Читать книгу The Sunny Side - A. A. Milne - Страница 16

"It's about time," said Simpson one evening, "that we went to the tables and—er—" (he adjusted his spectacles)—"had a little flutter."

We all looked at him in silent admiration.

"Oh, Samuel," sighed Myra, "and I promised your aunt that you shouldn't gamble while you were away."

"But, my dear Myra, it's the first thing the fellows at the club ask you when you've been to the Riviera—if you've had any luck."

"Well, you've had a lot of luck," said Archie. "Several times when you've been standing on the heights and calling attention to the beautiful view below, I've said to myself, 'One push, and he's a deader,' but something, some mysterious agency within, has kept me back."

"All the fellows at the club—"

Simpson is popularly supposed to belong to a Fleet Street Toilet and Hairdressing Club, where for three guineas a year he gets shaved every day, and has his hair cut whenever Myra insists. On the many occasions when he authorizes a startling story of some well-known statesman with the words: "My dear old chap, I know it for a fact. I heard it at the club to-day from a friend of his," then we know that once again the barber's assistant has been gossiping over the lather.

"Do think, Samuel," I interrupted, "how much more splendid if you could be the only man who had seen Monte Carlo without going inside the rooms. And then when the hairdresser—when your friends at the club ask if you've had any luck at the tables, you just say coldly, 'What tables?'"

"Preferably in Latin," said Archie. "Quae mensae?"

But it was obviously no good arguing with him. Besides, we were all keen enough to go.

"We needn't lose," said Myra. "We might win."

"Good idea," said Thomas. He lit his pipe and added, "Simpson was telling me about his system last night. At least, he was just beginning when I went to sleep." He applied another match to his pipe and went on, as if the idea had suddenly struck him, "Perhaps it was only his internal system he meant. I didn't wait."

"Samuel, you are quite well inside, aren't you?"

"Quite, Myra. But, I have invented a sort of system for roulette, which we might—"

"There's only one system which is any good," pronounced Archie. "It's the system by which, when you've lost all your own money, you turn to the man next to you and say, 'Lend me a louis, dear old chap, till Christmas; I've forgotten my purse.'"

"No systems," said Dahlia. "Let's make a collection and put it all on one number and hope it will win."

Dahlia had obviously been reading novels about people who break the bank.

"It's as good a way of losing as any other," said Archie. "Let's do it for our first gamble, anyway. Simpson, as our host, shall put the money on. I, as his oldest friend, shall watch him to see that he does it. What's the number to be?"

We all thought hard for several moments.

"Samuel, what's your age?" asked Myra, at last.

"Right off the board," said Thomas.

"You're not really more than thirty-six?" Myra whispered to him. "Tell me as a secret."

"Peter's nearly two," said Dahlia.

"Do you think you could nearly put our money on 'two'?" asked Archie.

"I once made seventeen," I said. "On that never-to-be-forgotten day when

I went in first with Archie—"

"That settles it. Here's to the highest score of The Rabbits' wicket-keeper. To-morrow afternoon we put our money on seventeen. Simpson, you have between now and 3.30 to-morrow to perfect your French delivery of the magic word dix-sept."

I went to bed a proud but anxious man that night. It was my famous score which had decided the figure that was to bring us fortune … and yet … and yet. …

Suppose eighteen turned up? The remorse, the bitterness! "If only," I should tell myself—"if only we had run three instead of two for that cut to square-leg!" Suppose it were sixteen! "Why, oh why," I should groan, "did I make the scorer put that bye down as a hit?" Suppose it were thirty-four! But there my responsibility ended. If it were going to be thirty-four, they should have used one of Archie's scores, and made a good job of it.

At 3.30 next day we were in the fatal building. I should like to pause here and describe my costume to you, which was a quiet grey in the best of taste, but Myra says that if I do this I must describe hers too, a feat beyond me. Sufficient that she looked dazzling, that as a party we were remarkably well-dressed, and that Simpson—murmuring "dix-sept" to himself at intervals—led the way through the rooms till he found a table to his liking.

"Aren't you excited?" whispered Myra to me.

"Frightfully," I said, and left my mouth well open. I don't quite know what picture of the event Myra and I had conjured up in our minds, but I fancy it was one something like this. At the entrance into the rooms of such a large and obviously distinguished party there would be a slight sensation among the crowd, and way would be made for us at the most important table. It would then leak out that Chevalier Simpson—the tall poetical-looking gentleman in the middle, my dear—had brought with him no less a sum than thirty francs with which to break the bank, and that he proposed to do this in one daring coup. At this news the players at the other tables would hastily leave their winnings (or losings) and crowd round us. Chevalier Simpson, pale but controlled, would then place his money on seventeen—"dix-sept," he would say to the croupier to make it quite clear—and the ball would be spun. As it slowed down, the tension in the crowd would increase. "Mon Dieu!" a woman would cry in a shrill voice; there would be guttural exclamations from Germans; at the edge of the crowd strong men would swoon. At last a sudden shriek … and the croupier's voice, trembling for the first time for thirty years, "Dix-sept!" Then gold and notes would be pushed at the Chevalier. He would stuff his pockets with them; he would fill his hat with them; we others, we would stuff our pockets too. The bank would send out for more money. There would be loud cheers from all the company (with the exception of one man, who had put five francs on sixteen and had shot himself) and we should be carried—that is to say, we four men—shoulder high to the door, while by the deserted table Myra and Dahlia clung to each other, weeping tears of happiness. …

Something like that.

What happened was different. As far as I could follow, it was this. Over the heads of an enormous, badly-dressed and utterly indifferent crowd Simpson handed his thirty francs to the croupier.

"Dix-sept," he said.

The croupier with his rake pushed the money on to seventeen.

Another croupier with his rake pulled it off again … and stuck to it.

The day's fun was over.

* * * * *

"What did win?" asked Myra some minutes later, when the fact that we should never see our money again had been brought home to her.

"Zero," said Archie.

I sighed heavily.

"My usual score," I said, "not my highest."