The Comedienne. Władysław Stanisław Reymont

the verge of fainting. She bent her head and eagerly drank in those murmurs resembling lightning flashes and, like them blinding the soul. She breathed in those cries of the delighted public with her full breath and with all the might of her soul that craved for fame. She closed her eyes, so that that impression, that picture might last longer.

      The enchanting vision had dissolved. Over the stage moved men in their shirt sleeves and without vests; they were changing the scenes, arranging the furniture, fastening the props. She saw the grimy necks, the dirty and ugly faces, the coarse and hardened hands and the heavy forms.

      She went out on the stage and through a slit in the curtain gazed out on the dim hall packed full of people. She saw hundreds of young faces, women's faces, smiling and still stirred by the music, while their owners fanned themselves; the men in their black evening clothes formed dark spots scattered at regular intervals, upon the light background of feminine toilettes.

      Janina felt a strange disappointment as she realized that the faces of the public were very much like those of Grzesikiewicz, her father, her home acquaintances, the principal of her boarding school, the professors at the academy and the telegrapher at Bukowiec. For the moment, it seemed to her that that was a sheer impossibility. How so? … She, of course, knew what to think about those others, whom long ago she had classified as fools, light-heads, drunkards, gossipers, silly geese and house-hens; small and shallow souls, a band of common eaters-of-bread, sunk in the shallow morass of material existence. And these people that filled the theater and doled out applause, and whom she had once thought of as demi-gods were they the same as those others? Janina asked herself, that, wonderingly.

      "Madame!" said a voice beside her.

      She tore her face away from the curtain. At her side stood a handsome, elegantly dressed young man who was holding his hand to his hat, smiling in a conventional manner.

      "Just let me look a moment … " he said.

      Janina moved away a bit.

      He glanced through the slit in the curtain and relinquished her place to her.

      "Pardon me, pardon me for disturbing you … " he said.

      "Oh, I've looked all I wanted to, sir … " she answered.

      "Not a very interesting sight, is it? … " he queried. "The most authentic Philistia; trade-mongers and shoemakers. … Perhaps you think, madame, that they come to hear, and admire the play? Oh, no! … they come here to display their new clothes, have supper, and kill time. … "

      "Well then, who does come for the play itself?" she asked.

      "In this place, no one. … At the Grand Theater and at the Varieties … there, perhaps, you may yet find a group, a very small group who love art and who come for the sake of art alone. I have often touched upon that matter in the papers."

      "Mr. Editor, let me have a cigarette!" called an actor from behind the scenes.

      "At your service." He handed the actor a silver cigarette-case.

      Janina, moving away, gazed with admiration at the writer, delighted with the opportunity of observing such a man at close range.

      How many times in the country while listening to the everlasting conversations about farming, politics, rainy and clear weather, she had dreamed of this other world, of people who would discourse to her of ideals, art, humanity, progress and poetry, and who impersonated in themselves all those ideals.

      "You must not be very long in this company for I have not had the pleasure of seeing you before … "

      "I was engaged only to-day."

      "Have you appeared elsewhere before?"

      "No, never on the real stage. … I took part only in amateur theatricals."

      "That is the way nearly all dramatic talent develops. I know … I happen to know … Modrzejewska herself often mentioned that fact to me," he remarked, with a condescending smile.

      "Mr. Editor … do your duty!" called Kaczkowska, extending her hands.

      The editor buttoned her gloves, kissed each of her hands a few times, received a slap on the shoulder in reward and retreated to the curtain where Janina was standing.

      "So this is your first appearance in the theater? … " he asked. "No doubt it's a case of the family opposing … inflexible determination on your part … the isolation and dullness of the countryside … your first appearance as an amateur … stage fright … success … the recognition of the divine spark within yourself … your dreams of the real stage … tears … sleepless nights … a struggle with an adverse environment … finally, consent … or perhaps a secret escape in the night … fear … anxiety … going the rounds of the directors … seeking an engagement … ecstasy … art … godliness!" he spoke rapidly, telegraphically.

      "You have almost guessed it, Mr. Editor … it was the same with me," said Janina.

      "You see, mademoiselle, I knew so from the first. It's intuition that's all! I'll take care of you, upon my word! … I'll insert a little item about you in our next issue. Later, give a few details under a sensational headline, next, a longer article about the new star on the horizon of dramatic art," he sped on. … "You will sweep them off their feet … the directors will tear you away from each other, and in about a year or two … you will be in the Grand Theater at Warsaw! … "

      "But, Mr. Editor, no one knows me; no one, as yet, knows whether I have talent … "

      "You have talent, my word! My intuition tells me that. … Do not believe the testimony of the senses, mademoiselle, hold yourself aloof from all reasoning, throw to the dogs all calculations, but do not fail to believe intuition! … "

      "Come here, editor … hurry!" called someone to him.

      "Au revoir! au revoir!" he said, throwing a kiss to Janina and touching the brim of his hat as he disappeared.

      Janina arose from her seat, but that same intuition which he had advised her to heed, told her not to take his words seriously. He seemed to her a light-headed individual given to hasty judgments. That promise of notices and articles in the papers and his extravagant praises of her talent seemed to her merely insincere twaddle. Even his face, gestures, and manner of speaking reminded her of a certain notorious braggart living in the vicinity of Bukowiec.

      The second act of the play commenced.

      Janina looked on, but it did not carry her away as the first had done.

      "How do you like our theater? … " asked the brunette chorus girl, whom she had met in the dressing-room.

      "Very well!" answered Janina.

      "Bah! the theater is like a plague; when it infects anyone, you might as well say amen! … " whispered the brunette, her voice hard.

      Behind the scenes, in the almost dark passages between the decorations there was a great number of people. The actors stood in the passages and certain pairs were crouched in the darkness; whispers and discreet laughs sounded on all sides.

      The stage-director, an old, bald man without a collar and dressed only in a vest, with a scenario in one hand and a bell in the other, ran up and down at the back.

      "To the stage! You enter immediately, madame! … enter!" he cried all perspired and flushed, and ran on again, gathered from the dressing-rooms those who were needed on the stage, and at the appropriate moment whispered: "Enter!"

      Janina saw how the actors suddenly interrupted their conversations, left each other in the midst of some sentence, stood down half-empty glasses, and rushed for the entrances, waiting for their turn, immovable and silent or nervously whispering the words of their roles, and entering into their characters; she saw the quivering of lips and eyelids, the trembling of legs, the sudden paleness beneath the layer of paint, and the feverish glances of stage fright …

      "Enter!" sounded a voice like the crack of a whip.

      Almost