65 Short Stories (204 page)

‘I should have,’ returned the Scot, ‘only Mr Rosenbaum kept me up talking of old times.’

‘What’s the good of going to bed when you can’t sleep?’ said Mr Rosenbaum. ‘Walk ten times round the deck with me tomorrow morning and you’ll sleep all right.’

‘I’ve never taken any exercise in my life and I’m not going to begin now’

‘That’s foolishness. You’d be twice the man you are now if you’d taken exercise. Look at me. You’d never think I was seventy-nine, would you.’ Mr Rosenbaum looked critically at Mr Donaldson.

‘No, I wouldn’t. You’re very well preserved. You look younger than me and I’m only seventy-six. But then I never had a chance to take care of myself.’ At that moment the steward came up.

‘The bar’s just going to close, gentlemen. Is there anything I can get you?’

‘It’s a stormy night,’ said Mr Rosenbaum. ‘Let’s have a bottle of champagne.’

‘Small Vichy for me,’ said Mr Donaldson.

‘Oh, very well, small Vichy for me too.’

The steward went away.

‘But mind you,’ continued Mr Rosenbaum testily, ‘I wouldn’t have done without the things you’ve done without, not for all the money in the world.’ Mr Donaldson gave me his gentle smile.

‘Mr Rosenbaum can’t get over it because I’ve never touched a card nor a drop of alcohol for fifty-seven years.’

‘Now I ask you, what sort of a life is that?’

‘I was a very heavy drinker when I was a young fellow and a desperate gambler, but I had a very terrible experience. It was a lesson to me and I took it.’

‘Tell him about it,’ said Mr Rosenbaum. ‘He’s an author. He’ll write it up and perhaps he’ll be able to make his passage money.’

‘It’s not a story I like telling very much even now I’ll make it as short as I can. Me and three others had staked out a claim, friends all of us, and the oldest wasn’t twenty-five; there was me and my partner and a couple of brothers, McDermott their name was, but they were more like friends than brothers. What was one’s was the other’s, and one wouldn’t go into town without the other went too, and they were always laughing and joking together. A fine clean pair of boys, over six feet high both of them, and handsome. We were a wild bunch and we had pretty good luck on the whole and when we made money we didn’t hesitate to spend it. Well, one night we’d all been drinking very heavily and we started a poker game. I guess we were a good deal drunker than we realized. Anyhow suddenly a row started between the McDermotts. One of them accused the other of cheating. “You take that back,” cried Jamie. “I’ll see you in hell first,” says Eddie. And before me and my partner could do anything Jamie had pulled out his gun and shot his brother dead.’

The ship gave a huge roll and we all clung to our seats. In the steward’s pantry there was a great clatter as bottles and glasses slid along a shelf It was strange to hear that grim little story told by that mild old man. It was a story of another age and you could hardly believe that this fat, red-faced little fellow, with his silver fringe of hair, in a dinner jacket, two large pearls in his shirt-front, had really taken part in it.

‘What happened then?’ I asked.

‘We sobered up pretty quick. At first Jamie couldn’t believe Eddie was dead. He took him in his arms and kept calling him. “Eddie,” he says, “wake up, old boy, wake up.” He cried all night and next day we rode in with him to town, forty miles it was, me on one side of him and my partner on the other, and handed him over to the sheriff. I was crying too when we shook hands with him and said good-bye. I told my partner I’d never touch a card again or drink as long as I lived, and I never have, and I never will.’

Mr Donaldson looked down, and his lips were trembling. He seemed to see again that scene of long ago. There was one thing I should have liked to ask him about, but he was evidently so much moved I did not like to. They seem not to have hesitated, his partner and himself, but delivered up this wretched boy to justice as though it were the most natural thing in the world. It suggested that even in those rough, wild men the respect for the law had somehow the force of an instinct. A little shiver ran through me. Mr Donaldson emptied his glass of Vichy and with a curt good night left us.

‘The old fellow’s getting a bit childish,’ said Mr Rosenbaum. ‘I don’t believe he was ever very bright.’

‘Well, apparently he was bright enough to make an awful lot of money.’

‘But how? In those days in California you didn’t want brains to make money, you only wanted luck. I know what I’m talking about. Johannesburg was the place where you had to have your wits about you. Joburg in the eighties. It was grand. We were a tough lot of guys, I can tell you. It was each for himself and the devil take the hindmost.’

He took a meditative sip of his Vichy.

‘You talk of your cricket and baseball, your golf and tennis and football, you can have them, they’re all very well for boys; is it a reasonable thing, I ask you, for a grown man to run about and hit a ball? Poker’s the only game fit for a grown man. Then your hand is against every man and every man’s hand is against yours. Team-work? Who ever made a fortune by team-work? There’s only one way to make a fortune and that’s to down the fellow who’s up against you.’

‘I didn’t know you were a poker player,’ I interrupted. ‘Why don’t you take a hand one evening?’

‘I don’t play any more. I’ve given it up too, but for the only reason a man should. I can’t see myself giving it up because a friend of mine was unlucky enough to get killed. Anyway a man who’s damn fool enough to get killed isn’t worth having as a friend. But in the old days! If you wanted to know what poker was you ought to have been in South Africa then. It was the biggest game I’ve ever seen. And they were fine players; there wasn’t a crooked dodge they weren’t up to. It was grand. Just to give you an example, one night I was playing with some of the biggest men in Johannesburg and I was called away. There was a couple of thousand pounds in the pot! “Deal me a hand, I won’t keep you waiting,” I said. “All right,” they said, “don’t hurry.” Well, I wasn’t gone more than a minute. When I came back I picked up my cards and saw I’d got a straight flush to the queen. I didn’t say a word, I just threw in my hand. I knew my company. And do you know, I was wrong.’

‘What do you mean? I don’t understand.’

‘It was a perfectly straight deal and the pot was won on three sevens. But how could I tell that? Naturally I thought someone else had a straight flush to the king. It looked to me just the sort of hand I might lose a hundred thousand pounds on.’

‘Too bad,’ I said.

‘I very nearly had a stroke. And it was on account of another pat straight flush that I gave up playing poker. I’ve only had about five in my life.’

‘I believe the chances are nearly sixty-six thousand to one against.’

‘In San Francisco it was, the year before last. I’d been playing in poor luck all the evening. I hadn’t lost much money because I never had a chance to play. I’d hardly had a pair and if I got a pair I couldn’t improve. Then I got a hand just as bad as the others and I didn’t come in. The man next to me wasn’t playing either and I showed him my hand. “That’s the kind of thing I’ve been getting all the evening,” I said. “How can anyone be expected to play with cards like that?” ‘Well, I don’t know what more you want,” he said, as he looked at them. “Most of us would be prepared to come in on a straight flush.”

“What’s that,” I cried. I was trembling like a leaf I looked at the cards again. I thought I had two or three little hearts and two or three little diamonds. It was a straight flush in hearts all right and I hadn’t seen it. My eyes, it was. I knew what it meant. Old age. I don’t cry much. I’m not that sort of man. But I couldn’t help it then. I tried to control myself, but the tears just rolled down my cheeks. Then I got up. “I’m through, gentlemen,” I said. “When a man’s eyes are so dim that he can’t see a straight flush when it’s dealt him he has no business to play poker. Nature’s given me a hint and I’m taking it. I’ll never play poker again as long as I live.” I cashed in my chips, all but one, and I left the house. I’ve never played since.’

Mr Rosenbaum took a chip out of his waistcoat pocket and showed it to me. ‘I kept this as a souvenir. I always carry it about with me. I’m a sentimental old fool, I know that, but, you see, poker was the only thing I cared for. Now I’ve only got one thing left.’

‘What is that?’ I asked.

A smile flickered across his cunning little face and behind his thick glasses his rheumy eyes twinkled with ironic glee. He looked incredibly astute and malicious. He gave the thin, high-pitched cackle of an old man amused and answered with a single word ‘Philanthropy’.

A CASUAL AFFAIR

♦

I am telling this story in the first person, though I am in no way connected with it, because I do not want to pretend to the reader that I know more about it than I really do. The facts are as I state them, but the reasons for them I can only guess, and it may be that when the reader has read them he will think me wrong. No one can know for certain. But if you are interested in human nature there are few things more diverting than to consider the motives that have resulted in certain actions. It was only by chance that I heard anything of the unhappy circumstances at all. I was spending two or three days on an island on the north coast of Borneo, and the District Officer had very kindly offered to put me up. I had been roughing it for some time and I was glad enough to have a rest. The island had been at one time a place of some consequence, with a Governor of its own, but was so no longer; and now there was nothing much to be seen of its former importance except the imposing stone house in which the Governor had once lived and which now the District Officer, grumblingly because of its unnecessary size, inhabited. But it was a comfortable house to stay in, with an immense drawing-room, a dining-room large enough to seat forty people, and lofty, spacious bedrooms. It was shabby, because the government at Singapore very wisely spent as little money on it as possible; but I rather liked this, and the heavy official furniture gave it a sort of dull stateliness that was amusing. The garden was too large for the District Officer to keep up and it was a wild tangle of tropical vegetation. His name was Arthur Low; he was a quiet, smallish man in the later thirties, married, with two young children. The Lows had not tried to make themselves at home in this great place, but camped there, like refugees from a stricken area, and looked forward to the time when they would be moved to some other post where they could settle down in surroundings more familiar to them.

I took a fancy to them at once. The D.O. had an easy manner and a humorous way with him. I am sure he performed his various duties admirably, but he did everything he could to avoid the official demeanour. He was slangy of speech and pleasantly caustic. It was charming to see him play with the two children. It was quite obvious that he had found marriage a very satisfactory state. Mrs Low was an extremely nice little woman, plump, with dark eyes under fine eyebrows, not very pretty, but certainly attractive. She looked healthy and she had high spirits. They chaffed one another continually and each one seemed to look upon the other as immensely comic. Their jokes were neither very good nor very new, but they thought them so killing that you were obliged to laugh with them.

I think they were glad to see me, especially Mrs Low, for with nothing much to do but keep an eye on the house and the children, she was thrown very much on her own resources. There were so few white people on the island that the social life was soon exhausted; and before I had been there twenty-four hours she pressed me to stay a week, a month, or a year. On the evening of my arrival they gave a dinner-party to which the official population, the government surveyor, the doctor, the schoolmaster, the chief of constabulary, were invited, but on the following evening the three of us dined by ourselves. At the dinnerparty the guests had brought their house-boys to help, but that night we were waited on by the Lows’ one boy and my travelling servant. They brought in the coffee and left us to ourselves. Low and I lit cheroots.

‘You know that I’ve seen you before,’ said Mrs Low.

Where?’ I asked.

‘In London. At a party. I heard someone point you out to somebody else. In Carlton House Terrace at Lady Kastellan’s.’

‘Oh? When was that?’

‘Last time we were home on leave. There were Russian dancers.’

‘I remember. About two or three years ago. Fancy you being there!’

‘That’s exactly what we said to one another at the time,’ said Low, with a slow, engaging smile. ‘We’d never been at such a party in our lives.’

‘It made a great splash, you know,’ I said. ‘It was the party of the season. Did you enjoy it?’

‘I hated every minute of it,’ said Mrs Low.

‘Don’t let’s overlook the fact that you insisted on going, Bee.’ said Low ‘I knew we’d be out of it among all those swells. My dress clothes were the same I’d had at Cambridge and they’d never been much of a fit.’

‘I bought a frock specially at Peter Robinson’s. It looked lovely in the shop. I wished I hadn’t wasted so much money when I got there; I never felt so dowdy in my life.’

‘Well it didn’t much matter. We weren’t introduced to anybody.’