The Comedienne Part 62

"It may harm you, because . . . because . . ." and she whispered the rest into Janina's ear.

The blood rushed to Janina's face with shame at the thought that Sowinska had recognized her condition which she was seeking to conceal. She had no more strength left to reply to her, nor time either, for she had to go on the stage.

They were playing The Peasant Emigration and Janina appeared in the first act as a super.

In the men's dressing-room that evening, a storm broke out. In the intermission before the so-called "Christmas Eve" scene of the play, Topolski, who was acting the part of "Bartek Kozica," sent to Cabinski a letter, or a sort of ultimatum demanding fifty rubles for himself and Majkowska and, in case of a denial, refusing to play any further. While waiting for Cabinski's reply, he began slowly to remove his make-up.

Cabinski came running almost with tears in his eyes and cried: "I will give you twenty rubles. Oh, oh! you people have no mercy on me!"

"Give me fifty rubles and we shall continue to play; if you don't then . . ." Here he unglued one half of his mustache and began to take off his leggings.

"For G.o.d's sake man! there is only one hundred rubles in all in the treasury and that is hardly enough to cover the expenses."

"Let me have fifty rubles immediately, or else you can finish the play yourself or return the public its money," calmly said Topolski, pulling off his other legging.

"Up till now, I had thought that you, at least, were a man! Just think what you are doing to us all," pleaded Cabinski.

"Don't you see, Director . . . I am undressing."

The intermission was being prolonged and the public outside was beginning to shout and stamp its feet with impatience.

"No, I should sooner have expected death than that! And you, who are my best friend, are you going to go back on me now?" continued Cabinski.

"My dear Director, there's no use talking any further. You can fool everyone else, but not me."

"But I haven't the money. If I give you thirty rubles now, I will have nothing left with which to pay the rent of the theater!" cried Cabinski in despair, running about the dressing-room.

"I have said: if you do not give us fifty rubles, we shall go straight home."

In the hall there began to rise a very pandemonium of shouts and catcalls.

"All right, here is fifty rubles, take them. You are robbing your own companions, but you don't care a rap about that, for you'll have something with which to organize your own company. Here, take them, but that ends all relations between us!"

"Don't worry about my company; I shall reserve the position of a stage-hand for you."

"Sooner will you check coats in my theater, before I join yours."

"Silence, you clown!"

"I'll call the police and they'll quiet you right away!" shouted the infuriated Cabinski.

"I'll silence you immediately, you circus performer!" cried Topolski, who had just finished dressing, and, taking Cabinski by the collar, he gave him a kick that sent him flying out of the dressing-room; then he himself went out on the stage.

The performance was concluded peacefully, but a new quarrel started around the box office. The actors and actresses stood there in a close group so that only their heads and faces, shining with the grease used to wash off the paint, were visible in the gaslight.

They were all shouting for money and demanding their overdue salaries. They shook their fists threateningly at the cashier's window, their eyes flashed lightning, and their voices were hoa.r.s.e from shouting.

Cabinski, still red and trembling from the abuse that had just met him, quarreled with everybody and swore and wanted to pay only the usual installments.

"Whoever isn't satisfied with what he gets, let him go to Topolski!

It's all the same to me . . ." he cried.

Janina approached the window and said: "Director, you promised to pay me to-day."

"I haven't the money!"

"But neither have I," she begged quietly.

"I am not paying the others either, and yet, they do not importune me as you do."

"Mr. Cabinski, I am almost dying from hunger," she answered straightforwardly.

"Then go and earn some money. All the others know how to help themselves. I like naive women, but only on the stage. A comedienne!

Go to Topolski, he will advance you the money."

"Oh, Topolski a.s.suredly won't let the members of his company suffer poverty. He will pay each what is due him and will not cheat people!" cried Janina impulsively.

"Then you can go straight to him and don't show up here again!"

shouted Cabinski, driven to fury by the mention of Topolski.

"Listen there, Director!" began Glas, but Janina listened no longer and, pushing her way through the crowd, left the theater.

"Go and earn it . . ." she repeated to herself.

She walked along the almost empty streets. The gas-lamps cast a ghastly, yellowish glare like that of funeral tapers on the silent and deserted thoroughfares and alleys. The dark-blue vault of the sky hung over the city like a huge canopy embroidered with brightly scintillating stars. A cool breeze swept down the streets and chilled Janina to the marrow.

"Go and earn it!" she again repeated to herself, pa.s.sing before the Grand Theater. She had come here without being aware of it.

Janina glanced at the building and turned back. An unbearable pain racked her head, as though there was a burning iron ring about it.

She was so utterly weak and worn-out that at moments she could scarcely resist the desire to sit down on the curbstone and remain there. Then again, so desperate a realization of her poverty filled her that she was almost ready to give herself to anyone who might ask, if she could only relieve that agonized trembling within herself, that almost deathly weakness and exhaustion.

She dragged herself heavily along the streets, for she no longer knew what to do, and the chill night air, the silence, and that deathly weariness gave her a sort of painful ecstasy. Before her eyes there hovered only phantom forms and fiery spots, so that she knew not where she was or what was happening to her. She felt only one thing and that was that she would no longer be able to endure it.

"What am I going to do further?" Janina asked thoughtlessly, looking before herself.

The silence of the sleeping city and the silence of the dark heavens seemed to be the only answer to her question.

Janina felt as though she were falling swiftly down a steep incline and that there, at the very bottom, lay the outstretched corpse of Niedzielska.

"Death!" she answered herself. "Death!" and she gazed fixedly at that dead face with the congealed tears on its cheeks, and not fear, but an immense silence enveloped her soul.

She looked all about her as though she were seeking for the cause of that deep silence at her side.

Then, she began thinking of her father, of the theater, and of herself, but as though they were things which she had only seen or read about.

"What am I going to do?" Janina asked herself aloud after she had returned home. It was impossible for her to see or even to imagine what the morrow would be like.

"In this condition I can't go to the theater, I can't go anywhere.

But what am I going to do?" That question smote her now and then, as with a club.