He had nothing but an unregistered

bag in the rack, and the train was jammed to suffocation, most of the

passengers being unredeemed holiday English. He disliked them, not

because they were his fellow-countrymen, but because they were noisy

and obtrusive, obliterating with their big limbs and tweed clothing all

the quieter tints of the day that brought him satisfaction and enabled

him to melt into insignificance and forget that he was anybody. These

English clashed about him like a brass band, making him feel vaguely

that he ought to be more self-assertive and obstreperous, and that he

did not claim insistently enough all kinds of things that he didn’t

want and that were really valueless, such as corner seats, windows up

or down, and so forth.

So that he felt uncomfortable in the train, and

wished the journey were over and he was back again living with his

unmarried sister in Surbiton.

And when the train stopped for ten panting minutes

at the little station in northern France, and he got out to stretch his

legs on the platform, and saw to his dismay a further batch of the

British Isles debouching from another train, it suddenly seemed

impossible to him to continue the journey. Even his flabby soul

revolted, and the idea of staying a night in the little town and going

on next day by a slower, emptier train, flashed into his mind. The

guard was already shouting “en voiture” and the corridor of his

compartment was already packed when the thought came to him. And, for

once, he acted with decision and rushed to snatch his bag.

Finding the corridor and steps impassable, he tapped

at the window (for he had a corner seat) and begged the Frenchman who

sat opposite to hand his luggage out to him, explaining in his wretched

French that he intended to break the journey there. And this elderly

Frenchman, he declared, gave him a look, half of warning, half of

reproach, that to his dying day he could never forget; handed the bag

through the window of the moving train; and at the same time poured

into his ears a long sentence, spoken rapidly and low, of which he was

able to comprehend only the last few words: “a cause du sommeil et a

cause des chats.”

In reply to Dr. Silence, whose singular psychic

acuteness at once seized upon this Frenchman as a vital point in the

adventure, Vezin admitted that the man had impressed him favourably

from the beginning, though without being able to explain why. They had

sat facing one another during the four hours of the journey, and though

no conversation had passed between them—Vezin was timid about his

stuttering French—he confessed that his eyes were being continually

drawn to his face, almost, he felt, to rudeness, and that each, by a

dozen nameless little politenesses and attentions, had evinced the

desire to be kind. The men liked each other and their personalities did

not clash, or would not have clashed had they chanced to come to terms

of acquaintance. The Frenchman, indeed, seemed to have exercised a

silent protective influence over the insignificant little Englishman,

and without words or gestures betrayed that he wished him well and

would gladly have been of service to him.

“And this sentence that he hurled at you after the

bag?” asked John Silence, smiling that peculiarly sympathetic smile

that always melted the prejudices of his patient, “were you unable to

follow it exactly?”

“It was so quick and low and vehement,” explained

Vezin, in his small voice, “that I missed practically the whole of it.

I only caught the few words at the very end, because he spoke them so

clearly, and his face was bent down out of the carriage window so near

to mine.”

“‘A cause du sommeil et a cause des chats’?” repeated Dr. Silence, as though half speaking to himself.

“That’s it exactly,” said Vezin; “which, I take it,

means something like ‘because of sleep and because of the cats,’

doesn’t it?”

“Certainly, that’s how I should translate it,” the

doctor observed shortly, evidently not wishing to interrupt more than

necessary.

“And the rest of the sentence—all the first part I

couldn’t understand, I mean—was a warning not to do something—not to

stop in the town, or at some particular place in the town, perhaps.

That was the impression it made on me.”

Then, of course, the train rushed off, and left

Vezin standing on the platform alone and rather forlorn.

The little town climbed in straggling fashion up a

sharp hill rising out of the plain at the back of the station, and was

crowned by the twin towers of the ruined cathedral peeping over the

summit. From the station itself it looked uninteresting and modern, but

the fact was that the mediaeval position lay out of sight just beyond

the crest. And once he reached the top and entered the old streets, he

stepped clean out of modern life into a bygone century. The noise and

bustle of the crowded train seemed days away. The spirit of this silent

hill-town, remote from tourists and motor-cars, dreaming its own quiet

life under the autumn sun, rose up and cast its spell upon him. Long

before he recognised this spell he acted under it. He walked softly,

almost on tiptoe, down the winding narrow streets where the gables all

but met over his head, and he entered the doorway of the solitary inn

with a deprecating and modest demeanour that was in itself an apology

for intruding upon the place and disturbing its dream.

At first, however, Vezin said, he noticed very

little of all this. The attempt at analysis came much later. What

struck him then was only the delightful contrast of the silence and

peace after the dust and noisy rattle of the train. He felt soothed and

stroked like a cat.

“Like a cat, you said?” interrupted John Silence,

quickly catching him up.

“Yes. At the very start I felt that.” He laughed

apologetically. “I felt as though the warmth and the stillness and the

comfort made me purr. It seemed to be the general mood of the whole

place—then.”

The inn, a rambling ancient house, the atmosphere of the old

coaching days still about it, apparently did not welcome him too

warmly. He felt he was only tolerated, he said. But it was cheap and

comfortable, and the delicious cup of afternoon tea he ordered at once

made him feel really very pleased with himself for leaving the train in

this bold, original way. For to him it had seemed bold and original. He

felt something of a dog.