It made him think of

trees swept by the wind, of night breezes singing among wires and

chimney-stacks, or in the rigging of invisible ships; or—and the

simile leaped up in his thoughts with a sudden sharpness of

suggestion—a chorus of animals, of wild creatures, somewhere in

desolate places of the world, crying and singing as animals will, to

the moon. He could fancy he heard the wailing, half-human cries of cats

upon the tiles at night, rising and falling with weird intervals of

sound, and this music, muffled by distance and the trees, made him

think of a queer company of these creatures on some roof far away in

the sky, uttering their solemn music to one another and the moon in

chorus.

It was, he felt at the time, a singular image to

occur to him, yet it expressed his sensation pictorially better than

anything else. The instruments played such impossibly odd intervals,

and the crescendos and diminuendos were so very suggestive of cat-land

on the tiles at night, rising swiftly, dropping without warning to deep

notes again, and all in such strange confusion of discords and accords.

But, at the same time a plaintive sweetness resulted on the whole, and

the discords of these half-broken instruments were so singular that

they did not distress his musical soul like fiddles out of tune.

He listened a long time, wholly surrendering himself

as his character was, and then strolled homewards in the dusk as the

air grew chilly.

“There was nothing to alarm?” put in Dr. Silence briefly.

“Absolutely nothing,” said Vezin; “but you know it

was all so fantastical and charming that my imagination was profoundly

impressed. Perhaps, too,” he continued, gently explanatory, “it was

this stirring of my imagination that caused other impressions; for, as

I walked back, the spell of the place began to steal over me in a dozen

ways, though all intelligible ways. But there were other things I could

not account for in the least, even then.”

“Incidents, you mean?”

“Hardly incidents, I think. A lot of vivid

sensations crowded themselves upon my mind and I could trace them to no

causes. It was just after sunset and the tumbled old buildings traced

magical outlines against an opalescent sky of gold and red. The dusk

was running down the twisted streets. All round the hill the plain

pressed in like a dim sea, its level rising with the darkness. The

spell of this kind of scene, you know, can be very moving, and it was

so that night. Yet I felt that what came to me had nothing directly to

do with the mystery and wonder of the scene.”

“Not merely the subtle transformations of the spirit

that come with beauty,” put in the doctor, noticing his hesitation.

“Exactly,” Vezin went on, duly encouraged and no

longer so fearful of our smiles at his expense. “The impressions came

from somewhere else. For instance, down the busy main street where men

and women were bustling home from work, shopping at stalls and barrows,

idly gossiping in groups, and all the rest of it, I saw that I aroused

no interest and that no one turned to stare at me as a foreigner and

stranger. I was utterly ignored, and my presence among them excited no

special interest or attention.

“And then, quite suddenly, it dawned upon me with

conviction that all the time this indifference and inattention were

merely feigned. Everybody as a matter of fact was watching me closely.

Every movement I made was known and observed. Ignoring me was all a

pretence—an elaborate pretence.”

He paused a moment and looked at us to see if we were smiling, and

then continued, reassured—

“It is useless to ask me how I noticed this, because I simply cannot

explain it. But the discovery gave me something of a shock. Before I

got back to the inn, however, another curious thing rose up strongly in

my mind and forced my recognition of it as true. And this, too, I may

as well say at once, was equally inexplicable to me. I mean I can only

give you the fact, as fact it was to me.”

The little man left his chair and stood on the mat

before the fire. His diffidence lessened from now onwards, as he lost

himself again in the magic of the old adventure. His eyes shone a

little already as he talked.

“Well,” he went on, his soft voice rising somewhat

with his excitement, “I was in a shop when it came to me first—though

the idea must have been at work for a long time subconsciously to

appear in so complete a form all at once. I was buying socks, I think,”

he laughed, “and struggling with my dreadful French, when it struck me

that the woman in the shop did not care two pins whether I bought

anything or not. She was indifferent whether she made a sale or did not

make a sale. She was only pretending to sell.

“This sounds a very small and fanciful incident to

build upon what follows. But really it was not small. I mean it was the

spark that lit the line of powder and ran along to the big blaze in my

mind.

“For the whole town, I suddenly realised, was

something other than I so far saw it.