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.