The Comedienne Part 45

"For goodness' sake, say something, or I'll go crazy, or get hydrophobia! . . ." he suddenly exclaimed.

Janina burst out laughing, "Well, let us talk about this evening, if about nothing else," ventured the girl.

"Do you want to drive me crazy altogether? May the deuce take me, but I fear I won't endure till this evening!"

"But haven't you told me that this is not your first play, so . . ."

"Yes, but at the presentation of each new one the ague always shakes me, for always at the last moment I see that I have written rubbish, tommyrot, cheap trash . . ."

"I don't pretend to be a judge, but I liked the play immensely. It is so frank."

"What? Do you mean that seriously?" he cried.

"Of course."

"For you see, I told myself that if this play fails, I shall . . ."

"Will you give up writing?"

"No, but I shall vanish from the horizon for a few months and write another one. I will write a second, a third . . . I will write until I produce a perfectly good one! I must!"

"Tell me, do you think Majkowska will make a good Antka in my play?"

he suddenly asked.

"It seems to me that that role is well-suited to her."

"Maurice also will play his part well, but the rest of them are a miserable lot and the staging terrible. It's bound to turn out a fiasco!"

"Mimi knows nothing about the peasants and her imitation of their dialect is ludicrous," remarked Janina.

"I heard her and it pained me to listen! Do you know the peasants?

Ah, Great Scott!" he cried impulsively. "Why don't you act that role? . . ."

"Because they didn't give it to me."

"Why didn't you tell me about that sooner? May the deuce take me, but even if I had to smash up the whole theater I would have forced them to give you that role!"

"The director gave me the part of Phillip's wife."

"That's merely a super, an episode . . . it could have been given to anyone. I feel that Mimi is going to chatter like a soubrette from an operetta. See what you have caused me! By glory, what a mess! If you think that life is a charming operetta, you are greatly mistaken!"

"I already happen to know something about that . . ." answered Janina with a bitter smile.

"So far you don't know anything . . . you will learn it only later on. But after all women usually have an easier time of it. We men have to fight hard to grasp our share and have to pay dearly. G.o.d knows how dearly."

"Don't you think the women pay anything?"

"It's this way: women, and particularly those on the stage, owe the minimum part of their success to their talents or themselves; the maximum part to their lovers who support them and the rest to the gallantry of those men who hope to be able to support them some day."

Janina answered nothing, for there flashed before her mind a picture of Majkowska with Topolski in back of her, Mimi with Wawrzecki, Kaczkowska with one of the journalists and so on through almost all of them.

"Don't be angry with me. I merely stated a fact that came to my mind."

"No. I'm not angry. I admit you're entirely right."

"With you, it will not be that way, I feel it. Come, let us go now!"

he suddenly cried, jumping up from the bench.

"I will say something more . . ." said Glogowski when they were already walking down the shaded paths on their way back, "I will repeat what I said on the day that I first met you at Bielany; let us be friends! . . . It's no use trying to deny it, man is a gregarious beast: he always needs someone near him so that his lot on this earth may be half-way bearable . . . Man does not stand alone; he must lean against and link up with others, go together with them and feel together with them to be able to accomplish anything. To be sure, one kindred soul suffices. Let us be friends!"

"All right," said Janina, "but I will lay down one condition."

"Quick, for G.o.d's sake! For perhaps I will not accept it!"

"It is this: give me your word of honor that you will never, never speak to me about love, and that you will not fall in love with me.

You can even confide in me, if you wish, all your love affairs and disappointments."

"Agreed, all along the line! I seal that with my solemn word of honor!" cried Glogowski.

They gravely pressed each others' hands.

"This is a union of pure souls with ideal aims!" he laughed, winking his eyes. "Something makes me feel so merry now that I could take my own head in my hands and kiss it heartily."

"It is a premonition of the triumph of your Churls."

"Don't remind me of that. I know what awaits me. But I must now bid farewell to you."

"Aren't you going to escort me home?"

"No . . . Oh well, all right, but I warn you I will talk to you about . . . love!" he cried gayly.

"Well, in that case, good-by! May G.o.d preserve you from such falsehoods."

"Your ears must have surfeited on that rubbish, if the very mention of it nauseates you. . . ."

"Go now if you wish . . . I will tell you about it some other time. . . ."

Glogowski leaped into a hack and drove away in haste toward Comely Street and Janina went home.

She tried on the peasant costume which Mme. Anna was making for her appearance and thought with a smile of the alliance that she had formed with Glogowski.

At the theater it was evident that a premiere was to be given. All the members of the company appeared earlier, dressed and made up more carefully than usual and only Krzykiewicz, as was his custom, paraded about the dressing-room and the stage half-dressed with his rouge pot in his hand.

Stanislawski, who when he played, usually came about two hours before the performance, was already dressed and only now and then added an extra touch to his make-up.

Wawrzecki, with his role in his hand paced up and down the dressing-room rehearsing in an undertone.

The stage-director ran about more swiftly than usual and in the ladies' dressing-room livelier quarrels were going on. Everyone was more nervous to-day. The prompter supervised the stage arrangements and watched the public that was beginning to fill the hall. The chorus girls, who were to act as supers, were already dressed in their peasant costumes and straggled all about the stage.