Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 42).djvu/743

eople sometimes say that they envy me because, with my power of reading thoughts—that, they say, is what it comes to—I must have so many opportunities of doing people good. It must be so sweet, they add, with what I occasionally feel tor be an irritating smirk, to be able, with very little trouble to oneself, to benefit one's fellow-creatures. That sort of remark is very easy to make, but it is not easy to benefit one's fellow-creatures. And as for doing people good, it is surprising how many people would rather not be done good to. Take that case of what happened at Dieppe.

I was spending my summer holidays at Dieppe. I had been there about a fortnight. One evening I was sitting, all alone by myself, on the terrace outside the Casino. I had been dancing; my partner had gone to fulfil another engagement, and, as I was not engaged for that dance, I had asked him to leave me where I was. I was taking my ease in a long chair close to the sea-wall. In front of me, in the glow of the electric light, people were seated at little tables having refreshments. At one of these was a gentleman whose name I knew, talking to one who was to me a complete stranger.

The first gentleman's name was Armitage—Cecil Armitage. He was an amazingly handsome young man, perhaps in the late twenties. He was staying in my hotel, and was the cause of no little amusement to some of the other visitors. He, a young man of seven or eight and twenty, evidently of birth and breeding, was paying the most marked attention to a woman who was one of the greatest jokes in Dieppe—Miss Drawbridge.

Miss Drawbridge, commonly known as "Gertrude" to people who had never spoken to her in their lives, was a sort of standing dish at Dieppe. She was supposed to have been there longer than the oldest inhabitant; she had certainly been a frequenter for quite a number of years. What I had seen of her I rather liked. She was staying at my hotel, and there was a time when she had asked me to share her table; and, although that time had passed and she never asked me to share it now, we were still on quite good terms. She was certainly a curious person—people who haunt the same foreign watering-place year after year generally are; and what an extremely presentable young man like Cecil Armitage could see in her was a mystery—unless it was her money.

Imagine the sensation which stirred the air when it became known that this perfect Adonis was engaged to "Gertrude." Had not Miss Drawbridge announced the fact herself, I fancy few people would have believed it. And the things which were said of Miss Drawbridge, especially by some of the women! The men just sneered.

There was I on the terrace, in my long chair (I could say things about men, but I think I had better get on with my story), and there was Mr. Armitage, drinking what looked to me very like absinthe—fancy drinking absinthe at that time of night, or, so far as that goes, at any time!—and talking to a perfect stranger. Of course, the man was quite entitled to be a stranger; but I have seldom seen a man whose looks I liked less. The contrast between him and Mr. Armitage was amazing. He was a sallow, hatchet-faced man, with an upturned moustache—which I hate!—and something the matter with one of his eyes which made him seem to be looking in two directions at once. Nor did I like his manner towards Mr. Armitage; he seemed to me to be positively bullying him. That was one reason why I watched what they said, and some very surprising observations—I cannot say I heard—I saw. And, as always is the case on such occasions, I could not have gained a more intimate acquaintance with them had they bawled them in my ear.

The first thing I saw was the stranger's thin lips contorting themselves as, in what I imagined to be an angry undertone, they formed these words, which I have no doubt, judging from the expression of his face, he snapped out at Mr. Armitage as if he were an angry terrier:—