The
old man was silent, though he seemed continually at the point of
bursting into eager speech. However, he remained uncommunicative and
followed the boy's movements with a blank speculative countenance.
Finally he said abruptly:
"Sing that song over--about the 'damn ol' nigger.'"
Harry Baggs responded; and, at the end, Janin nodded.
"What I should have expected," he pronounced. "When I first heard you I
thought: 'Here, perhaps, is a great voice, a voice for Paris;' but I
was mistaken. You have some bigness--yes, good enough for street
ballads, sentimental popularities; that is all."
An overwhelming depression settled upon Harry Baggs, a sense of
irremediable loss. He had considered his voice a lever that might one
day raise him out of his misfortunes; he instinctively valued it to an
extraordinary degree; it had resembled a precious bud, the possible
opening of which would flood his being with its fragrant flowering. He
gazed with a new dread at the temporary shelters and men about him, the
huts and men that resembled each other so closely in their patched
decay.
Until now, except in brief moments of depression, he had thought of
himself as only a temporary part of this broken existence. But it was
probable that he, too, was done--like Runnel, and Dake, who lived on
the fear of women. He recalled with an oath his reception in the
village of his birth on his return from jail: the veiled or open
distrust of the adults; the sneering of the young; his barren search
for employment.
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