The Comedienne Part 44

"You will be famous . . . you will be very famous!" he whispered hurriedly without looking at her.

"That isn't true; you didn't see that there!" she exclaimed, reading the falsehood in his eyes.

"My word! my word of honor all that is written there! You will achieve fame, but through so much suffering, through so many tears. . . . Beware of dreaming!"

And he kissed her hand.

The noisy buzz of voices merged with tones of music broke the stillness in which both of them had become rapt.

For a little while Janina sat alone, after her companion withdrew, torn by dim forebodings.

"You are going to be very famous! Beware of dreaming!" she kept repeating to herself.

That evening the counselor sent to Janina a bouquet, a box of candy, and a letter inviting her to supper at the "Idyl," mentioning that Topolski and Majkowska were also to be there.

She read it and, not knowing what to do, asked Sowinska.

"Sell the bouquet, eat the candy, and go to the supper."

"So that is your advice? . . ." asked Janina.

Sowinska scornfully shrugged her shoulders.

Janina angrily threw the bouquet in a corner, distributed the candy among the chorus girls, and after the performance went straight home, highly indignant at the counselor whom she had looked upon as a very serious and honest man.

On the next day at the rehearsal Majkowska remarked tauntingly to Janina: "You are an immaculate romanticist."

"No, only I respect myself," answered Janina.

"Get thee to a nunnery!" declaimed Majkowska.

In the afternoon Janina went as usual to Cabinska's home to give Yadzia her piano lesson, but she could not forget that scornful shrug of Sowinska's shoulders and Majkowska's words.

She finished the lesson and then sat for a long time playing Chopin's Nocturnes, finding in their melancholy strains a balm for her own sorrows.

"Miss Janina . . . My husband has left a role here for you!" called Cabinska from the other room.

Janina closed the piano and began to peruse the role. It consisted of a few words from Glogowski's new play and did not satisfy her in the least, for it was nothing but a short little episode.

Nevertheless, this was to be her first real appearance in the drama.

The play had been postponed until the following Thursday and rehearsals of it were to be held every afternoon, for Glogowski had earnestly requested that and generously treated the entire cast each day to get them to learn their roles well.

A few days after receiving her first role Janina's first month at Sowinska's expired. The old woman reminded her of it in the morning, asking for the money as soon as possible.

Janina gave her ten rubles, solemnly promising to pay the balance in a few days. She had only a few rubles left of her entire capital.

She thought in astonishment how she had spent the two hundred rubles which she had brought with her from Bukowiec.

"What am I going to do?" Janina asked herself, determining as soon as possible to ask Cabinski for her overdue salary.

She did so at the very next rehearsal.

"I haven't the money!" cried Cabinski at once. "Moreover, I never pay beginners in my company for the first month. It's strange that no one informed you about that. Others are already here a whole season and they don't bother me about their salaries."

Janina listened in consternation and finally said frankly: "Mr.

Director, in a week's time I will not have a penny left to live on."

"And that old . . . counselor . . . can't he give it to you? . . .

Surely, everyone knows that . . ."

"Oh, Mr. Director!" whispered Janina, blus.h.i.+ng deeply.

"A pretty deceiver!" he muttered with a cynical twist of his lips.

Janina forcibly suppressed her indignation and said: "In the meantime I need ten rubles, for I must buy myself a costume for the new play."

"Ten rubles! Ha! ha! ha! That's great! Even Majkowska does not ask for so much at one time! Ten rubles! what delightful simplicity!"

Cabinski laughed heartily and then, turning to go, he said: "Remind me of it this evening and I will give you an order to the treasurer."

That evening Janina received one ruble.

Janina knew that the chorus girls even after the most profitable performance received only fifty copecks on account and usually only two gold pieces or forty groszy. Only now, did she recall those sad and worn faces of the elder actresses. There were revealed to her now many things that she had never seen before, or seeing them, had never understood. Her own want opened wide her eyes to the poverty that oppressed everyone in the theater and those hidden daily struggles with it that they often disguised under a glittering veil of gayety.

That daily standing before the treasurer's window and fairly begging for money, which she was now compelled to do, cast a shadow over Janina's soul and filled her with bitterness. It made her all the more eager to get a larger role so that she might get out of that hated chorus, but Cabinski steadily put her off.

Kotlicki hovered about Janina incessantly, but did not renew his proposal and seemed to be waiting his chance.

Wladek was, the most companionable of all in regard to Janina and told everyone that she visited his mother. Niedzielska continually spied on Wladek, for she already suspected him of liking Janina.

The girl received Wladek's attentions with the same indifference that she received Kotlicki's, with the same indifference that she received the bouquets and candy which the counselor sent her every day. None of these three silent admirers interested her in the least and she kept them at a respectable distance from herself by her coolness.

The other actresses ridiculed Janina's inflexibility, but in their hearts they sincerely envied her. She ignored their spiteful remarks, for she knew that to answer them would be merely to invite a greater avalanche of ridicule.

Janina liked only Glogowski, who because of the coming presentation of his play would spend whole days at the theater. He openly singled her out as an object of his special regard from among all the women, spoke only with her on weighty subjects and treated her alone as a human being. She felt highly flattered and grateful. She liked him especially because he never mentioned love to her, nor boasted.

Often they would go together for walks in Lazienki Park. Janina a.s.sociated with him on a footing of sincere friends.h.i.+p.

After the final rehearsal of The Churls, Glogowski and Janina left the theater together. He seemed to be more gloomy than usual. He was racked with anxiety over his play that was to be given that evening, yet he laughed aloud.

"Suppose we take a ride to the Botanical Gardens. Do you agree?" he suggested.

Janina a.s.sented and they started off.

They found an unoccupied seat near one of the pools, under a huge plane tree and for a time sat there in silence.

The garden was fairly empty. A few persons seated here and there upon the benches appeared like shadows in the sultry air. The last roses of summer gleamed with their bright hues through the foliage of the low-hanging branches; the stocks in the central flower-bed diffused a heavy fragrance. The birds twittered only at rare intervals with somnolent voices. The trees stood motionless as though listening to the sunlit tranquility of that August day. Only now and then some leaf or withered twig would float down in a spiral line upon the lawns. The golden splashes of sunlight filtering through the branches formed a s.h.i.+fting mosaic upon the gra.s.s and gleamed like strips of pale platinum.

"Let the devil take it all!" Glogowski occasionally flung out into the silence and distractedly rumpled his hair.

Janina merely glanced at him, loath to mar with words the silence that enveloped her that calm of nature lulled to sleep by the excessive warmth. She also was lulled by some unknown tenderness that had no connection with any particular thing, but seemed to float down out of s.p.a.ce, from the blue sky, from the transparent whiteness of the slowly sailing clouds from the deep verdure of the trees.