VII
The next day moved toward its end without arresting incident. Janin and Harry Baggs had walked to the public road, where they stood leaning against the rail fence. The smoke from Baggs' pipe uprose in unbroken spheres; the evening was definitely hot. French Janin said:
“In the town to-day I asked about that house here at the bend. It seems he's got money; comes for a couple of months in the spring—just like us—and then goes to Europe like as not. Perhaps he knows a voice.”
The blind man fell silent, contemplative.
“Trouble is,” he broke out fretfully, “we've got nothing to sing. That about the 'damn old nigger' won't do. You ought to know something like the Serenade.
“Well,” he added after a moment, “why not? I could teach you the words—it's Italian; you've nearly got the air. It's all wrong and backward; but this isn't the Conservatoire. You can forget it when you have started; sing exercises again.”
“When can we begin?” Harry Baggs asked.
“We'll brush our clothes up best we can,” Janin proceeded, absorbed in his planning, “and go up to the porch of an evening. 'Mr. Brinton'—that's his name—I'll say, 'I'm M. Janin, once of the orchestra at the Opera Comique, and I'd like you to listen to a pupil of mine. I've heard them all and this boy is better——'” He stopped; took morphia.
“Can't you stop that for a day?” Harry Baggs demanded desperately. “Can't you?”
He watched with bitter rebellion the inevitable slackening of the other's being, the obfuscation of his mind. Janin hung over the fence, with hardly more semblance of life than an incredibly tattered and empty garment.
“Come on, you old fool!” Baggs exclaimed, burning with impatience, balked desire; he half carried him brusquely to his bed.
Yet, under the old man's fluctuating tuition, he actually began the Serenade within twenty-four hours. “Deh vieni alla finestra,” French Janin pronounced. “Deh vieni——” Harry Baggs struggled after him. His brow grew wet with the intensity of his effort; his tongue, it seemed to him, would never accomplish the desired syllables.
Janin made a determined effort to live without his drug; the abstinence emphasized his fragility and he was cold, even in the heart of the long sunny day; but the effort stayed him with a flickering vitality, bred visions, renewed hopes of the future. He repeated the names of places, opera houses—the San Carlo, in Naples; the Scala—unknown to Harry Baggs, but which came to him with a strange vividness. The learning of the Serenade progressed slowly; French Janin forgot whole phrases, some of which returned to memory; one entire line he was forced to supply from imagination.
At last the boy could sing it with a degree of intelligence; Janin translated and reconstructed the scene, the characters.
“You ought to have some good clothes,” he told Harry Baggs; he spoke again of the necessity of a diamond stud.
“Well, I haven't,” the other stated shortly. “They'll have to listen to me without looking.”
He borrowed a rusted razor and subjected himself to the pain of an awkward shaving; then inadequately washed his sole shirt and looped the frayed collar with a nondescript tie.
The night was immaculate; the moon, past the full, cast long segments of light and shadow across the countryside. Harry Baggs drew a deep breath:
“We might as well go.”
French Janin objected; he wasn't ready; he wasn't quite sure of what he was going to say. Then:
“I haven't anything to show. Perhaps they will laugh at me—at Janin, of the Opéra Comique. I couldn't allow that.”
“I'm going to sing,” the boy reminded him; “if it's any good they won't laugh. If what you say's right they'll have to believe you.”
“I feel bad to-night, too, in my legs.”
“Get your violin.”
A fresh difficulty arose: French Janin positively refused to play on his present instrument before a critical audience.
“It's as thin as a cat,” he protested. “Do you want me to make a show of myself?”
“All right; I'll sing alone. Come on!”
Janin's legs were uncertain; he stumbled over the path to the road and stopped at the fence. He expressed fresh doubts, the hesitation of old age; but Harry Baggs silenced him, forced him on. A cold fear possessed the boy, which he resolutely suppressed: if Janin were wrong, his voice worthless, if they laughed, he was done. Opportunity, he felt, would never return. With his voice scorned, no impetus remained; he had no other interest in life, no other power that could subdue the slight inward flaw.
He saw this in a vivid flash of self-knowledge.... If he couldn't sing he would go down, lower than Janin; perhaps sink to the level of Dake.
“Come on!” he repeated grimly, assisting his companion over the luminous white road.
Janin got actually feebler as he progressed. He stopped, gasping, his sightless face congested.
“I'll have to take a little,” he whispered, “just a taste. That puts life in me; it needs a good deal now to send me off.”
He produced the familiar bottle and absorbed some powder. Its effect was unexpected—he straightened, walked with more ease; but it acted upon his mind with surprising force.
“I want to stop just a little,” he proclaimed with such an air of decision that Harry Baggs followed him without protest to the fragrant bank. “You're a good fellow,” Janin went on, seated; “and you're going to be a great artist. It'll take you among the best. But you will have a hard time for a while; you won't want anybody hanging on you. I'd only hurt your chances—a dirty old man, a drugtaker. I would go back to it, Harry; it's got me, like you said. People wouldn't have me round. I doubt if I'd be comfortable with them. They'd ask me why I wasn't Director.”
“Come on,” Baggs repeated for the third time; “it's getting late.”
He lifted French Janin to his feet and forced him on. “You don't know life,” the other continued. “You would get sick of me; you might get influenced to put me in a Home. I couldn't get my breath right there.”
Harry Baggs forced him over the road, half conscious of the protesting words. The fear within him increased. Perhaps they wouldn't even listen to him; they might not be there.
His grip tightened on French Janin; he knew that at the first opportunity the old man would sink back into the oblivion of morphia.
“I've done all I could for you, Harry”—the other whimpered. “I've been some—good. Janin was the first to encourage you; don't expect too much.”
“If I get anywhere, you did it,” Harry Baggs told him.
“I'd like to see it all,” French Janin said. “I know it so well. Who'd have thought”—a dull amazement crept into his voice—“that old Janin, the sot, did it?... And you'll remember.”
They stopped opposite the entrance to the place they sought. Harry Baggs saw people on the porch; he recognized a man's voice that he had heard there before. On the right of the drive a thick maple tree cast a deep shadow, but beyond it a pool of clear moonlight extended to the house. He started forward, but Janin dragged him into the gloom of the maple.
“Sing here,” he whispered in the boy's ear; “see, the window—Deh vieni alla finestra.”
Harry Baggs stood at the edge of the shadow; his throat seemed to thicken, his voice expire.
“No,” he protested weakly; “you must speak first.”
He felt the old man shaking under his hand and a sudden desperate calm overtook him.
He moved forward a little and sang the first phrase of the Serenade.
A murmur of attention, of surprised amusement, arose from the porch; then, as his voice gained in bigness, flowed rich and thrilling and without effort from his deep powerful lungs, the murmur died away. The song rose toward its end; Harry Baggs saw nothing but the window above him; he put all the accumulated feeling, the longing, of the past miserable years into his ending.
A silence followed, in which Harry Baggs stood with drooping head. Then an unrestrained patter of applause followed; figures advanced. French Janin gave the boy a sharp unexpected shove into the radiance beyond the tree.
“Go on and on,” he breathed; “and never come back any more!”
He turned and shambled rapidly away into the shadows, the obscurity, that lined the road.