Three John Silence Stories
Page 15
_obliquely_. He laughed in his mind as the thought thusclothed itself in words, but the phrase exactly described it. Theylooked at him from angles which naturally should have led their sight inanother direction altogether. Their movements were oblique, too, so faras these concerned himself. The straight, direct thing was not their wayevidently. They did nothing obviously. If he entered a shop to buy, thewoman walked instantly away and busied herself with something at thefarther end of the counter, though answering at once when he spoke,showing that she knew he was there and that this was only her way ofattending to him. It was the fashion of the cat she followed. Even inthe dining-room of the inn, the be-whiskered and courteous waiter, litheand silent in all his movements, never seemed able to come straight tohis table for an order or a dish. He came by zigzags, indirectly,vaguely, so that he appeared to be going to another table altogether,and only turned suddenly at the last moment, and was there beside him.
Vezin smiled curiously to himself as he described how he began torealize these things. Other tourists there were none in the hostel, buthe recalled the figures of one or two old men, inhabitants, who tooktheir _dejeuner_ and dinner there, and remembered how fantastically theyentered the room in similar fashion. First, they paused in the doorway,peering about the room, and then, after a temporary inspection, theycame in, as it were, sideways, keeping close to the walls so that hewondered which table they were making for, and at the last minute makingalmost a little quick run to their particular seats. And again hethought of the ways and methods of cats.
Other small incidents, too, impressed him as all part of this queer,soft town with its muffled, indirect life, for the way some of thepeople appeared and disappeared with extraordinary swiftness puzzled himexceedingly. It may have been all perfectly natural, he knew, yet hecould not make it out how the alleys swallowed them up and shot themforth in a second of time when there were no visible doorways oropenings near enough to explain the phenomenon. Once he followed twoelderly women who, he felt, had been particularly examining him fromacross the street--quite near the inn this was--and saw them turn thecorner a few feet only in front of him. Yet when he sharply followed ontheir heels he saw nothing but an utterly deserted alley stretching infront of him with no sign of a living thing. And the only openingthrough which they could have escaped was a porch some fifty yards away,which not the swiftest human runner could have reached in time.
And in just such sudden fashion people appeared, when he never expectedthem. Once when he heard a great noise of fighting going on behind a lowwall, and hurried up to see what was going on, what should he see but agroup of girls and women engaged in vociferous conversation whichinstantly hushed itself to the normal whispering note of the town whenhis head appeared over the wall. And even then none of them turned tolook at him directly, but slunk off with the most unaccountablerapidity into doors and sheds across the yard. And their voices, hethought, had sounded so like, so strangely like, the angry snarling offighting animals, almost of cats.
The whole spirit of the town, however, continued to evade him assomething elusive, protean, screened from the outer world, and at thesame time intensely, genuinely vital; and, since he now formed part ofits life, this concealment puzzled and irritated him; more--it beganrather to frighten him.
Out of the mists that slowly gathered about his ordinary surfacethoughts, there rose again the idea that the inhabitants were waitingfor him to declare himself, to take an attitude, to do this, or to dothat; and that when he had done so they in their turn would at lengthmake some direct response, accepting or rejecting him. Yet the vitalmatter concerning which his decision was awaited came no nearer to him.
Once or twice he purposely followed little processions or groups of thecitizens in order to find out, if possible, on what purpose they werebent; but they always discovered him in time and dwindled away, eachindividual going his or her own way. It was always the same: he nevercould learn what their main interest was. The cathedral was ever empty,the old church of St. Martin, at the other end of the town, deserted.They shopped because they had to, and not because they wished to. Thebooths stood neglected, the stalls unvisited, the little _cafes_desolate. Yet the streets were always full, the townsfolk ever on thebustle.
"Can it be," he thought to himself, yet with a deprecating laugh that heshould have dared to think anything so odd, "can it be that these peopleare people of the twilight, that they live only at night their reallife, and come out honestly only with the dusk? That during the day theymake a sham though brave pretence, and after the sun is down their truelife begins? Have they the souls of night-things, and is the wholeblessed town in the hands of the cats?"
The fancy somehow electrified him with little shocks of shrinking anddismay. Yet, though he affected to laugh, he knew that he was beginningto feel more than uneasy, and that strange forces were tugging with athousand invisible cords at the very centre of his being. Somethingutterly remote from his ordinary life, something that had not waked foryears, began faintly to stir in his soul, sending feelers abroad intohis brain and heart, shaping queer thoughts and penetrating even intocertain of his minor actions. Something exceedingly vital to himself, tohis soul, hung in the balance.
And, always when he returned to the inn about the hour of sunset, he sawthe figures of the townsfolk stealing through the dusk from their shopdoors, moving sentry-wise to and fro at the corners of the streets, yetalways vanishing silently like shadows at his near approach. And as theinn invariably closed its doors at ten o'clock he had never yet foundthe opportunity he rather half-heartedly sought to see for himself whataccount the town could give of itself at night.
"--_a cause du sommeil et a cause des chats_"--the words now rang in hisears more and more often, though still as yet without any definitemeaning.
Moreover, something made him sleep like the dead.
III
It was, I think, on the fifth day--though in this detail his storysometimes varied--that he made a definite discovery which increased hisalarm and brought him up to a rather sharp climax. Before that he hadalready noticed that a change was going forward and certain subtletransformations being brought about in his character which modifiedseveral of his minor habits. And he had affected to ignore them. Here,however, was something he could no longer ignore; and it startled him.
At the best of times he was never very positive, always negative rather,compliant and acquiescent; yet, when necessity arose he was capable ofreasonably vigorous action and could take a strongish decision. Thediscovery he now made that brought him up with such a sharp turn wasthat this power had positively dwindled to nothing. He found itimpossible to make up his mind. For, on this fifth day, he realised thathe had stayed long enough in the town and that for reasons he could onlyvaguely define to himself it was wiser _and safer_ that he should leave.
And he found that he could not leave!
This is difficult to describe in words, and it was more by gesture andthe expression of his face that he conveyed to Dr. Silence the state ofimpotence he had reached. All this spying and watching, he said, had asit were spun a net about his feet so that he was trapped and powerlessto escape; he felt like a fly that had blundered into the intricacies ofa great web; he was caught, imprisoned, and could not get away. It was adistressing sensation. A numbness had crept over his will till it hadbecome almost incapable of decision. The mere thought of vigorousaction--action towards escape--began to terrify him. All the currents ofhis life had turned inwards upon himself, striving to bring to thesurface something that lay buried almost beyond reach, determined toforce his recognition of something he had long forgotten--forgottenyears upon years, centuries almost ago. It seemed as though a windowdeep within his being would presently open and reveal an entirely newworld, yet somehow a world that was not unfamiliar. Beyond that, again,he fancied a great curtain hung; and when that too rolled up he wouldsee still farther into this region and at last understand something ofthe secret life of these extraordinary people.
"Is this why they wait and wa
tch?" he asked himself with rather ashaking heart, "for the time when I shall join them--or refuse to jointhem? Does the decision rest with me after all, and not with them?"
And it was at this point that the sinister character of the adventurefirst really declared itself, and he became genuinely alarmed. Thestability of his rather fluid little personality was at stake, he felt,and something in his heart turned coward.
Why otherwise should he have suddenly taken to walking stealthily,silently, making as little sound as possible, for ever looking behindhim? Why else should he have moved almost on tiptoe about the passagesof the practically deserted inn, and when he was abroad have foundhimself deliberately taking advantage of what cover presented itself?And why, if he was not afraid, should the wisdom of staying indoorsafter sundown have suddenly occurred to him as eminently desirable? Why,indeed?
And, when John Silence gently pressed him for an explanation of thesethings, he admitted