James Pethel

Part 1

Produced by Judith Boss.

James Pethel

MAX BEERBOHM

I was shocked this morning when I saw in my newspaper a paragraph announcing his sudden death. I do not say that the shock was very disagreeable. One reads a newspaper for the sake of news. Had I never met James Pethel, belike I should never have heard of him: and my knowledge of his death, coincident with my knowledge that he had existed, would have meant nothing at all to me. If you learn suddenly that one of your friends is dead, you are wholly distressed. If the death is that of a mere acquaintance whom you have recently seen, you are disconcerted, pricked is your sense of mortality; but you do find great solace in telling other people that you met "the poor fellow" only the other day, and that he was "so full of life and spirits," and that you remember he said--whatever you may remember of his sayings. If the death is that of a mere acquaintance whom you have not seen for years, you are touched so lightly as to find solace enough in even such faded reminiscence as is yours to offer. Seven years have passed since the day when last I saw James Pethel, and that day was the morrow of my first meeting with him.

I had formed the habit of spending August in Dieppe. The place was then less overrun by trippers than it is now. Some pleasant English people shared it with some pleasant French people. We used rather to resent the race-week--the third week of the month--as an intrusion on our privacy. We sneered as we read in the Paris edition of "The New York Herald" the names of the intruders, though by some of these we were secretly impressed. We disliked the nightly crush in the baccarat-room of the casino, and the croupiers' obvious excitement at the high play. I made a point of avoiding that room during that week, for the special reason that the sight of serious, habitual gamblers has always filled me with a depression bordering on disgust. Most of the men, by some subtle stress of their ruling passion, have grown so monstrously fat, and most of the women so harrowingly thin. The rest of the women seem to be marked out for apoplexy, and the rest of the men to be wasting away. One feels that anything thrown at them would be either embedded or shattered, and looks vainly among them for one person furnished with a normal amount of flesh. Monsters they are, all of them, to the eye, though I believe that many of them have excellent moral qualities in private life; but just as in an American town one goes sooner or later--goes against one's finer judgment, but somehow goes--into the dime-museum, so year by year, in Dieppe's race-week, there would be always one evening when I drifted into the baccarat-room. It was on such an evening that I first saw the man whose memory I here celebrate. My gaze was held by him for the very reason that he would have passed unnoticed elsewhere. He was conspicuous not in virtue of the mere fact that he was taking the bank at the principal table, but because there was nothing at all odd about him.

He alone, among his fellow-players, looked as if he were not to die before the year was out. Of him alone I said to myself that he was destined to die normally at a ripe old age. Next day, certainly, I would not have made this prediction, would not have "given" him the seven years that were still in store for him, nor the comparatively normal death that has been his. But now, as I stood opposite to him, behind the croupier, I was refreshed by my sense of his wholesome durability. Everything about him, except the amount of money he had been winning, seemed moderate. Just as he was neither fat nor thin, so had his face neither that extreme pallor nor that extreme redness which belongs to the faces of seasoned gamblers: it was just a clear pink. And his eyes had neither the unnatural brightness nor the unnatural dullness of the eyes about him: they were ordinarily clear eyes, of an ordinary gray. His very age was moderate: a putative thirty-six, not more. ("Not less," I would have said in those days.) He assumed no air of nonchalance. He did not deal out the cards as though they bored him, but he had no look of grim concentration. I noticed that the removal of his cigar from his mouth made never the least difference to his face, for he kept his lips pursed out as steadily as ever when he was not smoking. And this constant pursing of his lips seemed to denote just a pensive interest.

His bank was nearly done now; there were only a few cards left. Opposite to him was a welter of party-colored counters that the croupier had not yet had time to sort out and add to the rouleaux already made; there were also a fair accumulation of notes and several little stacks of gold--in all, not less than five-hundred pounds, certainly. Happy banker! How easily had he won in a few minutes more than I, with utmost pains, could win in many months! I wished I were he. His lucre seemed to insult me personally. I disliked him, and yet I hoped he would not take another bank. I hoped he would have the good sense to pocket his winnings and go home. Deliberately to risk the loss of all those riches would intensify the insult to me.

"Messieurs, la banque est aux encheres." There was some brisk bidding while the croupier tore open and shuffled two new packs. But it was as I feared: the gentleman whom I resented kept his place.

"Messieurs, la banque est faite. Quinze-mille francs a la banque. Messieurs, les cartes passent. Messieurs, les cartes passent."

Turning to go, I encountered a friend, one of the race-weekers, but in a sense a friend.

"Going to play?" I asked.

"Not while Jimmy Pethel's taking the bank," he answered, with a laugh.

"Is that the man's name?"

"Yes. Don't you know him? I thought every one knew old Jimmy Pethel."

I asked what there was so wonderful about "old Jimmy Pethel" that every one should be supposed to know him.

"Oh, he's a great character. Has extraordinary luck--always."

I do not think my friend was versed in the pretty theory that good luck is the subconscious wisdom of them who in previous incarnations have been consciously wise. He was a member of the stock exchange, and I smiled as at a certain quaintness in his remark. I asked in what ways besides luck the "great character" was manifested. Oh, well, Pethel had made a huge "scoop" on the stock exchange when he was only twenty-three, and very soon had doubled that and doubled it again; then retired. He wasn't more than thirty-five now, And then? Oh, well, he was a regular all-round sportsman; had gone after big game all over the world and had a good many narrow shaves. Great steeple-chaser, too. Rather settled down now. Lived in Leicestershire mostly. Had a big place there. Hunted five times a week. Still did an occasional flutter, though. Cleared eighty-thousand in Mexicans last February. Wife had been a barmaid at Cambridge; married her when he was nineteen. Thing seemed to have turned out quite well. Altogether, a great character.

Possibly, thought I. But my cursory friend, accustomed to quick transactions and to things accepted "on the nod," had not proved his case to my slower, more literary intelligence. It was to him, though, that I owed, some minutes later, a chance of testing his opinion. At the cry of "Messieurs, la banque est aux encheres," we looked round and saw that the subject of our talk was preparing to rise from his place. "Now one can punt," said Grierson (this was my friend's name), and turned to the bureau at which counters are for sale. "If old Jimmy Pethel punts," he added, "I shall just follow his luck." But this lode-star was not to be. While my friend was buying his counters, and I was wondering whether I, too, could buy some, Pethel himself came up to the bureau. With his lips no longer pursed, he had lost his air of gravity, and looked younger. Behind him was an attendant bearing a big wooden bowl--that plain, but romantic, bowl supplied by the establishment to a banker whose gains are too great to be pocketed. He and Grierson greeted each other. He said he had arrived in Dieppe this afternoon, was here for a day or two. We were introduced. He spoke to me with empressement, saying he was a "very great admirer" of my work. I no longer disliked him. Grierson, armed with counters, had now darted away to secure a place that had just been vacated. Pethel, with a wave of his hand toward the tables, said:

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