CASE II: ANCIENT SORCERIES
I
There are, it would appear, certain wholly unremarkable persons, withnone of the characteristics that invite adventure, who yet once or twicein the course of their smooth lives undergo an experience so strangethat the world catches its breath--and looks the other way! And it wascases of this kind, perhaps, more than any other, that fell into thewide-spread net of John Silence, the psychic doctor, and, appealing tohis deep humanity, to his patience, and to his great qualities ofspiritual sympathy, led often to the revelation of problems of thestrangest complexity, and of the profoundest possible human interest.
Matters that seemed almost too curious and fantastic for belief he lovedto trace to their hidden sources. To unravel a tangle in the very soulof things--and to release a suffering human soul in the process--waswith him a veritable passion. And the knots he untied were, indeed,after passing strange.
The world, of course, asks for some plausible basis to which it canattach credence--something it can, at least, pretend to explain. Theadventurous type it can understand: such people carry about with them anadequate explanation of their exciting lives, and their charactersobviously drive them into the circumstances which produce theadventures. It expects nothing else from them, and is satisfied. Butdull, ordinary folk have no right to out-of-the-way experiences, and theworld having been led to expect otherwise, is disappointed with them,not to say shocked. Its complacent judgment has been rudely disturbed.
"Such a thing happened to _that_ man!" it cries--"a commonplace personlike that! It is too absurd! There must be something wrong!"
Yet there could be no question that something did actually happen tolittle Arthur Vezin, something of the curious nature he described to Dr.Silence. Outwardly or inwardly, it happened beyond a doubt, and in spiteof the jeers of his few friends who heard the tale, and observed wiselythat "such a thing might perhaps have come to Iszard, that crack-brainedIszard, or to that odd fish Minski, but it could never have happened tocommonplace little Vezin, who was fore-ordained to live and dieaccording to scale."
But, whatever his method of death was, Vezin certainly did not "liveaccording to scale" so far as this particular event in his otherwiseuneventful life was concerned; and to hear him recount it, and watch hispale delicate features change, and hear his voice grow softer and morehushed as he proceeded, was to know the conviction that his haltingwords perhaps failed sometimes to convey. He lived the thing over againeach time he told it. His whole personality became muffled in therecital. It subdued him more than ever, so that the tale became alengthy apology for an experience that he deprecated. He appeared toexcuse himself and ask your pardon for having dared to take part in sofantastic an episode. For little Vezin was a timid, gentle, sensitivesoul, rarely able to assert himself, tender to man and beast, and almostconstitutionally unable to say No, or to claim many things that shouldrightly have been his. His whole scheme of life seemed utterly remotefrom anything more exciting than missing a train or losing an umbrellaon an omnibus. And when this curious event came upon him he was alreadymore years beyond forty than his friends suspected or he cared to admit.
John Silence, who heard him speak of his experience more than once, saidthat he sometimes left out certain details and put in others; yet theywere all obviously true. The whole scene was unforgettablycinematographed on to his mind. None of the details were imagined orinvented. And when he told the story with them all complete, the effectwas undeniable. His appealing brown eyes shone, and much of the charmingpersonality, usually so carefully repressed, came forward and revealeditself. His modesty was always there, of course, but in the telling heforgot the present and allowed himself to appear almost vividly as helived again in the past of his adventure.
He was on the way home when it happened, crossing northern France fromsome mountain trip or other where he buried himself solitary-wise everysummer. He had nothing but an unregistered bag in the rack, and thetrain was jammed to suffocation, most of the passengers being unredeemedholiday English. He disliked them, not because they were hisfellow-countrymen, but because they were noisy and obtrusive,obliterating with their big limbs and tweed clothing all the quietertints of the day that brought him satisfaction and enabled him to meltinto insignificance and forget that he was anybody. These Englishclashed about him like a brass band, making him feel vaguely that heought to be more self-assertive and obstreperous, and that he did notclaim insistently enough all kinds of things that he didn't want andthat 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 wereover and he was back again living with his unmarried sister in Surbiton.
And when the train stopped for ten panting minutes at the little stationin 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 debouchingfrom another train, it suddenly seemed impossible to him to continue thejourney. Even _his_ flabby soul revolted, and the idea of staying anight in the little town and going on next day by a slower, emptiertrain, flashed into his mind. The guard was already shouting "_envoiture_" and the corridor of his compartment was already packed whenthe thought came to him. And, for once, he acted with decision andrushed to snatch his bag.
Finding the corridor and steps impassable, he tapped at the window (forhe had a corner seat) and begged the Frenchman who sat opposite to handhis luggage out to him, explaining in his wretched French that heintended to break the journey there. And this elderly Frenchman, hedeclared, gave him a look, half of warning, half of reproach, that tohis dying day he could never forget; handed the bag through the windowof the moving train; and at the same time poured into his ears a longsentence, spoken rapidly and low, of which he was able to comprehendonly the last few words: "_a cause du sommeil et a cause des chats_."
In reply to Dr. Silence, whose singular psychic acuteness at once seizedupon this Frenchman as a vital point in the adventure, Vezin admittedthat the man had impressed him favourably from the beginning, thoughwithout being able to explain why. They had sat facing one anotherduring the four hours of the journey, and though no conversation hadpassed between them--Vezin was timid about his stuttering French--heconfessed that his eyes were being continually drawn to his face,almost, he felt, to rudeness, and that each, by a dozen nameless littlepolitenesses and attentions, had evinced the desire to be kind. The menliked each other and their personalities did not clash, or would nothave clashed had they chanced to come to terms of acquaintance. TheFrenchman, indeed, seemed to have exercised a silent protectiveinfluence over the insignificant little Englishman, and without words orgestures betrayed that he wished him well and would gladly have been ofservice to him.
"And this sentence that he hurled at you after the bag?" asked JohnSilence, smiling that peculiarly sympathetic smile that always meltedthe prejudices of his patient, "were you unable to follow it exactly?"
"It was so quick and low and vehement," explained Vezin, in his smallvoice, "that I missed practically the whole of it. I only caught the fewwords at the very end, because he spoke them so clearly, and his facewas bent down out of the carriage window so near to mine."
"'_A cause du sommeil et a cause des chats'?_" repeated Dr. Silence, asthough 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 observedshortly, 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, orat some particular place in the town, perhaps. That was the impressionit made on me."
Then, of course, the train rushed off, and left Vezin standing on theplatform alone and rather forlorn.
The little town climbed in straggling fashion up a sharp hill rising outof the plain at the
back of the station, and was crowned by the twintowers of the ruined cathedral peeping over the summit. From the stationitself it looked uninteresting and modern, but the fact was that themediaeval position lay out of sight just beyond the crest. And once hereached the top and entered the old streets, he stepped clean out ofmodern life into a bygone century. The noise and bustle of the crowdedtrain seemed days away. The spirit of this silent hill-town, remote fromtourists and motor-cars, dreaming its own quiet life under the autumnsun, rose up and cast its spell upon him. Long before he recognised thisspell he acted under it. He walked softly, almost on tiptoe, down thewinding narrow streets where the gables all but met over his head, andhe entered the doorway of the solitary inn with a deprecating and modestdemeanour that was in itself an apology for intruding upon the place anddisturbing its dream.
At first, however,