The Comedienne Part 21

"Is it possible that he loves me?" she thought to herself, sipping her cooled chocolate.

She pulled some role out of her pocket, read a few lines, and again gazed out upon the street.

The dilapidated hacks, pulled by lean horses, dragged along lazily; the tramways rumbled by; along the sidewalks people threaded like a long, immovable ribbon.

The clock chimed three. Cabinska arose and started for home, walking slowly until she spied the editor walking with Nicolette and the calm horizon of her mind suddenly became clouded.

"He, with Nicolette? . . . with that . . . base intriguer?"

Already from a distance she scorched them with the gaze of a Gorgon.

At the corner of Warecka Street, Nicolette suddenly disappeared and the editor approached her with a beaming countenance.

"Good morning! . . ." he cried, extending his hand.

Pepa measured him coolly and turned her face away.

"What sort of nonsense is this, Pepa?" he asked, quietly.

"Oh, you are unspeakably mean!" she retorted.

"A comedy of some kind again? . . ." he queried.

"You dare to speak to me in that way?"

"Well . . . I'll quit then and merely say: good-day!" he snapped back angrily, bowed stiffly and, before she could bethink herself, jumped into a hack and drove away.

Cabinska was petrified with indignation.

Cabinska, on returning home whipped the children, scolded the nurse, and locked herself in her room.

She heard her husband enter, ask for her, and knock at her door; when dinner was served, she did not come out, but paced angrily up and down her room.

Soon thereafter, Janina arrived. Cabinska greeted her cordially in her boudoir, becoming suddenly unrecognizably hospitable.

Janina left alone, began to explore that boudoir with curiosity, for, although the entire house looked like a junk shop, or a railroad waiting-room of the third cla.s.s, filled with packs, valises and trunks, this one room possessed an almost luxurious air. It had two windows opening upon the garden, the walls were decorated with a paper resembling brocatelle, and cupids were painted on the ceiling.

The grotesquely carved furniture was upholstered with crimson silk striped with gold. A cream-colored rug in imitation of antique Italian covered the floor. A set of Shakespeare, bound in gilded morocco lay on a lacquered table painted in Chinese designs.

Janina did not pay much attention to all this, for she was entirely absorbed by the wreaths hanging on the walls which bore such inscriptions as these: "To our companion on the occasion of her birthday," "To a distinguished artist," "From the grateful public,"

"To the Directress from the Company," "From the admirers of your talent." The laurel branches and palm leaves were yellow and shrunken from age and hung there covered with dust and cobwebs. The broad white, yellow, and red ribbons streamed down the walls like separate colors of the rainbow with their gold-stamped letters proclaiming glories that had long since pa.s.sed into oblivion. Those inscriptions and withered wreaths gave the room the appearance of a mortuary chapel.

Janina was looking through an alb.u.m, when Cabinska quietly entered.

Her face wore an expression of suffering and melancholy; she dropped down heavily into a chair, sighed deeply and whispered, "Pardon me for letting you bore yourself here."

"Oh I didn't feel a bit bored!"

"This is my sanctuary. Here I lock myself up when life becomes unbearable. I come here to recall a happy past and to dream of that which will never more return . ." she added, indicating the roles and the wreaths hanging on the walls.

"Are you ill, Madame Directress? . . . perhaps I am intruding, and solitude is the best medicine." Janina spoke with sincere sympathy.

"Oh, please stay! . . . It affords me real relief to speak with a person who is, as yet, a stranger to this world of falsehood and vanity!" she said with emphasis, as though reciting a role.

"I don't know whether I am worthy of your confidence," answered Janina modestly.

"Oh, my artistic intuition never deceives me! . . . I pray you sit nearer to me! So you have never before been in the theater, mademoiselle?"

"No."

"How I envy you! . . . Ah, if I could begin over again, I would not know all this bitterness and disappointment! Do you love the theater?"

"I have sacrificed almost everything for it."

"Oh, the fate of artists is a sad one! One must sacrifice all; peace, domestic happiness, love, family, and friends and for what? . . . for that which they write about us; for such wreaths that last only a few days; for the handclaps of the tiresome throng. . . . Oh, beware the provinces, mademoiselle! . . . Look at me . . . Do you see those wreaths? . . . They are splendid and withered, are they not? And yet, not so long ago I played at Lwow. . . ."

She paused for a moment as though fascinated by the memory of those days.

"The stages of the whole world were open to me. The director of the Comedie Francaise came purposely to see me and offer me an engagement. . . ."

"You possess also a mastery of French, madame?"

"Do not interrupt me. I was paid a salary of several thousand rubles; the papers could not find words strong enough to praise my acting; I was pelted with flowers and bracelets set with diamonds!

(She unconsciously adjusted her cheap bracelet.) Counts and princes courted my favors. . . . Then came a great misfortune which changed everything; I fell in love . . . Yes, do not wonder at that! I loved, as deeply as it is possible to love, the most beautiful and best man in the whole world. . . . He was a n.o.bleman, a prince and heir to a large estate. We were about to be married. I cannot tell you how happy we were! . . . Then . . . like a bolt from the blue sky . . . his family, the old prince, a tyrannical magnate without a heart parted us. . . . He took him away and wanted to pay me a hundred thousand guldens or even a million, if only I would renounce my beloved. I threw the money at his feet and showed him the door.

He avenged himself cruelly. He spread the most dishonorable calumnies about me, bribed the press, and persecuted me at every step, the base wretch! . . . I had to leave Lwow and my life took an entirely different turn . . . a different turn . . ."

Cabinska paced up and down the room, tears in her eyes, love in her smile, a sad bitterness upon her lips, a tragic mask of resignation upon her face, forsaken, violent grief in her voice.

She acted the tale with such mastery that Janina believed everything.

"If you knew how sincerely I sympathize with you, madame! . . . What a dreadful fate!"

"That is already past! . . ." answered Cabinska, dropping into her chair.

She herself had come almost to believe in those stories, retold with numerous variations a hundred times over to all those who were willing to listen. Sometimes, on ending her account, moved by the picture of that fancied misfortune, she would actually suffer.

Cabinska had acted the parts of so many unfortunate and betrayed women that she had already lost all memory of the bounds of her own individuality; her own emotions became merged and identified in ever greater degree with the characters which she impersonated, and thus it happened that her fanciful tales were not downright lies.

After a long silence, Cabinska asked in a calm voice, "You live at Mrs. Sowinska's, mademoiselle?"

"Not yet," answered Janina, "I have already rented the room, but they have to renovate it. In the meanwhile, I am living at the hotel."

"Kaczkowska and Halt told me that you play the piano very well."

"A little bit."

"I wanted to ask you, if you would not teach my Yadzia? . . . She is a very bright girl and has a good ear for music."

"With real pleasure. My knowledge is rather limited, but I can teach your daughter the rudiments of music. . . . Only, I don't know whether I will have enough time. . . ."

"Oh, certainly! And as to your fee, we shall include that in your salary."