The Shrieking Pit | Page 2

unseeing eyes, you would
probably conclude that he was under the influence of liquor, and in
your English way you would severely blame him, not so much for the
moral turpitude involved in his excess as for the bad taste, which
prompted him to show himself in public in such a condition. If, on
reaching his place, the young man's conduct took the additional
extravagant form of picking up a table-knife and sticking it into the
table in front of him, you would probably enlarge your previous
conclusion by admitting the hypotheses of drugs or dementia to account
for such remarkable behaviour.

All these things were done by the young man at the alcove table in the
breakfast room of the Grand Hotel, Durrington, on an October morning
in the year 1916; but Colwyn, who was only half an Englishman, and,
moreover, had an original mind, did not attribute them to drink,
morphia, or madness. Colwyn flattered himself that he knew the
outward signs of these diseases too well to be deceived into thinking
that the splendid specimen of young physical manhood at the far table
was the victim of any of them. His own impression was that it was a
case of shell-shock. It was true that, apart from the doubtful evidence of
a bronzed skin and upright frame, there was nothing about him to
suggest that he had been a soldier: no service lapel or regimental badge
in his grey Norfolk jacket. But an Englishman of his class would be
hardly likely to wear either once he had left the Army. It was almost
certain that he must have seen service in the war, and by no means
improbable that he had been bowled over by shell-shock, like many
thousands more of equally splendid specimens of young manhood. Any
other conclusion to account for the strange condition of a young man
like him seemed unworthy and repellent.
"It must be shell-shock, and a very bad case--probably supposed to be
cured, and sent up here to recuperate," thought Colwyn. "I'll keep an
eye on him."
As Colwyn resumed his breakfast it occurred to him that some of the
other guests might have been alarmed by the young man's behaviour,
and he cast his eyes round the room to see if anybody else had noticed
him.
There were about thirty guests in the big breakfast apartment, which
had been built to accommodate five times the number--a charming,
luxuriously furnished place, with massive white pillars supporting a
frescoed ceiling, and lighted by numerous bay windows opening on to
the North Sea, which was sparkling brightly in a brilliant October
sunshine. The thirty people comprised the whole of the hotel visitors,
for in the year 1916 holiday seekers preferred some safer resort than a
part of the Norfolk coast which lay in the track of enemy airships
seeking a way to London.

Two nights before a Zeppelin had dropped a couple of bombs on the
Durrington front, and the majority of hotel visitors had departed by the
next morning's train, disregarding the proprietor's assurance that the
affair was a pure accident, a German oversight which was not likely to
happen again. Off the nervous ones went, and left the big hotel, the
long curved seafront, the miles of yellow sand, the high green
headlands, the best golf-links in the East of England, and all the other
attractions mentioned in the hotel advertisements, to a handful of
people, who were too nerve-proof, lazy, fatalistic, or indifferent to
bother about Zeppelins.
These thirty guests, scattered far and wide over the spacious isolation
of the breakfast-room, in twos and threes, and little groups, seemed,
with one exception, too engrossed in the solemn British rite of
beginning the day well with a good breakfast to bother their heads
about the conduct of the young man at the alcove table. They were, for
the most part, characteristic war-time holiday-makers: the men,
obviously above military age, in Norfolk tweeds or golf suits; two
young officers at a table by the window, and--as indifference to
Zeppelins is not confined to the sterner sex--a sprinkling of ladies,
plump and matronly, or of the masculine walking type, with two
charmingly pretty girls and a gay young war widow to leaven the mass.
The exception was a tall and portly gentleman with a slightly bald head,
glossy brown beard, gold-rimmed eye-glasses perilously balanced on a
prominent nose, and an important manner. He was breakfasting alone at
a table not far from Colwyn's, and Colwyn noticed that he kept
glancing at the alcove table where the young man sat. As Colwyn
looked in his direction their eyes met, and the portly gentleman nodded
portentously in the direction of the alcove table, as an indication that he
also had been watching the curious behaviour of the