The Comedienne. Władysław Stanisław Reymont

dark and vague presentiments and an unaccountable feeling of terror at times would seize upon her. She could not summon the necessary determination. A storm of some kind only could uproot her and carry her far away from home in the same way as it uprooted the trees and scattered them over the desolate fields. She was waiting now for some chance happening to cast her into the world. Krenska, in the meanwhile, kept her informed of the activities of the provincial theatrical companies. Janina made certain preparations and savings. Her father paid her regularly the interest on her inheritance and this enabled her in a year's time to lay aside about two hundred rubles.

      Grzesikiewicz's proposal and her father's insistance on her marriage roused a stormy protest in her.

      "No, no, no!" she repeated to herself, pacing excitedly up and down her room. "I will not marry!"

      Janina had never contemplated matrimony seriously. At times the vision of a great, overwhelming love would gleam through her mind, and she would dream of it for a while; but of marriage she had never given a thought.

      She even liked Grzesikiewicz, because he would never speak lightly to her about love, nor enact those amorous comedies to which other admirers had accustomed her. She liked him for the simplicity with which he would relate all that he had to suffer at school, how he was abused and humiliated as the son of a peasant and innkeeper and how he paid them back in peasant fashion with his fists. He would smile while relating this to her, but there was in his smile a trace of sorrow.

      She opened the door of her father's room and was about to tell him abruptly and decisively that there was no need of Grzesikiewicz's coming, but Orlowski was already enjoying his after-dinner nap, seated in a big arm-chair with his feet propped against the window-sill. The sun was shining straight into his face which was almost entirely bronzed from sunburn.

      Janina withdrew.

      "No, no, no! … Even though I have to run away from home, I will not marry!" she repeated to herself fiercely.

      But immediately there followed this determination a feeling of womanly helplessness.

      "I will go to my uncle's house. … Yes! … and from there I will go to the stage. No one can force me to stay here."

      Thereupon, the blood would rush to her head with indignation and she would immediately gaze with courage into the future, determined to meet anything that might happen rather than submit.

      She heard her father arise and then go to the window; she listened to the station bells, and to the jabbering of a few Jews who were boarding the train; she saw the red cap of her father, and the yellow striped cap of the telegrapher conversing through his window with some lady; she saw and heard all, but understood nothing, so absorbed was she in thought.

      Krenska entered and in her habitual way began to circle around the table with quiet, cat-like motion before she spoke. Her face bore an expression of sympathy and there was tenderness in her voice.

      "Miss Janina!"

      The young woman glanced at her.

      "No! I assure you that I will not!" she said with emphasis.

      "Your father gave Grzesikiewicz his word of honor … he will demand unquestioning obedience … what will come of it?"

      "No! I will not marry! … My father can retract his word; he cannot compel me—"

      "Yes … but there will be an awful rumpus, an awful rumpus!"

      "I have stood so many, I can stand some more."

      "I am afraid that this one will not end so smoothly. Your father has such a dreadful temper. … I can't understand how you are able to bear as much as you do. … If I were in your place, Miss Janina, I know what I should do … and do it now, immediately!"

      "I am anxious to know … give me your advice."

      "First of all, I would leave home to avoid all this trouble before it begins. I would go to Warsaw."

      "Well, and what would you do next?" asked Janina with trembling voice.

      "I would join some theater and let happen what will!"

      "Yes, that's a good idea, but … but—"

      And she broke off, for the old helplessness and fears reasserted themselves. She sat silent without answering Krenska.

      Janina put on a jacket and felt hat and taking a stick wandered off into the woods.

      She climbed to the top of that rocky hill from which spread out below her a wide view of the woods, the villages beyond them, and an endless expanse of fields. She sat gazing about her for a while, but the calm that reigned all around, contrasted with the feeling of unquiet and foreboding in her own soul, as before an impending storm, gave her no peace.

      At dusk Janina returned home. She did not speak either to her father or to Krenska but immediately after supper went to her own room and sat reading George Sand's Consuelo until a late hour.

      During the night she was perturbed with unquiet dreams from which she started up every now and then, perspiring heavily, and awoke fully before dawn, unable to sleep any longer. She lay upon her bed with wide open eyes, gazing fixedly at the ceiling on which flickered a patch of light reflected from the station lamp. A train went roaring by and she listened for a long while to its rhythmic rumbling and clatter that seemed like a whole choir of voices and tones streaming in through her window.

      At the farther end of the room, steeped in a twilight full of pale gleams that flickered like severed rays from a light long since extinguished, she seemed to see apparitions and vague outlines of mysterious scenes, figures, and sounds. Her wearied brain peopled the room with the phantoms of hallucination. She beheld, as it were, a vast edifice with a long row of columns that seemed to emerge from the dusk and take shape. In the morning she arose so worn out that she could scarcely stand on her feet.

      She heard her father issuing orders for a sumptuous dinner and saw them making preparations. Krenska circled about her on tiptoe and smiled at her with a subtle, ironical smile that irritated Janina. She felt dazed with exhaustion and the storm that was brewing within her, and beheld everything with indifference, for her mind was continually dwelling on the impending battle with her father. She tried to read or occupy herself with something, but was too nervous.

      She ran off to the woods, but immediately came back, for she knew not what to do there. A lethargy seemed to take hold of her and benumb her with an ever greater fear. Try as she would, Janina could not shake off this depressing mood.

      She sat down at the piano and began mechanically to play scales, but the somnolent monotony of the tones only added to her nervousness. Later she played some of Chopin's Nocturnes, lingered over those mysterious tones that seemed like strains from another world, full of tears, pain, cries of anguish, and bleak despair; the radiance of cold moonlight nights, moans like the whisper of departing souls, the laughter of parting, the soft vibrations of subtle, sad life.

      Suddenly, Janina stopped playing and burst into tears. She wept for a long time, not knowing why she wept she who since her mother's death had not shed a single tear.

      For the first time in her life which up till now had been one continuous struggle, revolt, and protest she felt overcome by distress. There awakened in her an irresistible longing to share her sorrows with someone, a longing to confide to some sympathetic heart those bewildered thoughts and feelings, that unexplainable misery and fear. She yearned for sympathy, feeling that her distress would be smaller, her anguish less violent, her tears not so bitter, if she could open her heart before some sincere woman friend.

      Krenska summoned her to dinner, announcing that Grzesikiewicz was already waiting.

      She wiped away the traces of tears from her eyes, arranged her hair and went.

      Grzesikiewicz kissed her hand and seated himself beside her at the table.

      Orlowski was in a holiday humor and every now and then twitted

       Janina and hurled triumphant glances at her.