he gave them.

After the performance Janina drew closer to Krenska and the latter, in a moment of weakness, betrayed the secret concerning her past life. She revealed to Janina a new realm, wondrous and alluring.

She listened with rapt attention to Krenska's accounts of the stage, her numerous appearances and triumphs, and the vivid life of an actor. As she related her experiences Krenska was herself carried away by enthusiasm and painted them in glowing colors; she no longer remembered the miseries of that life and held up only the brightest pictures to the gaze of the enraptured girl. She pulled out of her trunk faded and musty copies of roles she had once impersonated, read them to Janina and played them, stirred by memories of the past.

All this fascinated the girl and awoke in her certain strong desires, but it did not, as yet, absorb her; it was not, as yet, that mysterious "something" for which she had been waiting so long.

She began to read with great interest the theatrical criticisms and the details about actors in the newspapers. Finally, whether actuated by ennui or by an instinctive impulse, she bought a complete set of Shakespeare's works and, forthwith, was lost! She found that "something" for which she had sought so long; she found her hero, her aim, her ideal--it was the theater. She devoured Shakespeare with all the inherent intensity of her nature.

It would be difficult to epitomize the violent upheaval that now took place in Janina's soul, the wild soaring of her imagination, and the enlargement and expansion of her whole being. There swarmed about her a vast throng of characters evil, n.o.ble, base, petty, heroic, and struggling souls. There pa.s.sed through her such tones and words, such overwhelming thoughts and emotions that she felt as though the whole universe was contained in her soul!

She became consumed with a desire for the theater and for unusual emotions. The winters seemed too warm for her, the snowfalls too light; the springs dragged along too slowly, the summers were too cool, the autumns too dry; all this she visioned in her imagination in far grander outlines. She wished to see the acme of beauty, the acme of evil, and every act magnified to t.i.tanic proportions.

Orlowski knew a little about her "disease," but he smiled at it in scorn.

"You comedienne!" he called her, scoffingly.

Krenska would add fuel to this fire, for she wished at any cost to see Janina leave home. She persuaded her of her talent and warmly praised the theatrical career.

Janina could not pluck up courage to take the decisive step. She feared those dark and vague presentiments and an unaccountable feeling of terror at times would seize upon her. She could not summon the necessary determination. A storm of some kind only could uproot her and carry her far away from home in the same way as it uprooted the trees and scattered them over the desolate fields. She was waiting now for some chance happening to cast her into the world. Krenska, in the meanwhile, kept her informed of the activities of the provincial theatrical companies. Janina made certain preparations and savings. Her father paid her regularly the interest on her inheritance and this enabled her in a year's time to lay aside about two hundred rubles.

Grzesikiewicz's proposal and her father's insistance on her marriage roused a stormy protest in her.

"No, no, no!" she repeated to herself, pacing excitedly up and down her room. "I will not marry!"

Janina had never contemplated matrimony seriously. At times the vision of a great, overwhelming love would gleam through her mind, and she would dream of it for a while; but of marriage she had never given a thought.

She even liked Grzesikiewicz, because he would never speak lightly to her about love, nor enact those amorous comedies to which other admirers had accustomed her. She liked him for the simplicity with which he would relate all that he had to suffer at school, how he was abused and humiliated as the son of a peasant and innkeeper and how he paid them back in peasant fas.h.i.+on with his fists. He would smile while relating this to her, but there was in his smile a trace of sorrow.

She opened the door of her father's room and was about to tell him abruptly and decisively that there was no need of Grzesikiewicz's coming, but Orlowski was already enjoying his after-dinner nap, seated in a big arm-chair with his feet propped against the window-sill. The sun was s.h.i.+ning straight into his face which was almost entirely bronzed from sunburn.

Janina withdrew.

"No, no, no! . . . Even though I have to run away from home, I will not marry!" she repeated to herself fiercely.

But immediately there followed this determination a feeling of womanly helplessness.

"I will go to my uncle's house. . . . Yes! . . . and from there I will go to the stage. No one can force me to stay here."

Thereupon, the blood would rush to her head with indignation and she would immediately gaze with courage into the future, determined to meet anything that might happen rather than submit.

She heard her father arise and then go to the window; she listened to the station bells, and to the jabbering of a few Jews who were boarding the train; she saw the red cap of her father, and the yellow striped cap of the telegrapher conversing through his window with some lady; she saw and heard all, but understood nothing, so absorbed was she in thought.

Krenska entered and in her habitual way began to circle around the table with quiet, cat-like motion before she spoke. Her face bore an expression of sympathy and there was tenderness in her voice.

"Miss Janina!"

The young woman glanced at her.

"No! I a.s.sure you that I will not!" she said with emphasis.

"Your father gave Grzesikiewicz his word of honor . . . he will demand unquestioning obedience . . . what will come of it?"

"No! I will not marry! . . . My father can retract his word; he cannot compel me--"

"Yes . . . but there will be an awful rumpus, an awful rumpus!"

"I have stood so many, I can stand some more."