For little Vezin was a timid, gentle, sensitive
soul, rarely able to assert himself, tender to man and beast, and
almost constitutionally unable to say No, or to claim many things that
should rightly have been his. His whole scheme of life seemed utterly
remote from anything more exciting than missing a train or losing an
umbrella on an omnibus. And when this curious event came upon him he
was already more years beyond forty than his friends suspected or he
cared to admit. John Silence, who heard him speak of his experience more than once,
said that he sometimes left out certain details and put in others;
yet they were all obviously true. The whole scene was unforgettably
cinematographed on to his mind. None of the details were imagined
or invented. And when he told the story with them all complete, the
effect was undeniable. His appealing brown eyes shone, and much of the
charming personality, usually so carefully repressed, came forward and
revealed itself. His modesty was always there, of course, but in the
telling he forgot the present and allowed himself to appear almost
vividly as he lived again in the past of his adventure. He was on the way home when it happened, crossing northern France from
some mountain trip or other where he buried himself solitary-wise
every summer. 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: “_à cause du sommeil et à 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 à 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 mediæval 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.