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. All the currents of
his life had turned inwards upon himself, striving to bring to the
surface something that lay buried almost beyond reach, determined to
force his recognition of something he had long forgotten—forgotten
years upon years, centuries almost ago. It seemed as though a window
deep within his being would presently open and reveal an entirely new
world, yet somehow a world that was not unfamiliar. Beyond that, again,
he fancied a great curtain hung; and when that too rolled up he would
see still farther into this region and at last understand something of
the secret life of these extraordinary people. “Is this why they wait and watch?” he asked himself with rather a
shaking heart, “for the time when I shall join them—or refuse to join
them? Does the decision rest with me after all, and not with them?”

And it was at this point that the sinister character of the adventure
first really declared itself, and he became genuinely alarmed. The
stability of his rather fluid little personality was at stake, he felt,
and something in his heart turned coward. Why otherwise should he have suddenly taken to walking stealthily,
silently, making as little sound as possible, for ever looking behind
him? Why else should he have moved almost on tiptoe about the passages
of the practically deserted inn, and when he was abroad have found
himself deliberately taking advantage of what cover presented itself?