The Sunny Side (3 page)

“Go on,” smiled Myra. “You have still to explain how we invite ourselves to lunch.”

“We don't; we leave that to her. All we do is to give a list of the meals in which, in the ordinary course, we are wont to indulge, together with a few notes on our relative capacities at each. ‘Perhaps,' you wind up, ‘it is at luncheon time that as a party
we show to the best advantage. Some day, my dear Mrs. Cardew, we must all meet at lunch. You will then see that I have exaggerated neither my husband's appetite, nor the light conversation of my brother, nor the power of apology, should any little
contretemps
occur, of Mr. Samuel Simpson. Let us, I say, meet at lunch. Let us—'” I took out my watch suddenly.

“Come on,” I said, getting up and giving a hand to Myra; “we shall only just be in time for it.”

V. T
HE
G
AMESTERS

“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.”

VI. T
HE
R
ECORD OF
I
T

“I shall be glad to see Peter again,” said Dahlia, as she folded up her letter from home.

Peter's previous letter, dictated to his nurse-secretary, had, according to Archie, been full of good things. Cross-examination of the proud father, however, had failed to reveal anything more stirring than “I love mummy,” and—er—so on.

We were sitting in the loggia after what I don't call breakfast—all of us except Simpson, who was busy with a mysterious package. We had not many days left; and I was beginning to feel that, personally, I should not be sorry to see things like porridge again. Each to his taste.

“The time has passed absurdly quickly,” said Myra. “We don't seem to have done
anything
—except enjoy ourselves. I mean anything 'specially Rivierish. But it's been heavenly.”

“We've done lots of Rivierish things,” I protested. “If you'll be quiet a moment I'll tell you some.”

These were some of the things: (1) We had been to the Riviera. (Nothing could take away from that. We had the labels on our luggage.)

(2) We had lost heavily (thirty francs) at the Tables. (This alone justified the journey.)

(3) Myra had sat next to a Prince at lunch. (Of course she might have done this in London, but so far there has been no great rush of Princes to our little flat. Dukes, Mayors, Companions of St. Michael and St. George, certainly; but, somehow, not Princes.)

(4) Simpson had done the short third hole at Mt. Agel in three. (His first had cleverly dislodged the ball from the piled-up tee; his second, a sudden nick, had set it rolling down the hill to the green; and the third, an accidental putt, had sunk it.)

(5) Myra and I had seen Corsica. (Question.)(6) And finally, and best of all, we had sat in the sun, under a blue sky above a blue sea, and watched the oranges and lemons grow.

So, though we had been to but few of the famous beauty spots around, we had had a delightfully lazy time; and as proof that we had not really been at Brighton there were, as I have said, the luggage labels. But we were to be able to show further proof. At this moment Simpson came out of the house, his face beaming with excitement, his hands carefully concealing something behind his back.

“Guess what I've got,” he said eagerly.

“The sack,” said Thomas.

“Your new bests,” said Archie.

“Something that will interest us all,” helped Simpson.

“I withdraw my suggestion,” said Archie.

“Something we ought to have brought with us all along.”

“More money,” said Myra.

The tension was extreme. It was obvious that our consuming anxiety would have to be relieved very speedily. To avoid a riot, Thomas went behind Simpson's back and took his surprise away from him.

“A camera,” he said. “Good idea.”

Simpson was all over himself with bonhommy.

“I suddenly thought of it the other night,” he said, smiling round at all of us in his happiness, “and I was just going to wake Thomas up to tell him, when I thought I'd keep it a secret. So I wrote to a friend of mine and asked him to send me out one, and some films and things, just as a surprise for you.”

“Samuel, you
are
a dear,” said Myra, looking at him lovingly.

“You see, I thought, Myra, you'd like to have some records of the place, because they're so jolly to look back on, and—er, I'm not quite sure how you work it, but I expect some of you know and—er—”

“Come on,” said Myra, “I'll show you.” She retired with Simpson to a secluded part of the loggia and helped him put the films in.

“Nothing can save us,” said Archie. “We are going to be taken together in a group. Simpson will send it to one of the picture papers, and we shall appear as ‘Another Merry Little Party of Well-known Sun-seekers. Names from left to right: Blank, blank, Mr. Archibald Mannering, blank, blank.' I'd better go and brush my hair.”

Simpson returned to us, nervous and fully charged with advice.

“Right, Myra, I see. That'll be all right. Oh, look here, do you—oh yes, I see. Right. Now then—wait a bit—oh yes, I've got it. Now then, what shall we have first? A group?”

“Take the house and the garden and the village,” said Thomas. “You'll see plenty of
us
afterwards.”

“The first one is bound to be a failure,” I pointed out. “Rather let him fail at us, who are known to
be beautiful, than at the garden, which has its reputation yet to make. Afterwards, when he has got the knack, he will be able to do justice to the scenery.”

Archie joined us again, followed by the bull-dog. We grouped ourselves picturesquely.

“That looks ripping,” said Simpson. “Oh, look here, Myra, do you—No, don't come; you'll spoil the picture. I suppose you have to—oh, it's all right, I think I've got it.”

“I shan't try to look handsome this time,” said Archie; “it's not worth it. I shall just put an ordinary blurred expression on.”

“Now, are you ready? Don't move. Quite still, please; quite—”

“It's instantaneous, you know,” said Myra gently.

This so unnerved Simpson that he let the thing off without any further warning, before we had time to get our expressions natural.

“That was all right, Myra, wasn't it?” he said proudly.

“I'm—I'm afraid you had your hand over the lens, Samuel dear.”

“Our new photographic series: ‘Palms of the
Great.' No. 1, Mr. S. Simpson's,” murmured Archie.

“It wouldn't have been a very good one anyhow,” I said encouragingly. “It wasn't typical. Dahlia should have had an orange in her hand, and Myra might have been resting her cheek against a cactus. Try it again, Simpson, and get a little more colour into it.”