eyebrows arched perplexedly above old tired eyes, the waiter’s fatigued napkin on the arm.
“—Monsieur—?”
“Ces arbres—” he stammered, pointing helplessly—“J’ai—j’ai—mais je les ai vu—avant—”
“Monsieur?”—the eyebrows still more patient, puzzled and concerned, the voice wrought with attention—“vous dites, monsieur?”
“J’ai dit que—ces arbres—je les ai vu—” he blundered helplessly, and suddenly muttered, with a face gone sullen and ashamed—“Ça ne fait rien—l’addition, s’il vous plaît.”
The waiter stared at him a moment with courteous, slightly pained astonishment, then smiled apologetically, shrugged his shoulders slightly in a movement of defeat, and saying, “Bien, monsieur,” took the ten-franc note upon the table, counted the racked saucers, and made change for him.
When the waiter had gone, he sat for a moment staring at the trees. It was in the month of April, it was night, he was alone on the café terrace, and yet the chill air was touched with a fragrance that was soft, thrilling and mysterious—a citrous fume, the smell of unknown flowers, or perhaps not even this—but only the ghost of a perfume, the thrilling, barren, and strangely seductive odour of Provence.
It was a street in the little town of Arles, at night—an old, worn, rutted, curiously dirty-looking street, haunted by the trunks of immense and dusty-looking trees. He had never been here before, the scene was strange and haunting as a dream, and yet it was instantly and intolerably familiar. It was, somehow, he thought, like a street he had been to in some small town in the hot South at the faded end of summer—a South Carolina town, he thought it must be, and he was sure that he would hear the sound of familiar, unknown voices, the passing of feet, the rustling of quiet, tired leaves. And then he saw again how strange it was, and could see the tired waiter racking chairs and tables for the night, and in the café tired lights and emptiness, and the white, tired light upon the old dusty street, the huge haunting boles of the great trees; and he knew that he had never been along that way before.
Then he got up and walked away, and put his hand upon the trunk of one of the old trees: it was white and felt smooth to the touch, and was somewhat like the sycamores at home—and yet it was not this that haunted him with troubling memory. He felt, intolerably, that the place, the scene, the great wreathed branches of the trees, were something he
