“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. His room, too, soothed him with its dark panelling
and low irregular ceiling, and the long sloping passage that led to it
seemed the natural pathway to a real Chamber of Sleep--a little dim
cubby hole out of the world where noise could not enter. It looked
upon the courtyard at the back. It was all very charming, and made
him think of himself as dressed in very soft velvet somehow, and the
floors seemed padded, the walls provided with cushions. The sounds of
the streets could not penetrate there. It was an atmosphere of absolute
rest that surrounded him. On engaging the two-franc room he had interviewed the only person
who seemed to be about that sleepy afternoon, an elderly waiter with
Dundreary whiskers and a drowsy courtesy, who had ambled lazily towards
him across the stone yard; but on coming downstairs again for a little
promenade in the town before dinner he encountered the proprietress
herself. She was a large woman whose hands, feet, and features seemed
to swim towards him out of a sea of person. They emerged, so to speak. But she had great dark, vivacious eyes that counteracted the bulk of
her body, and betrayed the fact that in reality she was both vigorous
and alert. When he first caught sight of her she was knitting in a low
chair against the sunlight of the wall, and something at once made him
see her as a great tabby cat, dozing, yet awake, heavily sleepy, and
yet at the same time prepared for instantaneous action. A great mouser
on the watch occurred to him. She took him in with a single comprehensive glance that was polite
without being cordial. Her neck, he noticed, was extraordinarily supple
in spite of its proportions, for it turned so easily to follow him, and
the head it carried bowed so very flexibly. “But when she looked at me, you know,” said Vezin, with that little
apologetic smile in his brown eyes, and that faintly deprecating
gesture of the shoulders that was characteristic of him, “the odd
notion came to me that really she had intended to make quite a
different movement, and that with a single bound she could have leaped
at me across the width of that stone yard and pounced upon me like some
huge cat upon a mouse.”

He laughed a little soft laugh, and Dr. Silence made a note in his book
without interrupting, while Vezin proceeded in a tone as though he
feared he had already told too much and more than we could believe. “Very soft, yet very active she was, for all her size and mass, and I
felt she knew what I was doing even after I had passed and was behind
her back. She spoke to me, and her voice was smooth and running. She
asked if I had my luggage, and was comfortable in my room, and then
added that dinner was at seven o’clock, and that they were very early
people in this little country town. Clearly, she intended to convey
that late hours were not encouraged.”

Evidently, she contrived by voice and manner to give him the impression
that here he would be “managed,” that everything would be arranged and
planned for him, and that he had nothing to do but fall into the groove
and obey. No decided action or sharp personal effort would be looked
for from him. It was the very reverse of the train. He walked quietly
out into the street feeling soothed and peaceful. He realised that he
was in a _milieu_ that suited him and stroked him the right way. It was
so much easier to be obedient. He began to purr again, and to feel that
all the town purred with him. About the streets of that little town he meandered gently, falling
deeper and deeper into the spirit of repose that characterised it. With
no special aim he wandered up and down, and to and fro. The September
sunshine fell slantingly over the roofs. Down winding alleyways,
fringed with tumbling gables and open casements, he caught fairylike
glimpses of the great plain below, and of the meadows and yellow copses
lying like a dream-map in the haze. The spell of the past held very
potently here, he felt. The streets were full of picturesquely garbed men and women, all busy
enough, going their respective ways; but no one took any notice of him
or turned to stare at his obviously English appearance. He was even
able to forget that with his tourist appearance he was a false note in
a charming picture, and he melted more and more into the scene, feeling
delightfully insignificant and unimportant and unselfconscious. It was
like becoming part of a softly-coloured dream which he did not even
realise to be a dream. On the eastern side the hill fell away more sharply, and the plain
below ran off rather suddenly into a sea of gathering shadows in which
the little patches of woodland looked like islands and the stubble
fields like deep water. Here he strolled along the old ramparts of
ancient fortifications that once had been formidable, but now were
only vision-like with their charming mingling of broken grey walls
and wayward vine and ivy. From the broad coping on which he sat for a
moment, level with the rounded tops of clipped plane trees, he saw the
esplanade far below lying in shadow. Here and there a yellow sunbeam
crept in and lay upon the fallen yellow leaves, and from the height
he looked down and saw that the townsfolk were walking to and fro in
the cool of the evening. He could just hear the sound of their slow
footfalls, and the murmur of their voices floated up to him through the
gaps between the trees. The figures looked like shadows as he caught
glimpses of their quiet movements far below. He sat there for some time pondering, bathed in the waves of murmurs
and half-lost echoes that rose to his ears, muffled by the leaves of
the plane trees. The whole town, and the little hill out of which it
grew as naturally as an ancient wood, seemed to him like a being lying
there half asleep on the plain and crooning to itself as it dozed. And, presently, as he sat lazily melting into its dream, a sound of
horns and strings and wood instruments rose to his ears, and the town
band began to play at the far end of the crowded terrace below to
the accompaniment of a very soft, deep-throated drum.