The Comedienne Part 29

"Almost so."

"We shall see, we shall see . . ." he said slowly, standing his cup upon the table and then, taking leave of Janina he left quietly.

In the anteroom where the sleepy Wicek handed him his overcoat, he heard the monotonous whispering of the children's voices behind the screen. He raised the curtain and saw Cabinski's four little boys kneeling in their nightgowns and repeating their prayers after the nurse.

A small night-lamp, glowing before a holy picture above the nurse's bed, faintly illumined that group of children and the old, gray-haired woman, who humbly bowed to the ground, struck her breast with her hand and whispered in a tearful voice: "O Lamb of G.o.d, who purgest the sins of the world!"

The children repeated the words after her with drowsy voices and beat their b.r.e.a.s.t.s with their little hands.

Kotlicki withdrew quietly and without a smile. Only when he had reached the stairs, he whispered: "Well, well! We shall see, we shall see. . . ."

Janina started for the boudoir, but Niedzielska stopped her and drew her into a conversation; later Wladek joined them.

The company began to break up.

"Do you live far away?" Niedzielska asked Janina.

"On Podwal Street, but in a week at most I am moving to Widok Street."

"Ah, that's good, for we live on Piwna Street, so we can go together. . . ."

They left immediately. Niedzielska took Janina by the arm, while Wladek walked alongside, a little angry because he had to accompany his mother; he swore to himself, while aloud he made melancholy remarks about the weather.

The streets were deserted and silent. Dawn was already illumining the dark depths of the horizon and the outlines of the houses became distinct. The gas lamps extended like an endless golden chain with their links of pale flames diffusing a mist of light upon the dew covered sidewalks and the gray walls of the houses. The fresh brisk breeze of a July morning swept down the streets with a strange charm and tranquility. The houses stood silent, still wrapt in slumber.

Arrived at her hotel Niedzielska kissed Janina with a sudden friendliness and they parted.

CHAPTER VI

"Will you find it comfortable here?"

"I think so. It is quiet and light. . . . Who lived here before me?"

"Miss Nicolette. She is now at the Warsaw Theater . . . That's a good omen."

"No, not entirely. They are likely not to engage her. . . ."

"Oh, they'll engage her all right. . . . Miss Zarnecka is clever,"

said Mme. Anna, the daughter of Sowinska into whose home Janina had just moved.

She was twenty-four years old, neither homely nor pretty with an indefinite color of hair and eyes, but with a very definite slenderness and bad temper.

She conducted a dressmaking establishment under the name of Mme.

Anna and although she made her living on actresses and very often received free tickets to the theater, she never went there and hated artists. There were often scenes over this with her mother, but old Sowinska, would not so much as listen to any suggestion that she should abandon the theater. She had become so deeply rooted there that she could not tear herself away, although Mme. Anna would turn almost yellow from shame over the fact that her mother was a theatrical seamstress. She was disgustingly stingy, ignorant, pitiless, and jealous.

Mme. Anna examined Janina's wardrobe with ill-concealed malice.

"All that will have to be made over, for it smells of the country,"

she decreed.

Janina began to protest a little, maintaining that the same styles could often be seen in the streets.

"Yes, but who wears them, please take notice of that: shop women or shoemakers' wives; a self-respecting woman will not wear such rags!"

Mme. Anna scornfully persisted.

"Well then, have them made over. I can pay you immediately for the work and also a full month's rent in advance."

"Oh, there's no hurry. You'll need to buy a few costumes."

"I'll have enough left for that."

Janina paid thirty rubles for her room.

"I am already settled for good," she later said to the old woman who dropped in to see her.

"Bosh, it won't be for long! In two months you'll be moving again.

An actor's life is a gypsy life, from wagon to wagon, from town to town. . . ."

"Perhaps at some time I'll be able to settle down permanently," said Janina.

Sowinska smiled gloomily. "That is the way one thinks in the beginning, but afterwards . . . afterwards it ends in eternal wandering. . . . You become worn-out like a rag and die on a hotel bed."

"Not all end in that way," answered Janina gaily, paying little attention.

"What are you laughing at? . . . It's not at all funny!" cried Sowinska.

"Am I laughing? . . . I merely said that not all end in that way."

"All ought to end in that way, every one of them!" Sowinska shouted angrily and left.

Janina could not understand either her violent anger, or her last words.

The days sped on. Janina absorbed the theater into herself ever more deeply. She attended the rehearsals regularly, afterwards went to give lessons for two hours to Cabinska's daughter, and later would go home for dinner, prepare her wardrobe for the performance, and at about eight in the evening start off again for the theater.

On the days when no operettas were played and the choruses were free, she went to the Summer Theater and there, squeezed high up in the gallery, spent entire evenings dreaming. She devoured with her eyes the actresses, their gestures, costumes, mimicry, and voices.

She followed the action of the plays so closely that later she could re-create them in her mind with detailed accuracy and often, after returning from the theater, she would light the candles, stand before the large mirror, and repeat the acting which she had seen, observing intently every quiver of her facial expression and trying out every conceivable pose. But she was seldom satisfied with herself.

The plays which she saw left her cold and bored. She was not stirred by the bourgeois dramas with their eternal conventional conflicts and flirtations. She repeated the ba.n.a.l lines of these plays apathetically and in the midst of some scene would stop and go to bed.

She asked Cabinski to give her a role in the cast of a new play, but he put her off with nothing.

"I am keeping you in mind, but first you must familiarize yourself with the stage. . . . When we present some melodrama or folk play you will get a bigger role . . ." was all he said.

In the meanwhile they were playing only operettas, for they filled the theater.

Janina smiled in reply to Cabinski's vague promises, although torn by impatience. But she had already learned to control her feelings and to wear a mask of smiling indifference. She consoled herself with the thought that sooner or later she would have done with the chorus and that the moment must at last arrive when she would appear in a real role.