Fate

== FATE ==
=== By Hector Hugh Munro ===
Published in Short Stories 1911
Rex Dillot was nearly twenty-four, almost good-looking and quite
penniless. His mother was supposed to make him some sort of an allowance out of
what her creditors allowed her, and Rex occasionally strayed into the ranks of
those who earn fitful salaries as secretaries or companions to people who are
unable to cope unaided with their correspondence or their leisure. For a few
months he had been assistant editor and business manager of a paper devoted to
fancy mice, but the devotion had been all on one side, and the paper
disappeared with a certain abruptness from club reading-rooms and other haunts
where it had made a gratuitous appearance. Still, Rex lived with some air of
comfort and well-being, as one can live if one is born with a genius for that
sort of thing, and a kindly Providence usually arranged that his week-end
invitations coincided with the dates on which his one white dinner-waistcoat
was in a laundry-returned condition of dazzling cleanness. He played most games
badly, and was shrewd enough to recognize the fact, but he had developed a
marvelously accurate judgement in estimating the play and chances of other
people, whether in a golf match, billiard handicap, or croquet tournament. By
dint of parading his opinion of such and such a player's superiority with a
sufficient degree of youthful assertiveness he usually succeeded in provoking a
wager at liberal odds, and he looked to his week-end winnings to carry him
through the financial embarrassments of his mid-week existence. The trouble
was, as he confided to Clovis Sangrail, that he never had enough available or
even prospective cash at his command to enable him to fix the wager at a figure
really worth winning.
"Some day," he said, "I shall come across a really safe
thing, a bet that simply can't go astray, and then I shall put it up for all
I'm worth, or rather for a good deal more than I'm worth if you sold me up to
the last button."
"It would be awkward if it didn't happen to come off," said
Clovis.
"It would be more than awkward," said Rex; "it would be a
tragedy. All the same, it would be extremely amusing to bring it off. Fancy
awaking in the morning with about three hundred pounds standing to one's
credit. I should go and clear out my hostess's pigeon-loft before breakfast out
of sheer good-temper."
"Your hostess of the moment mightn't have a pigeon-loft," said
Clovis.
"I always choose hostesses that have," said Rex; "a
pigeon-loft is indicative of a careless, extravagant, genial disposition, such
as I like to see around me. People who strew corn broadcast for a lot of
feathered inanities that just sit about cooing and giving each other the glad
eye in a Louis Quatorze manner are pretty certain to do you well."
"Young Strinnit is coming down this afternoon," said Clovis
reflectively; "I dare say you won't find it difficult to get him to back
himself at billiards. He plays a pretty useful game, but he's not quite as good
as he fancies he is."
"I know one member of the party who can walk round him," said
Rex softly, an alert look coming into his eyes; "that cadaverous-looking
Major who arrived last night. I've seen him play at St. Moritz. If I could get
Strinnit to lay odds on himself against the Major the money would be safe in my
pocket. This looks like the good thing I've been watching and praying
for."
"Don't be rash," counselled Clovis, "Strinnit may play up
to his self-imagined form once in a blue moon."
"I intend to be rash," said Rex quietly, and the look on his
face corroborated his words.
"Are you all going to flock to the billiard-room?" asked
Teresa Thundleford, after dinner, with an air of some disapproval and a good
deal of annoyance. "I can't see what particular amusement you find in
watching two men prodding little ivory balls about on a table."
"Oh, well," said her hostess, "it's a way of passing the
time, you know."
"A very poor way, to my mind," said Mrs. Thundleford;
"now I was going to have shown all of you the photographs I took in Venice
last summer."
"You showed them to us last night," said Mrs. Cuvering
hastily.
"Those were the ones I took in Florence. These are quite a
different lot."
"Oh, well, some time to-morrow we can look at them. You can leave
them down in the drawing-room, and then every one can have a look."
"I should prefer to show them when you are all gathered together,
as I have quite a lot of explanatory remarks to make, about Venetian art and
architecture, on the same lines as my remarks last night on the Florentine
galleries. Also, there are some verses of mine that I should like to read you,
on the rebuilding of the Campanile. But, of course, if you all prefer to watch
Major Latton and Mr. Strinnit knocking balls about on a table --"
"They are both supposed to be first-rate players," said the
hostess.
"I have yet to learn that my verses and my art causerie are of
second-rate quality," said Mrs. Thundleford with acerbity. "However,
as you all seem bent on watching a silly game, there's no more to be said. I
shall go upstairs and finish some writing. Later on, perhaps, I will come down
and join you."
To one, at least, of the onlookers the game was anything but silly. It
was absorbing, exciting, exasperating, nerve-stretching, and finally it grew to
be tragic. The Major with the St. Moritz reputation was playing a long way
below his form, young Strinnit was playing slightly above his, and had all the
luck of the game as well. From the very start the balls seemed possessed by a
demon of contrariness; they trundled about complacently for one player, they
would go nowhere for the other.
"A hundred and seventy, seventy-four," sang out the youth who
was marking. In a game of two hundred and fifty up it was an enormous lead to
hold. Clovis watched the flush of excitement die away from Dillot's face, and a
hard white look take its place.
"How much have you got on?" whispered Clovis. The other
whispered the sum through dry, shaking lips. It was more than he or any one
connected with him could pay; he had done what he had said he would do. He had
been rash.
"Two hundred and six, ninety-eight."
Rex heard a clock strike ten somewhere in the hall, then another
somewhere else, and another, and another; the house seemed full of striking
clocks. Then in the distance the stable clock chimed in. In another hour they
would all be striking eleven, and he would be listening to them as a disgraced
outcast, unable to pay, even in part, the wager he had challenged.
"Two hundred and eighteen, a hundred and three." The game was
as good as over. Rex was as good as done for. He longed desperately for the
ceiling to fall in, for the house to catch fire, for anything to happen that
would put an end to that horrible rolling to and fro of red and white ivory
that was jostling him nearer and nearer to his doom.
"Two hundred and twenty-eight, a hundred and seven."
Rex opened his cigarette-case; it was empty. That at least gave him a
pretext to slip away from the room for the purpose of refilling it; he would
spare himself the drawn-out torture of watching that hopeless game played out
to the bitter end. He backed away from the circle of absorbed watchers and made
his way up a short stairway to a long, silent corridor of bedrooms, each with a
guests' name written in a little square on the door. In the hush that reigned
in this part of the house he could still hear the hateful click-click of the
balls; if he waited for a few minutes longer he would hear the little outbreak
of clapping and buzz of congratulation that would hail Strinnit's victory. On
the alert tension of his nerves there broke another sound, the aggressive,
wrath-inducing breathing of one who sleeps in heavy after-dinner slumber. The
sound came from a room just at his elbow; the card on the door bore the
announcement "Mrs. Thundleford." The door was just slightly ajar; Rex
pushed it open an inch or two more and looked in. The august Teresa had fallen
asleep over an illustrated guide to Florentine art-galleries; at her side,
somewhat dangerously near the edge of the table, was a reading-lamp. If Fate
had been decently kind to him, thought Rex, bitterly, that lamp would have been
knocked over by the sleeper and would have given them something to think of
besides billiard matches.
There are occasions when one must take one's Fate in one's hands. Rex
took the lamp in his.
"Two hundred and thirty-seven, one hundred and fifteen."
Strinnit was at the table, and the balls lay in good position for him; he had a
choice of two fairly easy shots, a choice which he was never to decide. A
sudden hurricane of shrieks and a rush of stumbling feet sent every one flocking
to the door. The Dillot boy crashed into the room, carrying in his arms the
vociferous and somewhat dishevelled Teresa Thundleford; her clothing was
certainly not a mass of flames, as the more excitable members of the party
afterwards declared, but the edge of her skirt and part of the table-cover in
which she had been hastily wrapped were alight in a flickering, half-hearted
manner. Rex flung his struggling burden on the billiard table, and for one
breathless minute the work of beating out the sparks with rugs and cushions and
playing on them with soda-water syphons engrossed the energies of the entire
company.
"It was lucky I was passing when it happened," panted Rex;
"some one had better see to the room, I think the carpet is alight."
As a matter of fact the promptitude and energy of the rescuer had
prevented any great damage being done, either to the victim or her
surroundings. The billiard table had suffered most, and had to be laid up for
repairs; perhaps it was not the best place to have chosen for the scene of
salvage operations; but then, as Clovis remarked, when one is rushing about
with a blazing woman in one's arms one can't stop to think out exactly where
one is going to put her.
Category:Short-Stories
Category:Munro
Category:Published