The Comedienne. Władysław Stanisław Reymont

eat the chicken just as well without it; sauce is nothing but an invention, a freak and a modern fad!"

      "No self-respecting woman sells herself to the first man that comes along merely because he is capable of supporting her!"

      "You're a fool. They all do it, they all sell themselves. Love is childish prattle and nonsense. Don't irritate me."

      "It is not a question of irritating you, father, or whether love is nonsense or not; it is a question of my future which you dispose of as though it belonged to you. Already at the time that Zielenkiewicz proposed to me. I told you that I do not intend to marry at all."

      "Zielenkiewicz is merely Zielenkiewicz, but Grzesikiewicz is a very lord, and what I call a man! He is kind-hearted, wise for did he not graduate from the academy at Dublany and as strong as a bull. A fellow who can master the wildest horse and who, when he struck a peasant in the face the other day, knocked out six of his teeth with one blow such a fellow is not good enough for you! I swear he is ideal, the highest of all ideals!"

      "Yes, your ideal is an incomparable one; he'd make a good prize-fighter."

      "You are as crazy as your mother was. Wait! Andrew will muzzle you and show you how such women are ruled. He will not spare the whip."

      Janina violently shoved aside her chair, threw her spoon on the table, and left the room, slamming the door after her.

      "Don't sit there gaping, but order the cutlets served for me," he shouted at Mrs. Krenska, who gazed after Janina with a sympathetic look.

      She handed him the dish with a servile mien, whispering to him with a solicitous tone in her voice, "Mr. Director, you must not irritate yourself so, it is not good for your health."

      "Such is my fate!" he drawled. "I can't even eat in peace, without having to listen to these everlasting squabbles."

      He then began to air at length his grievances and complaints over Janina's stubbornness, her wilful character, and his continual troubles with her.

      Mrs. Krenska obsequiously pretended to agree with him, and occasionally emphasized some detail. She complained discreetly that she also had to bear a great deal because of Janina, sighed deeply, and wheedled him at every opportunity. She brought in the coffee and arrack and poured it for him herself. While doing so she fawned upon him, touched his hands and arms, as though accidentally, lowered her eyes, and kept up a continual flirtation, trying to awaken some spark in him.

      Orlowski's anger slowly abated, and having drunk his coffee, he ejaculated, "Thank you! I swear to God that you alone understand me. … You are a kind woman, Mrs. Krenska."

      "Mr. Director, if I could only show you what I feel, what—" she faltered, dropping her eyes.

      Orlowski pressed her hand and went to his own room for a nap.

      Mrs. Krenska ordered the table cleared and afterwards, when she was alone, took up some sewing and sat near the window facing the station platform. Occasionally she would look up from her work and gaze at the woods, or at the long line of rails, but everything seemed deserted and silent. Finally, unable to sit still any longer, she arose and began to pace around the table with a soft, feline step, smiling and repeating to herself: "I will get him, I will get him! At last I will find a little rest in my life, my wanderings will come to an end!"

      Scenes from the past floated before her memory: whole years of wandering with a company of provincial actors. Krenska had abandoned the theater because she managed to catch a young fellow who married her. She lived with him for two whole years … two years which she recalled with bitterness. Her husband was insanely jealous and frequently beat her.

      At last he died and she was free, but she had no longer any desire to return to the theater. She shuddered at the thought of resuming that eternal pilgrimage from town to town and the everlasting poverty of a provincial actor's life. Moreover, she realized that she was growing old and homely. So she sold all her household furnishings, received a pension from the management to which her husband had belonged, and for half a year played the role of a widow. She was very eager to marry a second time and sedulously spread her nets, but all in vain, for her own temperament stood in the way. With money in her pocket, there awakened in her again the former actress with her careless and sporty disposition and craving for pleasure and enjoyment. Being still seductive, she was surrounded by a swarm of various admirers with whom she squandered all she had, together with the reputation which she had succeeded in establishing for herself with the aid of her husband.

      Krenska had no abilities of any kind, but she possessed a great deal of cleverness, so, instead of resigning herself to despair when the last of her admirers had forsaken her, she inserted an advertisement in the Kielce Gazette reading: "Middle-aged widow of a government official desires position as a housekeeper to widower, or as a social secretary."

      She did not have to wait long for results. Her advertisement was answered in person by Orlowski, who was badly in need of a house-keeper, for Janina was still attending school and he could not himself manage the servants. Krenska seemed so quiet, humble, and full of grief over the loss of her husband that he did not ask her any questions, but engaged her immediately.

      Orlowski was a widower who possessed a good salary, a few thousand dollars in cash, and an only daughter—an absent daughter whom he detested. Krenska at first tried to turn the heads of the station officials, but very soon sized up the situation and immediately began playing a new role whereby she perseveringly strove to attain the last act: Matrimony.

      Orlowski became used to her. She knew how to make herself indispensable and always to show that indispensability so skillfully that it did not offend.

      Moreover, the gray autumn days and the long wintry evenings brought her nearer to her goal, for Orlowski, who was fifty-eight years old and had rheumatism, was always a maniac, but during his rheumatic attacks he would become a raving maniac. She alone knew how to mollify and manage him with her inherent cleverness, sharpened by many years of theatrical experience. There was only one obstacle in her way—Janina. Krenska realized that as long as Janina was at home she could accomplish nothing. She decided to wait and waited patiently.

      Orlowski loved his daughter with hatred, that is, he loved her because he hated her. He hated her because she was the daughter of his wife, whose memory he violently cursed—his wife, who after two years of conjugal life, left him, because she could no longer endure his tyranny and eccentricities. He brought legal action against her and tried to force her to return to him, but their separation became a permanent one. He raved with anger, but his relentlessness, unexampled stubbornness, and insane pride prevented him from begging his wife to return, which she might have done, for she was a good woman. Her only failing was an illness that baffled all the provincial doctors. She had the soul of a mimosa, so sensitive that every tear, pain, or grief would cast her into despair. Moreover she had an abnormal fear of thunderstorms, showers, frogs, dark rooms, unlucky numbers, and all loud sounds; so this husband of hers was killing her with his brutality.

      Within a few years after their separation she died of nervous prostration, leaving Janina, who was then ten years old. Orlowski immediately took her away from his wife's family by force.

      An additional reason for his hatred of Janina was because she happened to be a girl. With his wild and violent disposition he wanted a son on whom he could exercise not only his fists, but also his everyday humor. He had dreamed of a son and fancied that he would be a big and half-wild fellow, energetic and as strong as an oak.

      He immediately sent Janina to a boarding-school, seeing her only once a year during her vacation. She spent the Christmas and Easter holidays at her aunt's home.

      For these vacations, which were now in their third year, he would wait impatiently, for he was weary of being alone at his remote station. And as soon as Janina arrived hostilities between them would begin.

      Janina grew up rapidly, and her mental and physical development were of the best, but having been conceived, born, and reared in an environment of continual hatred and quarrels and nursed with the tears and complaints of her mother at her father's brutality, she naturally disliked him and feared his