"She"s ashamed of her own mother. That"s true, but such a mother! . . ."
"A plain peasant woman. She compromises her before everybody. . . .
At least, she could refrain from making a show before other people!"
"How so? Can a girl be ashamed of her mother? . . ." cried Janina, who had been sitting in silence, until those last words stirred her to indignation.
"You are a newcomer, so you don"t know anything," several answered her at once.
"May I come in? . . ." called a masculine voice from without.
"You can"t! you can"t!" chorused the girls energetically.
"Zielinska! your editor has come."
A tall, stout chorus girl, rustling her skirts, pa.s.sed out of the room.
"Shepska! take a look out after them."
Shepska went out, but came back immediately.
"They"ve gone downstairs."
The stage bell rang violently.
"To the stage!" called the stage-director at the door. "We begin immediately!"
There arose an indescribable hubbub. All the girls began to talk and shout at the same time; they ran about, tore away hairpins and curling irons from one another, powdered themselves, quarreled over trifles, blew out candles, hastily closed their dressing-cases and rushed down the stairs in crowds, for the second bell had already sounded.
Janina descended last of all and stood behind the scenes. The performance began. They were playing some kind of half fairy-like operetta. Janina could hardly recognize those people or that theater everything had undergone such a magical transformation and taken on a new beauty under the influence of powder, paint, and light! . . .
The music, with the quiet caressing tones of the flute, floated through the silence and stole into Janina"s soul, lulling it sweetly . . . and later, a dance of some kind, soft, voluptuous, and intoxicating, enveloped her with its charm, lured and rocked her on the waves of rhythm and held her in an ecstatic lethargy.
She felt herself drawn ever farther into a confused whirl of lights, tones and colors. Her impulsive and sensuous nature, struggling hitherto with the drab commonplace of everyday events and people, was fascinated. It was almost as she had visioned it in her soul; full of lights, music, thrilling accents, ecstatic swoons, strong colors, and stormy and overpowering emotions, breaking with the force of thunderbolts.
The suffocating odor of powder dust floated about her like a cloud, while from the crowded hall there flowed a stream of hot breaths and desiring glances that broke against the stage like a magnetic wave, drowning in forgetfulness all that was not song, music, and pleasure.
When the act ended and a storm of applause broke loose, she was on 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 coa.r.s.e 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 princ.i.p.al 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 cla.s.sified 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 mora.s.s of material existence. And these people that filled the theater and doled out applause, and whom she had once thought of as demi-G.o.ds 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 b.u.t.toned 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 . . .
G.o.dliness!" 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 . . ."