Janina walked ahead of the company with Kotlicki who did not leave her for a moment.

"You owe me a reply," he said after a while, a.s.suming a tender expression.

"I answered you yesterday, and to-day you owe me an explanation,"

she said harshly, for now, after that recent conversation with Grzesikiewicz and all that it had cost her, she felt an almost physical aversion and hatred toward Kotlicki; he struck her as repulsive and brazen.

"An explanation? . . . Can one explain love or a.n.a.lyze a feeling? . . ." he began, uneasily biting his thin lips. He did not like the tone of her voice.

"Let us be sincere, for what you told me is . . ." she cried impulsively.

"Is sincerity itself."

"No, it is only a comedy!" Janina retorted sharply and felt a great desire to strike him in the face.

"You offend me! One can believe a person's feelings without sharing them," he said in a quieter tone so that those who followed them would not hear.

"Now please listen to what I have to say! I want to tell you that your comedy not only wearies me, but is beginning to anger me. I am still too little a hysterical actress and too much a normal woman to take pleasure in such acting. I was never taught by my mother, the secret code of a woman's conduct toward a man, nor did they warn me of man's falsehood and baseness. I observed that quickly enough for myself, and see it every day behind the scenes. You think that to every woman who is in the theater you can boldly talk about your love as though it were some trifle, in the hope that perhaps she will swallow your bait! Actresses are so playful and so silly, aren't they?" she said with stinging scorn. "Would you dare to tell me the same, if I were at home? No, you wouldn't dare tell me you loved me, if you didn't, for there, I would be a woman in your eyes, while here I am only an actress; for there, I would have behind me a father, mother, brothers or some convention which would prohibit you from many things. But here, you don't hesitate. And why? Because here I am alone and an actress, that is a woman to whom you can with impunity tell lies, whom you can with impunity possess and then cast off and go your way without the slightest fear of losing your reputation. Oh, you can be sure, Mr. Kotlicki, that I will not become your mistress, nor any other man's if I do not love him! I have already thought much, too much, about the matter to be deceived by fine phrases!" She spoke rapidly, and her sharp words fell like blows.

He trembled with impatience and gazed on her in amazement. He did not know her, and had not a.s.sumed for a moment that he would find an actress who would tell him such things to his face. He gazed at her through half-closed eyes, and stammered ever more frequently, so immensely did he like her for her courage. She fascinated him by her strength of character and honesty, for by those words she had spoken, by her face which faithfully reflected all her inner feelings, and by the sincere tones of her voice he began to perceive that she was an honest and uncommon girl; and in addition she was so beautiful!

"The whip was rawhide with leaden weights at the end of it. You beat with a womanly fury both the guilty and the innocent," said Kotlicki, and seeing that Janina did not answer he added after a while, "Is this not enough for you? If it would be possible during that entire flagellation to kiss your hands, I beg you to continue . . ."

"Kotlicki! . . . Wait a minute there and help us carry the baskets! . . ." called Wawrzecki.

The men carried the baskets with the provisions, while the whole company walked along the steep river bank, seeking a convenient spot for a camping ground.

All about them the lonely wood rustled softly with its young oak leaves and juniper bushes. They halted under a grove of verdant oaks. Behind them was the woodland solitude while beneath them the Wisla gleamed in the sunlight and murmured with its blue waves breaking against the sh.o.r.e.

After the preliminary drinks and sandwiches all became lively.

"Well, now let us drink the health of the initiators of the outing!"

cried Glogowski, filling the gla.s.ses.

"Let us rather drink to the success of your new play," cried several voices.

"No, that will not help it any . . . it will turn out a fiasco anyway . . ."

"Perhaps Topolski will now reveal to us his secret plan," said Kotlicki who was calmly stretched out on his plaid beside Janina.

"Let that rest! After we have had plenty to eat and still more to drink will be time enough. Perhaps the ladies will untie those packages," cried Wawrzecki.

Napkins were spread out on the gra.s.s and a variety of dainties was brought forward and set upon them amid laughter.

"That's nice, but where is the tea?" exclaimed Janina.

Kotlicki jumped up.

"The tea is here and also the samovar, only you, sir, will have to go for some water. We shall go together for it to the Wisla!" cried Majkowska, shaking the charcoal out of a pitcher.

Kotlicki frowned a bit, but went along with her. In a few minutes the samovar was started, Glogowski proving himself a real master.

"That is my specialty!" he shouted blowing at the fire like a pair of bellows. "And I must tell you ladies that very often, more often than I like, I lack coal. It is then that my inventive genius comes to the fore: I stoke the fire with papers or, if that is also missing, I pluck a board from the floor and, w.i.l.l.y nilly, the tea is produced."

"You must lead a very diversified life!" remarked Topolski with a laugh.

"A trifle! Just a trifle . . . but I won't say that I relish it."

"I proclaim to all in general and to everyone in particular that the tea is beginning to boil! . . . Now, ladies, a.s.sume the roles of Hebes!" called Glogowski.

Janina poured out the tea for all of them before sitting down near Mimi.

"I am organizing a dramatic society," began Topolski.

"I will tell you the only way to do it: you engage a few score of the theatrical tribe by promising them high salaries and give them small advances; you look for a lady treasurer who is wise enough to have a bond and naive enough to deposit it; with it you buy the necessary accessories, have them sent on account and you are ready either to begin, or to break up. And in two months you can repeat the same prescription until you get results," jested Wawrzecki.

"Wawrzecki, quit your confounded nonsense!" cried the irritated Topolski, drinking one gla.s.s of brandy after another. "That kind of company any idiot can organize, any Cabinski. I don't want a band of players who will scatter to the four winds as soon as someone lures them with the promise of a big advance, but a strong organization with a well-defined plan, an organization as solid as a stonewall!"

"You often broke up companies yourself and yet you think you can manage actors? . . ." persisted Wawrzecki.

"I am sure of it. Listen all! This is how I would go about it: condition one--about five thousand rubles to begin with; I fish out of all the companies their best forces, thirty persons at most; I pay them moderately but honestly; I a.s.sure dividends . . ." "Come now, you had better give up dreaming about dividends!" growled Kotlicki.

"There will be a dividend! there must be!" cried Topolski with growing enthusiasm. "I select my plays: a series of typical and cla.s.sical things; these will be the walls and foundations of my edifice; furthermore, all the more important novelties and all the folkplays, but away with operetta, away with clownishness, away with the circus, away with everything that is not true art! I want to have a theater and not a puppet show! artists are not clowns!" he cried in an ever louder voice.

Topolski began to cough so violently that all the veins in his neck swelled like whipcords. He coughed for a long time, then took a drink of brandy and began talking again, but in a quieter and slower voice, without looking at anyone, or seeing anything beyond this dream of his whole life, which he related in short and tangled sentences.

Kotlicki, who was not stirred even for a moment by that speech full of inspiration as well as illogicality, remarked: "You are a little late. Antoine in Paris has long ago put into practice what you propose; those are his ideas . . ."

"No, those are my ideas, my dreams; for twenty years already I am carrying them within me!" cried Topolski, growing suddenly livid as though struck by lightning, and gazing in a dazed way at Kotlicki.

"What of that, when others have already partially realized those dreams and given them their name . . ."

"Thieves! they have stolen my idea! they have stolen my idea!"

shouted Topolski and fell over half-senseless on the gra.s.s, covering his face with his hands, sobbing convulsively and stammering in a drunken voice: "They have stolen my idea! . . . Help! they have stolen my idea!" And he continued to roll about on the gra.s.s, sobbing like a grieved child.

"Not because of the fact that that idea is already known do I see the impossibility of realizing such a project," began Glogowski calmly, "but because our public has not yet reached the point where it is ready for such a theater and does not feel the need of such a stage. In the meanwhile, give them the farce full of acrobatic stunts and leg-shows, a half-naked ballet, cancan howling, a little, cheap kitchen sentimentality, a heap of empty phrases on the subject of virtue, morality, the family, duty, love, and . . ."

"Count up to twenty . . ." laughed Kotlicki.

"Just as is the public, so are its theaters; one is worth as much as the other!" remarked Majkowska.

"He who wants to rule the mult.i.tude and rule over it, must flatter it and do that which the mult.i.tude wants; he must give it that which it needs; he must first be its slave so that he may later become its master," said Kotlicki slowly and with unction.

"I will say: no! I neither want to cringe to the mob, nor be its master; I prefer to go my own way alone . . ." answered Glogowski emphatically.

"A splendid standpoint! From it you can laugh at everyone to your heart's content."

"Miss Janina, please let me have some tea!" cried the already irritated Glogowski, springing up violently, throwing his hat at a tree and feverishly rumpling his spa.r.s.e hair.

"You are ever a fiery radical of native breed," said Kotlicki with a good-natured irony.