“Don't you feel good?”
“I've been worse and better,” he replied. “This is bad for your throat, after singing all day in the rain. Voyou!” he repeated of himself.
Silence enveloped them, broken by the creaking of the blind man's chair and the decreasing patter of the rain. Soon it stopped and Harry Baggs went outside; stars glimmered at the edges of shifting clouds, a sweet odor rose from the earth, a trailing scent of blossoming trees expanded.
He sang in a vibrant undertone a stave without words. An uneasy form joined him; it was Runnel.
“I b'lieve my head'll burst!” he complained.
“Leave that soda-caffeine be.”
He would never forget Runnel with his everlasting pain; or Dake, who lived by scaring women.... Great audiences and roses, and the roar of applause. He heard it now.
V
Harry Baggs returned to the Nursery, where, with his visions, his sense of justification, he was happy among the fields of plants. There he was given work of a more permanent kind; he was put under a watchful eye in a group transplanting berry bushes, definitely reassigned to that labor to-morrow. He returned to the camp with a roll of tar paper and, after supper, covered the leaking roof of the shelter. French Janin sat with his blank face following the other's movements. Janin's countenance resembled a walnut, brown and worn in innumerable furrows; his neck was like a dry inadequate stem. As he glanced at him the old man produced a familiar bottle and shook out what little powder, like finely ground glass, it contained. He greedily absorbed what there was and, petulantly exploring the empty container, flung it into the bushes. A nodding drowsiness overtook him, his head rolled forward, he sank slowly into a bowed amorphous heap. Harry Baggs roused him with difficulty.
“You don't want to sit like this,” he said; “come up by the field, where it's fresher.”