“There—how stupid! Upon my word, I did not see your rook. Of course nobody but a fool would have put a queen there knowingly!”
She spoke excitedly, half expecting her antagonist to give her back the move.
“Nobody, of course,” said Knight serenely, and stretched out his hand towards his royal victim.
“It is not very pleasant to have it taken advantage of, then,” she said with some vexation.
“Club laws, I think you said?” returned Knight blandly, and mercilessly appropriating the queen.
She was on the brink of pouting, but was ashamed to show it; tears almost stood in her eyes. She had been trying so hard—so very hard—thinking and thinking till her brain was in a whirl; and it seemed so heartless of him to treat her so, after all.
“I think it is—” she began.
“What?”
—“Unkind to take advantage of a pure mistake I make in that way.”
“I lost my rook by even a purer mistake,” said the enemy in an inexorable tone, without lifting his eyes.
“Yes, but—” However, as his logic was absolutely unanswerable, she merely registered a protest. “I cannot endure those cold-blooded ways of clubs and professional players, like Staunton and Morphy. Just as if it really mattered whether you have raised your fingers from a man or no!”
Knight smiled as pitilessly as before, and they went on in silence.
“Checkmate,” said Knight.
“Another game,” said Elfride peremptorily, and looking very warm.
“With all my heart,” said Knight.
“Checkmate,” said Knight again at the end of forty minutes.
“Another game,” she returned resolutely.
“I’ll give you the odds of a bishop,” Knight said to her kindly.
“No, thank you,” Elfride replied in a tone intended for courteous indifference; but, as a fact, very cavalier indeed.
“Checkmate,” said her opponent without the least emotion.
Oh, the difference between Elfride’s condition of mind now, and when she purposely made blunders that Stephen Smith might win!
It was bedtime. Her mind as distracted as if it would throb itself out of her head, she went off to her chamber, full of mortification at being beaten time after time when she herself was the aggressor. Having for two or three years enjoyed the reputation throughout the globe of her father’s brain—which almost constituted her entire world—of being an excellent player, this fiasco was intolerable; for unfortunately the person most dogged in the belief in a false reputation is always that one, the possessor, who has the best means of knowing that it is not true.
In bed no sleep came to soothe her; that gentle thing being the very middle-of-summer friend in this respect of flying away at the merest troublous cloud. After lying awake till two o’clock an idea seemed to strike her. She softly arose, got a light, and fetched a Chess Praxis from the library. Returning and sitting up in bed, she diligently studied the volume till the clock struck five, and her eyelids felt thick and heavy. She then extinguished the light and lay down again.
“You look pale, Elfride,” said Mrs. Swancourt the next morning at breakfast. “Isn’t she, cousin Harry?”
A young girl who is scarcely ill at all can hardly help becoming so when regarded as such by all eyes turning upon her at the table in obedience to some remark. Everybody looked at Elfride. She certainly was pale.
“Am I pale?” she said with a faint smile. “I did not sleep much. I could not get rid of armies of bishops and knights, try how I would.”
“Chess is a bad thing just before bedtime; especially for excitable people like yourself, dear. Don’t ever play late again.”
“I’ll play early instead. Cousin Knight,” she said in imitation of Mrs. Swancourt, “will you oblige me in something?”
“Even to half my kingdom.”
“Well, it is to play one game more.”
“When?”
“Now, instantly; the moment we have breakfasted.”
“Nonsense, Elfride,” said her father. “Making yourself a slave to the game like that.”
“But I want to, papa! Honestly, I am restless at having been so ignominiously overcome. And Mr. Knight doesn’t mind. So what harm can there be?”
“Let us play, by all means, if you wish it,” said Knight.
So, when breakfast was over, the combatants withdrew to the quiet of the library, and the door was closed. Elfride seemed to have an idea that her conduct was rather ill-regulated and startlingly free from conventional restraint. And worse, she fancied upon Knight’s face a slightly amused look at her proceedings.
“You think me foolish, I suppose,” she said recklessly; “but I want to do my very best just once, and see whether I can overcome you.”
“Certainly: nothing more natural. Though I am afraid it is not the plan adopted by women of the world after a defeat.”
“Why, pray?”
“Because they know that as good as overcoming is skill in effacing recollection of being overcome, and turn their attention to that entirely.”
“I am wrong again, of course.”
“Perhaps your wrong is more pleasing than their right.”
“I don’t quite know whether you mean that, or whether you are laughing at me,” she said, looking doubtingly at him, yet inclining to accept the more flattering interpretation. “I am almost sure you think it vanity in me to think I am a match for you. Well, if you do, I say that vanity is no crime in such a case.”
“Well, perhaps not. Though it is hardly a virtue.”
“Oh yes, in battle! Nelson’s bravery lay in his vanity.”
“Indeed! Then so did his death.”
“Oh no, no! For it is written in the book of the prophet Shakespeare—
‘Fear and be slain? no worse can come to fight;
And fight and die, is death destroying death!’ ”
And down they sat, and the contest began, Elfride having the first move. The game progressed. Elfride’s heart beat so violently that she could not sit still. Her dread was lest he should hear it. And he did discover it at last—some flowers upon the table being set throbbing by its pulsations.
“I think we had better give over,” said Knight, looking at her gently. “It is too much for you, I know. Let us write down the position, and finish another time.”
“No, please not,” she implored. “I
