Sowinska was again reminding her almost every day about her overdue rent and that daily nagging was an unbearable torment. Janina could not ask her to sell those costumes, for she knew that Sowinska would unscrupulously keep the money, so she decided to sell them herself.

She wrapped one of the costumes in a piece of paper and went to the door to wait for a buyer of old clothes, but the porter was walking about the yard, servant girls were going to and fro, and in the windows of the houses she saw the faces of women who had often cast scornful glances at her. No, she could not sell here, for in a moment the whole house would know about her poverty. She went to one of the adjoining houses and waited a short while.

"Any old things to buy! Any old things to buy!" came the hoa.r.s.e voice of an old Jew.

Janina called him. The Jew turned his head and came to her. He was as dirty as he was old. She went with him to the stoop of some house.

"Do you want to sell anything?" asked the Jew, laying his bag and stick on the stairs and bending his thin face and red eyes over the package.

"Yes," answered Janina, unwrapping the paper.

The Jew took the costume in his dirty hands, spread it out in the sunlight, looked over it a few times, smiled imperceptibly, put it back in the paper, wrapped it up, picked up his bag and stick and said, "Such fineries are not for me." He began to descend the stairway, derisively smacking his lips.

"I will sell it cheap," Janina called after him, thinking with fear that perhaps she might get at least a ruble or a half-ruble for it.

"If you have some old shoes or pillow-slips, I will buy them, but such a thing is of no use to me. Who will buy it? Rubbish!"

"I will sell it cheap," she whispered.

"Well, how much do you want for it?"

"A ruble."

"May I fall down dead, if that is worth more than twenty kopecks.

What is it worth, who will buy it?" and he came back, unwrapped the costume, and again examined it indifferently.

"The ribbons alone cost me a few rubles," said Janina, and she became silent, deciding that she would take the twenty kopecks.

"Ribbons! What's that . . . all pieces!" chattered the Jew, glancing over the costume hastily. "Well, I will give you thirty kopecks. Do you want it? As I'm an honest man, I can't give you more . . . I have a good heart, but I can't. Well, do you want it?"

This barter filled Janina with such disgust, shame, and grief, that she felt like throwing down everything and running away.

The Jew counted out the money to her, took the costume and went away. From the window of her room Janina saw how in the full light of the yard he examined the dress once more.

"What shall I do with this?" she whispered helplessly, pressing in her hand the dirty and sticky kopecks.

Janina owed money to Mme. Anna for the rent of her room, to the tender of the theater-buffet, and to a few of her companions of the chorus, but she no longer thought of this, only took the thirty kopecks and went out to the store to buy herself something to eat.

She returned home, and having eaten, she wished to take a little nap, but Sowinska entered and told her that someone was waiting for her for the last half-hour and immediately there entered Niedzielska's servant girl with eyes all red from crying.

"Please Miss, come along with me, for my mistress is very sick and wants to see you without fail," she said.

"Is Madame Niedzielska so seriously ill?" cried Janina, springing up from the bed and hurriedly putting on her hat.

"The priest has already been there this afternoon with the sacrament and she has only a few hours to live," whispered the faithful old servant with tears in her eyes. "She can scarcely draw her breath and all I understood her to say was that I should run to you and tell you that she wants to see you right away. And where is Mr.

Wladyslaw?"

"How can I know? He ought to be with his mother," answered Janina.

"He ought to, but he is a worthless son," whispered the servant in hollow tones. "Already for a week he has not been at home, for he had an awful quarrel with his mother. My G.o.d! My G.o.d! how he swore at her and abused her and even wanted to strike her. O merciful Lord, that is the way he repaid her for loving him so dearly that she even denied herself food to supply him with money. She was such a miser that she did not want to spend money for a doctor or any medicines and he . . . oh! oh, G.o.d will punish him severely for his mother's tears! I know that you are not to blame for it, miss . . .

I can guess that . . . but . . ." she whispered quietly, hobbling alongside of Janina and every now and then wiping her eyes, all red from crying and loss of sleep.

Janina hardly heard a word of what she was saying for the noise and the din in the street and the splashing of water flowing from the drainpipes to the sidewalk drowned out everything else. She went along only because the dying woman had summoned her.

The first room of Niedzielska's home was almost filled with people and Janina greeted them as she pa.s.sed through it, but no one answered her and all eyes followed her with a peculiar curiosity.

In the room where Niedzielska lay, there were also a few persons seated about her bed. Janina went straight to the sick woman. She was lying flat on her back, but fixed her eyes upon Janina as soon as she had crossed the threshold.

On Janina's entrance the persons in the room stopped talking so abruptly that the sudden silence sent a strange thrill through her.

She met Niedzielska's gaze and could not tear her eyes away from it.

She sat down alongside of the bed, greeting her in a subdued voice.

The old woman grasped her hand tightly and in a quiet voice with a very strong accent asked: "Where is Wladek?"

Her brows knit themselves in an expression of severity and something like hatred gleamed in the yellowish whites of her eyes.

"I don't know. How am I to know?" answered Janina almost frightened by her question.

"You don't know, you thief! You have stolen my son and yet, you dare tell me that you don't know!" gasped Niedzielska, striving to raise her voice a little, but it sounded hollow and wild. Her eyes opened ever wider and gleamed with hatred and menace, her pale lips quivered nervously, and her thin, yellow face twitched continually.

She raised herself a bit on her bed and in a hoa.r.s.e voice, as though rallying her remaining strength cried: "You streetwalker! You thief!

You . . ." and she fell back exhausted, with a hollow groan.

Janina sprang up, as though an electric shock had pa.s.sed through her, but the old woman gripped her wrist so tightly that she fell back again on her chair, unable to free her hand. She glanced about desperately at everybody, in the room, but their faces were stern.

She closed her eyes for a moment to shut out the sight of the yellowish wrinkled faces of those women who stood facing her like specters glaring at her with their skeleton-like faces in the shadowy twilight of the room.

"So that is she! So young and already . . ."

"A base serpent."

"I would kill her like a dog, if she tried to do the same with my son."

"I would have her locked up and sent to the workhouse."

"In my days such women as that were put into the pillory as a punishment. I remember well."

"Be quiet! quiet!" whispered an old man trying to pacify the women.

"And for her he ran away to the comedians, for her he squandered so much money, for such a low-down thing as she, he beat his mother!

May you perish, you base serpent!"

Such were the voices full of hatred and scorn that hissed all about Janina and the poisonous malignity that dripped from their words and glances flooded her heart with an ocean of pain and shame. She wanted to cry out: "Mercy, people! I am innocent," but her head bent ever lower on her breast and she had an ever dimmer consciousness of where she was and what was happening to her. Janina's soul had already been weakened too much by misery to resist this blow. An immense wave of fear began to shake her, for it seemed to her that the hand of the old woman which held her so tightly and those dreadful eyes bulging from their sockets were drawing her down into a dark abyss and that this was death and the end of everything.

Later, Janina no longer heard anything that was being said and saw no one but the dying woman. At moments, she still felt a desire to spring up and run away from there but it was a mere flicker of will that pa.s.sed through her nerves without reaching her consciousness.

So many previous sufferings, and now this blow at her very heart, benumbed her brain with a quiet madness. She grew frightfully pale and sat as though dead, gazing at the face of the dying woman. Those same fragments of thoughts and visions now swarmed through her brain that had done so once before: that same vast ma.s.s of greenish waters seemed to submerge her consciousness. She was not even aware that they had torn her away from Niedzielska and shoved her into a corner where she stood immovable and bereft of her senses.

Niedzielska was dying. It seemed as though she had only been waiting for Janina before giving herself up to death, for anger and hatred kept her alive a few hours longer. Now, there followed a general dissolution. She lay there rigid and straight, with her hands upon the coverlet, which they tugged at automatically, and with her sad eyes gazing upward as though into the eternity into which she was entering.