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, a.s.sisting 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 acc.u.mulated 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.
Books By Joseph Hergesheimer
The Happy End
Java Head
Gold And Iron
The Three Black Pennys
Mountain Blood
The Lay Anthony