It was, I think, on the fifth day--though in this detail his story
sometimes varied--that he made a definite discovery which increased
his alarm and brought him up to a rather sharp climax. Before that he
had already noticed that a change was going forward and certain subtle
transformations being brought about in his character which modified
several 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 of reasonably vigorous action and could take a strongish
decision. The discovery he now made that brought him up with such a
sharp turn was that this power had positively dwindled to nothing.
He found it impossible to make up his mind. For, on this fifth day,
he realised that he had stayed long enough in the town and that for
reasons he could only vaguely 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 and
the expression of his face that he conveyed to Dr. Silence the state
of impotence he had reached. All this spying and watching, he said,
had as it were spun a net about his feet so that he was trapped and
powerless to escape; he felt like a fly that had blundered into the
intricacies of a great web; he was caught, imprisoned, and could not
get away. It was a distressing sensation. A numbness had crept over
his will till it had become almost incapable of decision. The mere
thought of vigorous action--action towards escape--began to terrify
him. All the currents of his life had turned inwards upon himself,
striving to bring to the surface something that lay buried almost
beyond reach, determined to force his recognition of something he had
long forgotten--forgotten years upon years, centuries almost ago. It
seemed as though a window deep within his being would presently open
and reveal an entirely new world, yet somehow a world that was not
unfamiliar. Beyond that, again, he fancied a great curtain hung; and
when that too rolled up he would see still farther into this region and
at last understand something of the secret life of these extraordinary
people.
“Is this why they wait and watch?” he asked himself with rather a
shaking heart, “for the time when I shall join them--or refuse to join
them? Does the decision rest with me after all, and not with them?”
And it was at this point that the sinister character of the adventure
first really declared itself, and he became genuinely alarmed. The
stability 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 behind
him? Why else should he have moved almost on tiptoe about the passages
of the practically deserted inn, and when he was abroad have found
himself deliberately taking advantage of what cover presented itself?
And why, if he was not afraid, should the wisdom of staying indoors
after sundown have suddenly occurred to him as eminently desirable?
Why, indeed?
And, when John Silence gently pressed him for an explanation of these
things, he admitted apologetically that he had none to give.
“It was simply that I feared something might happen to me unless I kept
a sharp look-out. I felt afraid. It was instinctive,” was all he could
say. “I got the impression that the whole town was after me--wanted me
for something; and that if it got me I should lose myself, or at least
the Self I knew, in some unfamiliar state of consciousness. But I am
not a psychologist, you know,” he added meekly, “and I cannot define it
better than that.”
It was while lounging in the courtyard half an hour before the evening
meal that Vezin made this discovery, and he at once went upstairs to
his quiet room at the end of the winding passage to think it over
alone. In the yard it was empty enough, true, but there was always the
possibility that the big woman whom he dreaded would come out of some
door, with her pretence of knitting, to sit and watch him. This had
happened several times, and he could not endure the sight of her. He
still remembered his original fancy, bizarre though it was, that she
would spring upon him the moment his back was turned and land with one
single crushing leap upon his neck. Of course it was nonsense, but then
it haunted him, and once an idea begins to do that it ceases to be
nonsense. It has clothed itself in reality.
He went upstairs accordingly. It was dusk, and the oil lamps had not
yet been lit in the passages. He stumbled over the uneven surface of
the ancient flooring, passing the dim outlines of doors along the
corridor--doors that he had never once seen opened--rooms that seemed
never occupied. He moved, as his habit now was, stealthily and on
tiptoe.
Half-way down the last passage to his own chamber there was a sharp
turn, and it was just here, while groping round the walls with
outstretched hands, that his fingers touched something that was
not wall--something that moved. It was soft and warm in texture,
indescribably fragrant, and about the height of his shoulder; and he
immediately thought of a furry, sweet-smelling kitten. The next minute
he knew it was something quite different.
Instead of investigating, however,--his nerves must have been too
overwrought for that, he said,--he shrank back as closely as possible
against the wall on the other side. The thing, whatever it was, slipped
past him with a sound of rustling, and retreating with light footsteps
down the passage behind him, was gone. A breath of warm, scented air
was wafted to his nostrils.
Vezin caught his breath for an instant and paused, stockstill, half
leaning against the wall--and then almost ran down the remaining
distance and entered his room with a rush, locking the door hurriedly
behind him. Yet it was not fear that made him run: it was excitement,
pleasurable excitement. His nerves were tingling, and a delicious glow
made itself felt all over his body. In a flash it came to him that this
was just what he had felt twenty-five years ago as a boy when he was
in love for the first time. Warm currents of life ran all over him and
mounted to his brain in a whirl of soft delight. His mood was suddenly
become tender, melting, loving.
The room was quite dark, and he collapsed upon the sofa by the window,
wondering what had happened to him and what it all meant. But the only
thing he understood clearly in that instant was that something in him
had swiftly, magically changed: he no longer wished to leave, or to
argue with himself about leaving. The encounter in the passage-way
had changed all that. The strange perfume of it still hung about him,
bemusing his heart and mind. For he knew that it was a girl who had
passed him, a girl’s face that his fingers had brushed in the darkness,
and he felt in some extraordinary way as though he had been actually
kissed by her, kissed full upon the lips.
Trembling, he sat upon the sofa by the window and struggled to collect
his thoughts. He was utterly unable to understand how the mere passing
of a girl in the darkness of a narrow passage-way could communicate
so electric a thrill to his whole being that he still shook with the
sweetness of it. Yet, there it was! And he found it as useless to deny
as to attempt analysis. Some ancient fire had entered his veins, and
now ran coursing through his blood; and that he was forty-five instead
of twenty did not matter one little jot. Out of all the inner turmoil
and confusion emerged the one salient fact that the mere atmosphere,
the merest casual touch, of this girl, unseen, unknown in the darkness,
had been sufficient to stir dormant fires in the centre of his heart,
and rouse his whole being from a state of feeble sluggishness to one of
tearing and tumultuous excitement.
After a time, however, the number of Vezin’s years began to assert
their cumulative power; he grew calmer; and when a knock came at
length upon his door and he heard the waiter’s voice suggesting that
dinner was nearly over, he pulled himself together and slowly made his
way downstairs into the dining-room.
Every one looked up as he entered, for he was very late, but he took
his customary seat in the far corner and began to eat. The trepidation
was still in his nerves, but the fact that he had passed through the
courtyard and hall without catching sight of a petticoat served to calm
him a little. He ate so fast that he had almost caught up with the
current stage of the table d’hôte, when a slight commotion in the room
drew his attention.
His chair was so placed that the door and the greater portion of the
long _salle à manger_ were behind him, yet it was not necessary to
turn round to know that the same person he had passed in the dark
passage had now come into the room. He felt the presence long before he
heard or saw any one. Then he became aware that the old men, the only
other guests, were rising one by one in their places, and exchanging
greetings with some one who passed among them from table to table. And
when at length he turned with his heart beating furiously to ascertain
for himself, he saw the form of a young girl, lithe and slim, moving
down the centre of the room and making straight for his own table in
the corner. She moved wonderfully, with sinuous grace, like a young
panther, and her approach filled him with such delicious bewilderment
that he was utterly unable to tell at first what her face was like, or
discover what it was about the whole presentment of the creature that
filled him anew with trepidation and delight.
“Ah, Ma’mselle est de retour!” he heard the old waiter murmur at his
side, and he was just able to take in that she was the daughter of the
proprietress, when she was upon him, and he heard her voice. She was
addressing him. Something of red lips he saw and laughing white teeth,
and stray wisps of fine dark hair about the temples; but all the rest
was a dream in which his own emotion rose like a thick cloud before
his eyes and prevented his seeing accurately, or knowing exactly what
he did. He was aware that she greeted him with a charming little bow;
that her beautiful large eyes looked searchingly into his own; that the
perfume he had noticed in the dark passage again assailed his nostrils,
and that she was bending a little towards him and leaning with one
hand on the table at his side. She was quite close to him--that was
the chief thing he knew--explaining that she had been asking after the
comfort of her mother’s guests, and was now introducing herself to the
latest arrival--himself.
“M’sieur has already been here a few days,” he heard the waiter say;
and then her own voice, sweet as singing, replied--
“Ah, but M’sieur is not going to leave us just yet, I hope. My mother
is too old to look after the comfort of our guests properly, but now
I am here I will remedy all that.” She laughed deliciously. “M’sieur
shall be well looked after.”
Vezin, struggling with his emotion and desire to be polite, half rose
to acknowledge the pretty speech, and to stammer some sort of reply,
but as he did so his hand by chance touched her own that was resting
upon the table, and a shock that was for all the world like a shock of
electricity, passed from her skin into his body. His soul wavered and
shook deep within him. He caught her eyes fixed upon his own with a
look of most curious intentness, and the next moment he knew that he
had sat down wordless again on his chair, that the girl was already
half-way across the room, and that he was trying to eat his salad with
a dessert-spoon and a knife.
Longing for her return, and yet dreading it, he gulped down the
remainder of his dinner, and then went at once to his bedroom to be
alone with his thoughts. This time the passages were lighted, and he
suffered no exciting contretemps; yet the winding corridor was dim with
shadows, and the last portion, from the bend of the walls onwards,
seemed longer than he had ever known it. It ran downhill like the
pathway on a mountain side, and as he tiptoed softly down it he felt
that by rights it ought to have led him clean out of the house into
the heart of a great forest. The world was singing with him. Strange
fancies filled his brain, and once in the room, with the door securely
locked, he did not light the candles, but sat by the open window
thinking long, long thoughts that came unbidden in troops to his mind.