Chapter 19

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.