CHAPTER X
He did not like going into his room, dreading that window, but once in bed he slept almost immediately and did not waken till morning. Thus strengthened with rest he embarked on Thursday, and wasted it, entire.
He knew that today, tomorrow or Saturday morning he must make the crucial decision. He knew that it would be more difficult to face tomorrow than today—yet he flung the day away aimlessly, dodging his thoughts by not putting them into words.
This is exactly how he felt: He, himself, was a frightened specter running through the caverns of his own mind, pursued by a suffocating something that he pretended was not pursuing him!
In the morning he took this feeling with him on a walk down the Boul' Mich' to the book stalls on the quais where he poked amongst worthless old books until he was so bored it seemed his veins were full of gray dust and his belly full of nothing.
He had luncheon in the Thin Cat, which stands where one cobbled street meets another. Horse-drawn trucks, motor trucks, hand-carts, passenger buses like mastodons, taxis, struggled by in a gasoline haze and each with engine, wheel, horn or voice seemed to be trying to make the most possible noise.
Inside the waiters slammed doors, plates, bottles, chairs, and shouted orders. Patrons banged dishes with knives and forks and screamed in passionate conversation. A thousand sounds made one ear-splitting blare of racket. Luncheon in the Chat Maigre would be plainly heard in London were there no intervening noises. But luncheon in the Chat Maigre cost three francs twenty-five centimes—or about fourteen and four-sixteenths cents, American, as Flecker figured it at the day's exchange. He chose a table in a corner not far from the entrance.
As he was finishing his meal the witch sat down opposite him. For a minute Flecker did not dare to look at her, but in the first glance he had seen she wore a black jacket and the same black hat. When he heard her speak to the waiter he looked up quickly.
She was not the witch. She was the old woman in gray. Her hooked nose stuck out above her wrinkled mouth. She leered and screamed at him.
"Comment?" Flecker's teeth chattered.
She screamed even louder, asking for the menu. With a trembling hand he passed it.
"Merci!" She opened her jaws in that terrible smile, and ogled him from the wrinkled corners of her eyes.
"Listen!" She leaned across the table. Flecker jerked back his head as if she were a snake. Seeing this she could not speak.
"Listen!" she repeated, recovering her grin. "Dear boy, darling boy! Wish for happiness!"
Flecker wanted only to get away from her.
He scraped back his chair and stumbled away. The waiter took his three francs, twenty-five, at the entrance. Spike looked over his shoulder at the old woman. She smiled and waved her napkin. Spike fled into the street.
As in a nightmare when one is the only reality in a world of shadows, a focused figure against a fade-out background, Flecker ran from the café. He did not know the impact of his running feet against the pavement; the traffic flowed by him in silence; the tall, leaning houses of gray plaster were no more substantial than curling smoke. His harsh fear held him in its clutch as he ran. He did not know where he was running. His long legs whisked him under the heads of running horses, scraped him against the headlights of motors, sitting back on their screaming brakes, got him out of reach of an agitated gendarme who was too fat to run far.