Tea for Two

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22670, 6 March 1937, Page 15 (Supplement)

Tea for Two

T'S a blame funny thing," said 1 Jimmie Frise, " that luck «*- hasn't been properly studied by 'science." '"Luck," I stated, "is a myth." "They've 'studied everything else," went on Jim. "Electricity and germs and everything. They can tell you to the fraction of a thousandth of an inch how thick a steel beam has to be *to stand so much weight. They knpw how far, to a quarter of a mile, it is to any number of stars that can't even be seen by the naked eve. Yet they don't know the first thing about luck. "Bat luck isn't real," I explained, "the way stars and bridges and germs "Not real?" cried Jimmie. "Good hentens!" "Of course it isn't," 1 told him. "It s only an imaginary thing, like thinking or beauty or love." "Why, luck," cried Jim, "is more real than we arc; more real than buildings or motor-cars or trees. "Why, luck is the reason we live or die. Luck is how we walk along the street or fall in love with our wives or get the right jobs. Luck'is the first low of life." "Tut, tut," I said. "My dear fellow," Jim said incredulously, "don't tell me you don't know about luck? How do you suppose the sun rises in the morning?" "Jim," I scoffed, "the sun rises according to immutable law; according to supreme laws of infinite universal balance; the laws of gravity and the mutual and eternal balance between all tbe heavenly bodies. The earth rotates on its axis. We see the sun

rise." . "Suppose," said Jim, something went wrong? Suppose the balance slipped?" . , "But it doesn't," I explained. "That's luck!" shouted Jim triumphantly. "Luck?" I laughed, "lou mean, it s luck that keeps the universe in balance?" said .Tim. "Just luck. Suppose something in all that eternal balance you talk about goes flooey? How does anything stay, the way it is? Just luck. How does anything change? How does anything happen? Just luck." "You mean," I argued, ' that if 1 decide to walk down to the corner store for a package of tobacco, that it is just luck if 1 get there?" "What else is it?" asked Jim. "What keeps a motor-car from going out of control suddenly and mounting the sidewalk and crushing you against the wall? Motor-cars do go out of control every day, don't they ? There s certainly nothing to cause you to belie\e that motor-cars don t go out of control. Well, what is it that preserves you from being crushed to death by a motor-car out of control, as you walk cheerfully down to the corner for some tobacco?" "All the probabilities in the world," I assured him. , "Probabilities," laughed Jim. ""A camouflage word for luck. I tell you, my boy, it's just luck that lets you buy that package of tobacco." ; You Can't Depend on Reason

"Well, if 1 thought all the care I take in this life," I said, "all the education I have struggled to acquire, all the laws and rules I have humbly and patiently learned, all the work and toil I submit to in order to achieve a certain end were dependent upon a sudden whim ..."

"What good is, your education and care and toil," asked jimmie, "if suddenly it is your luck to be. hit on the head by a milk bottle falling out of a ten-storey window as you walk along the street?" "You make me very uneasy, Jim," I'declared. "Everybody should feel uneasy, stated Jim. "Why shouldn't they? Heie we. spend our millions and billions and devote tens of thousands of our best brains studying comparatively silly and uniriiportant things like engineering and physics and chemistry, when the great thing in our lives, in all human affniis, is luck. We should have been studying luck for the past five hundred years, not engineering. What's the use of wasting a hundred j*cars studying how to build bridges big enough to carry fifty thousand people across a river when we don't know if there is good luck or bad luck waiting for them on the other side of the river?"

"But Jim," I begged, "how on earth are you going to study luck?" If you mean the law of averages, that has all been worked out ages ago." ' "I mean luck," said Jim. "There are hints of how to study luck in all nations and in all times. A thousand rules have come down to us from past ages, about walking under ladders and black cats and all that sort of thing. Those are not likely to be idle gossip. Like in religion and law and so forth, most of what has come down to us from'the past has some basis of truth in it. It s the essence of a people's experience, if we .believe religion, why shouldn't we believe these other things, like lucky stones and horseshoes?" "Childish, Jim," 1 assured him. "On the other hand," said Jim, "I •think they are grown up, and it is .childish to disbelieve them. If it has been the experience of many men, over many generations, that a horseshoe is lucky, i am inclined to believe there is something in it." '"Preposterous," I cried. "How could a horseshoe bring luck? It doesn't stand to reason."

"Neither docs this universal eternal balance among the stars," said Jim. '/Neither did it stand to reason in the opinion of all the bigwigs of the timo when electricity was first discovered, or ■when the first man thought the earth was round. Reason is not believing. Reason never discovered anything since the beginning of Reason says things can't be done. And then comes Columbus or somebody." "Tuesday Your Lucky Day" "Yeah," I snorted, "but Columbus •didn't put his faith irt horseshoes." "I bet ho not only had horseshoes nailed all over the Santa Maria," cried Jim, "but 1 bet he had lucky things tied to the bowsprit, the lucky ilags flying from the masthead and he was ■wearing lucky tokens and charms around his neck. At that, how do we *now that the whole success of ColumD\is in not being blown back by adverse winds to the coast of Ireland and giving *'P'liis dream entirely was due to some obscure deck hand or maybe the cook, lyho had a lucky stone with a hole in it?"

1 cried, "maybe nothing in the world is due to what we think it is

due, but to something else? Like Napoleon. Maybe Napoleon wasn't the great big shot we think lie was. Maybe he had a housemaid or somebody who carried a specially lucky rabbit's foot?" "Now you've got it," agreed Jim. "Or maybe the success of a great industry like a bank or a chain of stores or something," 1 insisted, "isn't due to tile brains and energy of the men we imagino were the builders. Maybe all the success is due to some unimportant clerk or cleaner or elevator man who has been with the business all along and wore a charm around his neck."

"I think it's far more likoly," said Jim, "than that anybody's brains ever accomplished the wonders we see in the world to-dav."

"You make me lapgh," I said, but I Mas not laughing. When you come to think of it, how does anything happen? "How do I get a horseshoe," I inquired. "You have to find one," said Jim. "On the road." "But they're hard to find," I said. "If you're lucky, you'll find one," said Jim. ""Where can we find out about luck?" I asked. "There's all kinds of ways," said Jim. "You can look up superstition in an encyclopaedia. That's written by a lot of guys who use reason. The people who believe aro out in the world doing things. The ones that don't believe are staying home writing encyclopaedias. But the best way is to talk to old ladies. Or gipsies. Or consult a palm reader or a tea-cup reader." "I'd feel silly," I said. .

"You can have lunch in lots of places," said Jim, "where they have tea-cup readers, right there, part of tlio lunch."

Which explains how Jimmie and I had lunch at a certain tea room and the lady, as soon as we had finished our liver and bacon, came and sat at our table.

"Finish your tea," slip said, "and turn the cup upside down on the saucer. Then turn the cup around three times, away from you." "MV friend first," said Jim.

She was a perfectly gentle lady, with a kind face and a far-away look as if she was planning what to give her husband "and children for supper. I turned my cup upside down and twisted it three times.

The lady placed her hand on it, reverently, and picked it up slowly.

"Ah," she said. "Birds. Birds flying everywhere. This is a very happy cup." "Lucky?'.' I asked. "Very lucky, indeed," she said. "First, though, I see you are going to meet, almost immediately, a tall dark man with glasses. Then a fair lady, very good looking, is going to eonie into your life very surprisingly. In fact, this lady is going to give you a shock of some sort "

"Mmmmmmm," said I, trying to think of any beautiful blonde ladies in my life. Mine are all dark.

"Money," said the lady. "Money. I see you are going to come very unexpectedly into money." "Much money?" I inquired. "A great deal of it," said the lady. "Are you a soldier, by any chance?" "No, ma'am, not now," T said. "Not in the regiments or anything? Do you work in a gas station? Have jon any kind of uniform at .-ill?" "No ma'am," I said. "I hate uniforms of all kinds." "I see uniforms in this cup," said the lady, earnestly. "Uniforms very near and very important." "How about luck?" I asked. "Is there anything I should do, horseshoes, or black cats or anything?" "Tuesday," said the lady, "is your lucky day. Navy blue is you colour.

Blonde women are important to you, on Tuesday, especially, if they wear navy blue." "No horseshoes?" "No," said the lady. She took Jim's cup, after turning it dreamily around three times and resting her hand that same religious way on top of it, as if to sense its contents. "Ah," sho said, "birds again. Many birds. News. Something imminent. Something near. 1 see a tall dark man with glasses. Shiny glasses. And this is strange, a blonde woman, who is going to play an unexpected part in your affairs." "Same as me," I said.

"Are you sure," she asked, looking up at him very doubtfully, "you aren't car conductors or chauffeurs, or something like that? 1 see uniforms in this cup too. Uniforms, very large and iirfportant "

"We're just loafers, lady," said Jim. "Wo live by telling stories and drawing things in the dust of window panes and that sort of thing. No., lady, we have no uniforms, and we're too old to go to the next war."

"I never saw cups," said tho lad\\ "so full of news, immediate news, and so full of excitement and blonde ladies and uniforms. Why, it's like a movie with Jeanette Mac Donald in it and Maurice Chevalier."

She was flushed with pleasure, and I leaned over to see what she could see in the cup. All I could see were about sixteen damp-looking tea leaves. And a couple of teaspoons of unmelted sugar!

"Tuesday," she said, "is you lucky day, too."

" The Police are Here "

"Pardon me," said the waitress, quietly, bending down, "but have either of vou two gentlemen got car number 4G.384.

"That's mine," I said. "There's a gentleman at the door to see you," said the waitress. "I'm through anyway," said the lady of tho tea cups. Jim came with mo to the door where in the hall, a man was waiting. He was tall. He was dark. And wore shining spectacles. "Oh, pardon me," he said, "but your car has humped into another car out here . . . "

"We dashed down the steps. I had parked just a few car lengths south of the tea rooms. .1 could see my car had moved and a little throng of people vere gathered around it, farther down the street.

We pushed into the group. "Excuse me," I said, cheerily, "my car."

"Your car?" cried a lady

She was tall and lean and blonde. She was well dressed in navy blue and stylish. She was angry and her eyes were dark with bad temper. "You left your car," she said, "with no hand brake on. Apparently, you left it propped against a car ahead of it. That car pulls out. Your car starts to roll and smashes into my car. Look." The fender of her bright blue roadster was crumpled. A polished blue luggage box on the back was bunted in. "In that trunk," said the lady, "J had a Serves vase I bought at auction and it is smashed.

Short Story

By GREGORY CLARK

"Mnun, ramm," I said, shaking my head. "1 want your name and address," said tho lady. She was one of those high-class ladies, lean, stylish, accustomed all her life to what she wanted, and I don't know how they ever get anybody to live with them. "Here's my card, lady," I said. "1 am going to send you a bill*for all this damage," she cried, in that loud, emphatic voice they get at a lady's finishing school, "and you are going to pay every cent of it, or I am going to chase you through all the courts in the country." "We'll see," I said, gently.

"See':'" she barked. My, what an old wolf hound she will be in ten years, 1 thought. "We'll sec, madam," I assured her. "How do L know somebody didn't push my car from behind? How do either of us know somebody who doesn't like you deliberately y;ot behind my car and rammed it into yours?"

"Call the police," she commanded the crowd in general. "This man is mad." But 1 could already see the heads of two policemen, a helmeted one and a motor traffic cop in his flat cap. They waved the crowd away. Uniforms.

"You can see for yourself what happened," said the lady haughtily to the cops as if she had cops to breakfast every i'.ow days. "He left his car on this grade with no brake on. Probably rested its nose against a car ahead. Cars pull cut. His car rolls down and bashes mine, including a priceless Sevres vase I just bought at an auction sale." The cops eyed me heavily and took out their note books.

"His name . . ." said the lady lifting the card to her nose. She stared at my card. "Do you," she demanded, "own tho hound Battledore Midnight of Sunrise?" "He'd be the best hound I ever owned," I admitted. 9 "I've got his two sons," said the lady, warmly, seizing my hand and waving it violently around, "Battle Cry and Blue Midnight. What a small world it is?" "Ah, you'd be Miss . . . nwnh . . .?" "Yes," she cried. "And as for all this silly business, you cops beat it. Go on you folks. Two old friends have just met." "But you must let mo settle for the vase." I said, amiably, "as one dog fancier to another."

"Nonsense," she yelled, "all I got it for was to throw at cats out the window or make a scene with it. Nonsense."

We parted without kissing, but we slapped each other on the back and shoved each other around in that hearty upper class way, and drove off. Jimmie and I, with lifted hat?, watched her vanish, her bashed-in car waggling gallantly off into the.traffic. "Jim," I said thinly, "dark man with glasses; blonde lady in navy blue; uniforms, cops; urgent, exciting news." "Where's the money?" asked Jim. "Maybe that Sevres vase," 1 said "would have cost me about fifty quid. If I don't have to pay it I'm in some unexpected money, am 1 not?" "You don't own any hound," said Jim. "Mine is a common name," T said. "You can't do this," said Jim. "1 gave her my card," I said. "I saw her throw it away," said Jim. "She hasn't any luck," I said. "This is Tuesday." "Money not spoilt is monoy found."