The Charmed Life | Page 4

irreproachably timid, if you get the idea.
Stephen Denton smiled reminiscently. Preordained, too, it seemed.
Preordained from the mild cocktail before dinner to the hoary place on
the bench I was expected to grace some day. I had every reason to be
happy, don't you think? And I was happy. Quite!
And then I smelled a whiff of wanderlust. And so it happened that that
red faced Britisher of a Roos-Keppel kicked me, figuratively speaking,
in the stomach--and I'm grateful to him--always shall be grateful.
I met him at the jockey club. He took to me and invited me to dinner at
the Hotel Semiramis, where he had a gorgeous suite of rooms. It was
some little dinner--just the two of us--and you know the sort of host he
is. We tried every barreled, fermented, and bottle refreshment from
Syrian raki to yellow-ribbon Grand Marnier; and it was at the end of
the party--I was busy with a large cup of coffee and a small glass of
brandy, and he with a small cup of coffee and a large glass of
brandy--that he cut loose and told me tales about India--tales in which
he had been either principal or witness--and, in half an hour, he had
taught me more about the hidden nooks and corners of this land than
there is in all the travel books, Murray's government and missionary
reports put together. What's more his tales were true.
So I asked him, like a tactless young cub: "Heavens, man, with your
knowledge of India-- why did you throw your chance away? Why
didn't you stick to it? You would have made a great, big, bouncing,
twenty-four carat success!"
"And I would have wound up with a G. C. S. I., a bloody knighthood, a
pension of ten thousand rupees a year, and a two-inch space in the
obituary column of the Calcutta Times--English papers please
copy--when I've kicked the bally bucket!" He guffawed, and he
hiccuped a little. For he had been hitting the brandy bottle, and all the
other assorted bottles, like a corn-stalk sailor on a shore spree after two
dry months on a lime-juicer without making port. "Success?" he

continued, "why, my lad, I am a success. A number one--
waterproof--and, damn my eyes. whisky-proof for that matter?"
"You are--what?" I asked, amazed for the man was serious, perfectly
serious, mind you; and he kept right on with his philippic monologue,
extravagant in diction and gesture, but the core of it--why it was serene,
grotesquely serene! "I am a success, I repeat: don't you believe me?"
He lowered a purple-veined eyelid in a fat, Falstaffian leer.
"Take a good look at these rooms of mine-- best rooms in the
Semiramis, in Calcutta, in India, hang it all--in the whole plurry
empire!" He pointed at the gorgeous furniture and the silk hangings,
"Viceroys by the score have occupied them--and the Prince of
Wales--and four assorted Russian grand dukes--and three bloated
Yankee plutocrats. And our little supper--look at the bottles and
dishes--how much do you think it'll cost? I tell you--five hundred
rupees-- without the tip! And," he laughed, "I haven't even got enough
of the ready to tip the black-lacquered Eurasian majordomo who
uncorked our sherry and, doubtless, swiped the first glass."
I made an instinctive gesture toward my pocket-book, but he stopped
me with another laugh. "Don't make a silly ass of yourself," he said. "I
don't want to borrow any money. All I want to prove to you is that I
live and I do as I please--forgetful of the yesterday, careless of the
morrow--serene in my belief in my own particular fate. To-night I am
broke--hopelessly, desperately broke, you'd call it. For I haven't got a
rupee in the world. My bank-account is concave, I owe wages to my
servants, I owe for my stable service and horse feed. Everything I
have--even my old C-spring barouche, even my old, patched, green
bedroom slippers are mortgaged. But what of it? I'll sleep to-night as
quiet and untouched as a little babe. something is sure to happen
tomorrow-- always does happen. I always kick through--somehow--"
"But--how?" I was beginning to get worried for him--I liked him.
"How? Because I am a success--a success with reverse English. The
world? Why, I put it all over this fool of a world. For I believe in
myself. That's why I win out. Everybody who believes in himself wins

out--in what he wants to win out. You, Denton," he went on after a
short pause, "are a nice lad, clean and well-bred and no end proper. But
you are too damned smug--no offense meant--you are like a respectable
spinster owl with respectable astigmatism. Cut away from it. See life.
Make life. Take life by the tail and swing it about your head