T was at dinner that the Horror first burst upon the guests of the Hôtel d'Angleterre at Métretat, in Brittany.
The season of Métretat had only just begun, but already all the usual people were there; for Métretat was different from other watering-places, and the Angleterre was different from other hotels. Both were exclusive, in the most esoteric sense of that abused term; both were at this time of the year given up to the English. One of the leaders of a certain set which had a hereditary right to look down upon persons merely "smart" had "discovered" Métretat some years before, and had discreetly confided its charms to a few of the brightest and best; consequently a colony of exactly the right people had practically annexed Métretat and the one hotel of the place. Rooms were engaged during one season for another, so that, if intrusive strangers dared try to break the charmed circle, the landlord was able to thwart the attempt by announcing that the house was full.
To spend August and September at the Hôtel d'Angleterre was like being a member of a big country-house party, for everybody knew everybody else, and most of the forty-five or fifty people called each other by their Christian names, or, still better, nicknames invented as a souvenir of some funny adventure, or to fit some pleasant little peculiarity. If strangers contrived to get in they were not really strangers, but guests, or, at least, friends of someone in the set; everyone knew all about them and (unless they were particularly amusing, in which case ancestors could be dispensed with) who their great-grandfathers had been.
There was nothing of the mushroom, nonveau riche element among the guests who came each summer to the little, old-fashioned, sleepy village on the rocky coast of Brittany. There was no ostentation, no outshining one another in dress. The women wore short serge skirts and blouses or white pique frocks till dinner-time, when they changed to the simplest possible gowns; and it was an unwritten law that there should be no jewellery, and no bodices revealing more than an inch of white skin below the collar-bone. As for the golfing or walking men, they lived in knickerbockers until sundown, while the boating and fishing men apparently valued their flannels according to their shabbiness.
The season at the Hôtel d'Angleterre had been in full, comfortable, lazy swing for about a week in the sixth August of its possession by the British; and, the dinner-gong having sounded, as usual, at eight o'clock one exquisite blue evening, the party had assembled. As it was a party of friends it was considered pleasant to have several tables, each capable of seating about a dozen. Thus the people who knew one another best could sit together, and when somebody at one table had anything to say to somebody at another he simply turned in his chair and called across the room. Consequently there was a great buzz and chatter; but everybody seemed to know what everybody else was talking about, and all were interested in the same subjects.
"What a shame Kit Vance should have got the flu!" remarked Lord Strathallin (known as "Woodsey"), nodding at one of two unoccupied places at his table. "She and Tom will be a big loss; they're both so ripping. Hope old Dupont won't be such a beast as to let their rooms to any bounding outsiders."
"He wouldn't dare," Lady "Jack" Avery reassured him from across several candle-lit, flower-decked tables.
At this instant the door of the dining-room opened, which it had no business to do, as everyone was in his or her proper place, and the soup was being taken away. There was a shrill rustle of new, rich silk linings, a luscious swish of heavy satin, a burst of white heliotrope scent, a tintinnabulation of many bangles, and a girl came into the room.
So insistently was she heralded to shocked ears and nostrils that, instinctively, eyes turned for confirmation of the announcement, remained fixed upon the vision for a frozen second, then met one another under raised brows for a long, expressive gaze.