Three John Silence Stories
Page 17
shyness, and realised his overwhelmingdefects only too well. Yet this bewitching young creature came to himdeliberately. Her manner was unmistakable, and she sought him out onevery possible occasion. Chaste and sweet she was undoubtedly, yetfrankly inviting; and she won him utterly with the first glance of hershining eyes, even if she had not already done so in the dark merely bythe magic of her invisible presence.
"You felt she was altogether wholesome and good!" queried the doctor."You had no reaction of any sort--for instance, of alarm?"
Vezin looked up sharply with one of his inimitable little apologeticsmiles. It was some time before he replied. The mere memory of theadventure had suffused his shy face with blushes, and his brown eyessought the floor again before he answered.
"I don't think I can quite say that," he explained presently. "Iacknowledged certain qualms, sitting up in my room afterwards. Aconviction grew upon me that there was something about her--how shall Iexpress it?--well, something unholy. It is not impurity in any sense,physical or mental, that I mean, but something quite indefinable thatgave me a vague sensation of the creeps. She drew me, and at the sametime repelled me, more than--than--"
He hesitated, blushing furiously, and unable to finish the sentence.
"Nothing like it has ever come to me before or since," he concluded,with lame confusion. "I suppose it was, as you suggested just now,something of an enchantment. At any rate, it was strong enough to makeme feel that I would stay in that awful little haunted town for years ifonly I could see her every day, hear her voice, watch her wonderfulmovements, and sometimes, perhaps, touch her hand."
"Can you explain to me what you felt was the source of her power?" JohnSilence asked, looking purposely anywhere but at the narrator.
"I am surprised that you should ask me such a question," answered Vezin,with the nearest approach to dignity he could manage. "I think no mancan describe to another convincingly wherein lies the magic of the womanwho ensnares him. I certainly cannot. I can only say this slip of a girlbewitched me, and the mere knowledge that she was living and sleeping inthe same house filled me with an extraordinary sense of delight.
"But there's one thing I can tell you," he went on earnestly, his eyesaglow, "namely, that she seemed to sum up and synthesise in herself allthe strange hidden forces that operated so mysteriously in the town andits inhabitants. She had the silken movements of the panther, goingsmoothly, silently to and fro, and the same indirect, oblique methods asthe townsfolk, screening, like them, secret purposes of herown--purposes that I was sure had _me_ for their objective. She kept me,to my terror and delight, ceaselessly under observation, yet socarelessly, so consummately, that another man less sensitive, if I maysay so"--he made a deprecating gesture--"or less prepared by what hadgone before, would never have noticed it at all. She was always still,always reposeful, yet she seemed to be everywhere at once, so that Inever could escape from her. I was continually meeting the stare andlaughter of her great eyes, in the corners of the rooms, in thepassages, calmly looking at me through the windows, or in the busiestparts of the public streets."
Their intimacy, it seems, grew very rapidly after this first encounterwhich had so violently disturbed the little man's equilibrium. He wasnaturally very prim, and prim folk live mostly in so small a world thatanything violently unusual may shake them clean out of it, and theytherefore instinctively distrust originality. But Vezin began to forgethis primness after awhile. The girl was always modestly behaved, and asher mother's representative she naturally had to do with the guests inthe hotel. It was not out of the way that a spirit of camaraderie shouldspring up. Besides, she was young, she was charmingly pretty, she wasFrench, and--she obviously liked him.
At the same time, there was something indescribable--a certainindefinable atmosphere of other places, other times--that made him tryhard to remain on his guard, and sometimes made him catch his breathwith a sudden start. It was all rather like a delirious dream, halfdelight, half dread, he confided in a whisper to Dr. Silence; and morethan once he hardly knew quite what he was doing or saying, as though hewere driven forward by impulses he scarcely recognised as his own.
And though the thought of leaving presented itself again and again tohis mind, it was each time with less insistence, so that he stayed onfrom day to day, becoming more and more a part of the sleepy life ofthis dreamy mediaeval town, losing more and more of his recognisablepersonality. Soon, he felt, the Curtain within would roll up with anawful rush, and he would find himself suddenly admitted into the secretpurposes of the hidden life that lay behind it all. Only, by that time,he would have become transformed into an entirely different being.
And, meanwhile, he noticed various little signs of the intention tomake his stay attractive to him: flowers in his bedroom, a morecomfortable arm-chair in the corner, and even special little extradishes on his private table in the dining-room. Conversations, too, with"Mademoiselle Ilse" became more and more frequent and pleasant, andalthough they seldom travelled beyond the weather, or the details of thetown, the girl, he noticed, was never in a hurry to bring them to anend, and often contrived to interject little odd sentences that he neverproperly understood, yet felt to be significant.
And it was these stray remarks, full of a meaning that evaded him, thatpointed to some hidden purpose of her own and made him feel uneasy. Theyall had to do, he felt sure, with reasons for his staying on in the townindefinitely.
"And has M'sieur not even yet come to a decision?" she said softly inhis ear, sitting beside him in the sunny yard before _dejeuner_, theacquaintance having progressed with significant rapidity. "Because, ifit's so difficult, we must all try together to help him!"
The question startled him, following upon his own thoughts. It wasspoken with a pretty laugh, and a stray bit of hair across one eye, asshe turned and peered at him half roguishly. Possibly he did not quiteunderstand the French of it, for her near presence always confused hissmall knowledge of the language distressingly. Yet the words, and hermanner, and something else that lay behind it all in her mind,frightened him. It gave such point to his feeling that the town waswaiting for him to make his mind up on some important matter.
At the same time, her voice, and the fact that she was there so closebeside him in her soft dark dress, thrilled him inexpressibly.
"It is true I find it difficult to leave," he stammered, losing his waydeliciously in the depths of her eyes, "and especially now thatMademoiselle Ilse has come."
He was surprised at the success of his sentence, and quite delightedwith the little gallantry of it. But at the same time he could havebitten his tongue off for having said it.
"Then after all you like our little town, or you would not be pleased tostay on," she said, ignoring the compliment.
"I am enchanted with it, and enchanted with you," he cried, feeling thathis tongue was somehow slipping beyond the control of his brain. And hewas on the verge of saying all manner of other things of the wildestdescription, when the girl sprang lightly up from her chair beside him,and made to go.
"It is _soupe a l'onion_ to-day!" she cried, laughing back at himthrough the sunlight, "and I must go and see about it. Otherwise, youknow, M'sieur will not enjoy his dinner, and then, perhaps, he willleave us!"
He watched her cross the courtyard, moving with all the grace andlightness of the feline race, and her simple black dress clothed her, hethought, exactly like the fur of the same supple species. She turnedonce to laugh at him from the porch with the glass door, and thenstopped a moment to speak to her mother, who sat knitting as usual inher corner seat just inside the hall-way.
But how was it, then, that the moment his eye fell upon this ungainlywoman, the pair of them appeared suddenly as other than they were?Whence came that transforming dignity and sense of power that envelopedthem both as by magic? What was it about that massive woman that madeher appear instantly regal, and set her on a throne in some dark anddreadful scenery, wielding a sceptre over the red glare of sometempestuous orgy? And why did this slender stripl
ing of a girl, gracefulas a willow, lithe as a young leopard, assume suddenly an air ofsinister majesty, and move with flame and smoke about her head, and thedarkness of night beneath her feet?
Vezin caught his breath and sat there transfixed. Then, almostsimultaneously with its appearance, the queer notion vanished again, andthe sunlight of day caught them both, and he heard her laughing to hermother about the _soupe a l'onion_, and saw her glancing back at himover her dear little shoulder with a smile that made him think of adew-kissed rose bending lightly before summer airs.
And, indeed, the onion soup was particularly excellent that day, becausehe saw another cover laid at his small table, and, with flutteringheart, heard the waiter murmur by way of explanation that "Ma'mselleIlse would honour M'sieur to-day at _dejeuner_, as her