First, they paused in
the doorway, peering about the room, and then, after a temporary
inspection, they came in, as it were, sideways, keeping close to the
walls so that he wondered which table they were making for, and at the
last minute making almost a little quick run to their particular seats. And again he thought of the ways and methods of cats. Other small incidents, too, impressed him as all part of this queer,
soft town with its muffled, indirect life, for the way some of the
people appeared and disappeared with extraordinary swiftness puzzled
him exceedingly. It may have been all perfectly natural, he knew, yet
he could not make it out how the alleys swallowed them up and shot
them forth in a second of time when there were no visible doorways or
openings near enough to explain the phenomenon. Once he followed two
elderly women who, he felt, had been particularly examining him from
across the street--quite near the inn this was--and saw them turn the
corner a few feet only in front of him. Yet when he sharply followed
on their heels he saw nothing but an utterly deserted alley stretching
in front of him with no sign of a living thing. And the only opening
through which they could have escaped was a porch some fifty yards
away, which not the swiftest human runner could have reached in time. And in just such sudden fashion people appeared when he never expected
them. Once when he heard a great noise of fighting going on behind a
low wall, and hurried up to see what was going on, what should he see
but a group of girls and women engaged in vociferous conversation which
instantly hushed itself to the normal whispering note of the town when
his head appeared over the wall. And even then none of them turned
to look at him directly, but slunk off with the most unaccountable
rapidity into doors and sheds across the yard. And their voices, he
thought, had sounded so like, so strangely like, the angry snarling of
fighting animals, almost of cats. The whole spirit of the town, however, continued to evade him as
something elusive, protean, screened from the outer world, and at the
same time intensely, genuinely vital; and, since he now formed part of
its life, this concealment puzzled and irritated him; more--it began
rather to frighten him. Out of the mists that slowly gathered about his ordinary surface
thoughts, there rose again the idea that the inhabitants were waiting
for him to declare himself, to take an attitude, to do this, or to do
that; and that when he had done so they in their turn would at length
make some direct response, accepting or rejecting him. Yet the vital
matter concerning which his decision was awaited came no nearer to him. Once or twice he purposely followed little processions or groups of
the citizens in order to find out, if possible, on what purpose they
were bent; but they always discovered him in time and dwindled away,
each individual going his or her own way. It was always the same: he
never could learn what their main interest was. The cathedral was ever
empty, the old church of St. Martin, at the other end of the town,
deserted. They shopped because they had to, and not because they wished
to. The booths stood neglected, the stalls unvisited, the little cafés
desolate. Yet the streets were always full, the townsfolk ever on the
bustle. “Can it be,” he thought to himself, yet with a deprecating laugh that
he should have dared to think anything so odd, “can it be that these
people are people of the twilight, that they live only at night their
real life, and come out honestly only with the dusk? That during the
day they make a sham though brave pretence, and after the sun is down
their true life begins? Have they the souls of night-things, and is the
whole blessed town in the hands of the cats?”

The fancy somehow electrified him with little shocks of shrinking and
dismay. Yet, though he affected to laugh, he knew that he was beginning
to feel more than uneasy, and that strange forces were tugging with a
thousand invisible cords at the very centre of his being. Something
utterly remote from his ordinary life, something that had not waked for
years, began faintly to stir in his soul, sending feelers abroad into
his brain and heart, shaping queer thoughts and penetrating even into
certain of his minor actions. Something exceedingly vital to himself,
to his soul, hung in the balance. And, always when he returned to the inn about the hour of sunset,
he saw the figures of the townsfolk stealing through the dusk from
their shop doors, moving sentry-wise to and fro at the corners of
the streets, yet always vanishing silently like shadows at his near
approach. And as the inn invariably closed its doors at ten o’clock he
had never yet found the opportunity he rather half-heartedly sought to
see for himself what account the town could give of itself at night. “----_à cause du sommeil et à cause des chats_”--the words now rang in
his ears more and more often, though still as yet without any definite
meaning. Moreover, something made him sleep like the dead. III

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.