1
AT the end of the pleasant hotel dining-room sat a big, florid man,
alone at a table. His reddish hair was sprinkled with grey and so were
the small side-whiskers he affected. His large hands held a wine-card
delicately, as though, used to some work that necessitated extreme
fineness of touch. His jaw was perhaps a trifle too massive, his mouth a
trifle too aggressive in expression, but his eyes were eager and limpid,
and his smile was frank and very kind.
He put down the wine-card and looked about him. His fellow guests
interested him, people always did. These people were like their
prototypes in every English hotel that he had ever been to; dull men
with duller wives, dreary examples of matrimonial stagnation. Dull sons
with dull fathers, dull daughters with dull mothers. The two girls with
bobbed hair sat together and chattered incessantly, but even they looked
commonplace in their evening dresses, which did not suit them or their
weather-stained necks and hands.
From his vantage-point, facing the swing doors, he could see the full
length of the room. Even the way people walked had a significance for
him; he was wont to say that you could read a person's whole life
history in the way they moved. As he looked towards the entrance, two
women came in; an old and very feeble lady wearing a white lace cap, and
a middle-aged woman with short, grey hair, who supported her companion
on her arm. In her disengaged hand she carried a white, fleecy shawl and
a bottle of medicine, while tucked away under her elbow was a box-shaped
thing that looked like a minute foot-warmer. The two women seated
themselves at a window table quite near the man.
"Open the window, dear," he heard the old lady say; "this room is
stuffy."
The younger woman did as she was asked, and he noticed that the window
seemed too heavy for her. They drank their soup in silence, but
presently the old lady shivered. "It's colder than I thought," she said
plaintively. "I think we'll have it shut, after all."
Her companion rose obediently and closed the window, then she put the
small box-shaped object under the other's feet.
"So it was a foot-warmer!" thought the man with some amusement.
He bent a little forward, the better to hear what they would say. "I'm
eavesdropping," he thought, "but they interest me."
"Won't you have your shawl on, Mother?"
"Well, perhaps I will. It's much colder here than it was last year."
The younger woman got up once more, this time to fold the shawl around
her mother's shoulders.
"Oh, Lord!" muttered the man impatiently, "will she never sit still?"
He looked attentively at the pair. "Gentle, tyrant mother," he told
himself, "and virgin daughter withering on her stem." But as he looked,
something in the short-haired woman's appearance arrested him. "It's a
fine face, even now," he thought, "and the mouth is positively
beautiful. I wonder why--I wonder how it happened. Who is it she reminds
me of?"
The woman turned her head and their eyes met; he thought she started and
looked more intently; at all events she turned to her mother and said
something in a low voice. In a second or two the old lady glanced at
him.
The man felt his heart tighten. Something in the face of this
short-haired woman and a certain gruff quality in her voice were
strangely familiar. Just then his attention was distracted, and when he
looked again the women's faces were turned away and they were speaking
in an undertone. The pair finished their dinner and left the room, while
he sat on stupidly, letting the years slip backwards.
2
Presently he got up and walked to the door. He went out into the hall,
meaning to look at the hotel register. The hall was empty except for the
short-haired woman, who had apparently anticipated him, for she was
turning over the pages of the book. He came up quietly and looked over
her shoulder. Her finger was hovering near his own entry: "Sir Richard
Benson, Harley Street, London."
She saw him out of the corner of her eye. "I was looking you up," she
explained simply.
"So I see," he said and smiled. "May I look you up, too?"
She nodded and he turned back a page. "Mrs. and Miss Ogden, Seabourne,"
he read aloud.