I went up to an empty table, asked for a pot of beer and a newspaper, and sat down not far off from this enigmatical being.
V
Putting the sheet of newspaper on a level with my face, I continued my scrutiny of the stranger. He scarcely stirred at all, only from time to time raising his bowed head. He was obviously expecting some one. I gazed and gazed.... Sometimes I fancied I must have imagined it all, that there could be really no resemblance, that I had given way to a half-unconscious trick of the imagination ... but the stranger would suddenly turn round a little in his seat, or slightly raise his hand, and again I all but cried out, again I saw my ‘dream-father’ before me! He at last noticed my uncalled-for attention, and glancing at first with surprise and then with annoyance in my direction, was on the point of getting up, and knocked down a small walking-stick he had stood against the table. I instantly jumped up, picked it up, and handed it to him. My heart was beating violently.
He gave a constrained smile, thanked me, and as his face drew closer to my face, he lifted his eyebrows and opened his mouth a little as though struck by something.
‘You are very polite, young man,’ he began all at once in a dry, incisive, nasal voice, ‘That’s something out of the common nowadays. Let me congratulate you; you must have been well brought up?’
I don’t remember precisely what answer I made; but a conversation soon sprang up between us. I learnt that he was a fellow-countryman, that he had not long returned from America, where he had spent many years, and was shortly going back there. He called himself Baron ... the name I could not make out distinctly. He, just like my ‘dream-father,’ ended every remark with a sort of indistinct inward mutter. He desired to learn my surname.... On hearing it, he seemed again astonished; then he asked me if I had lived long in the town, and with whom I was living. I told him I was living with my mother.
‘And your father?’ ‘My father died long ago.’ He inquired my mother’s Christian name, and immediately gave an awkward laugh, but apologised, saying that he picked up some American ways, and was rather a queer fellow altogether. Then he was curious to know what was our address. I told him.
VI
The excitement which had possessed me at the beginning of our conversation gradually calmed down; I felt our meeting rather strange and nothing more. I did not like the little smile with which the baron cross-examined me; I did not like the expression of his eyes when he, as it were, stuck them like pins into me.... There was something in them rapacious, patronising ... something unnerving. Those eyes I had not seen in the dream. A strange face was the baron’s! Faded, fatigued, and, at the same time, young-looking—unpleasantly young-looking! My ‘dream-father’ had not the deep scar either which ran slanting right across my new acquaintance’s forehead, and which I had not noticed till I came closer to him.
I had hardly told the baron the name of the street, and the number of the house in which we were living, when a tall negro, swathed up to the eyebrows in a cloak, came up to him from behind, and softly tapped him on the shoulder. The baron turned round, ejaculated, ‘Aha! at last!’ and with a slight nod to me, went with the negro into the café. I was left under the awning; I meant to await the baron’s return, not so much with the object of entering into conversation with him again (I really did not know what to talk about to him), as to verify once more my first impression. But half-an-hour passed, an hour passed.... The baron did not appear. I went into the café, passed through all the rooms, but could see nowhere the baron or the negro.... They must both have gone out by a back-door.