“Come, Mary, let’s drop the baby question, and play chess,” said James, impatiently, as we discussed the visitor; “I’m tired of the subject.”
“Wait until tomorrow, and you will become interested too,” she responded.
“I like hearty little bread-and-butter girls,” said he, “but not such die-away misses as that. She looks to me as if she read Coleridge already. Children should be children, to please me.”
The repulsion was mutual. I, only, had noticed the strange effect wrought upon my pet by a sight of James, and knowing, as I did, the peculiarities of her temperament, it had astonished me, and aroused my curiosity. By the ill-humor with which he received any allusion to Lenore, I believed that James himself was conscious that the pure eyes of the child looked straight into the darker chambers of his heart, and was frightened by what she saw there. A young man who was gambling away his uncle’s property upon the credit of a daughter’s hand which he had not yet won, could not have a very easy conscience; and it was not a pleasant thing to be reminded of his delinquencies by the clear eyes of an innocent child. As he became absorbed in his game of chess, I sat studying his countenance, and thinking of many things. I wondered if his uncle and cousins were not aware of the change which was coming over him; that reckless, dissipated look which writes certain wrinkles in a young man’s face, overwritten in his by outer smiles, which could not hide the truth from a discerning eye. I asked myself if I could justify my course in keeping silence about what I had seen; it was my plainest duty to inform Mr. Argyll, not only on his account, but on James also. Such a knowledge, coming to his uncle, though it would be terribly mortifying to his nephew, might be the means of breaking his new fetters of habit before they were riveted upon him. Such, I felt, was my duty. At the same time, I shrunk from it, as a person situated as I was naturally would shrink; I was liable to have my motives misconstrued; to have it hinted that self-interest was prompting me to place James in a bad light. No, I couldn’t do it! For the hundredth time I came to this conclusion, against the higher voice of the absolute right. I was glad to strengthen myself in my weak course by remembering that Mr. Burton had requested my silence, and that I was not at liberty to betray his confidence. Looking at him, thinking these things, with my thoughts more in my eyes than they ought to have been had I been on my guard, James suddenly looked up and encountered my gaze. He pushed the board aside with an angry motion, which overthrew half the men and entirely disconcerted the game.
“Well, how do you like my looks, Richard?” the defiant eyes glittering with a will which overpowered my own, smiling a deadly smile which threatened me.
“How peevish you are, James! I believe you threw up the game because you saw I was checkmating you,” cried his cousin.
“That’s it, my dear child; I never would allow myself to be checkmated!”
“Then you shouldn’t play!”
“Oh, sometimes I allow women to win the game; but when I play with men, I never give up. The man who attempts the chances with me must prepare for defeat.”
“How generous you are to the witless sex,” said Mary, sarcastically. “I am much obliged to you, that you sometimes allow us to win. Just pick up that castle you have sent tumbling in ruins, if you please, sir—and don’t ask me to play chess for at least a fortnight.”
I perceived a threat in his words of which the girl was quite innocent; he was throwing down the gauntlet to me; again and again his air, his words, were such that I could put no other construction upon them. He was determined to misunderstand me—to look upon me as a person seeking to injure him. I was in his way—I must get out of it. This was the manner he put on to me. I felt that night, more than ever, the conviction that my connection with the Argylls was about to be broken. If James felt thus toward me, I should be unwilling to take a position which he regarded as belonging, of right, to himself. Worse than all, I felt that his treacherous nature was working secretly against me, and that his efforts had already told upon those whose love and respect was most precious to me.
Shortly after, I took my leave; he was so engrossed, with his back toward me, looking over some old engravings, that he did not turn to say good night. My room at my boardinghouse had a particularly cheerless air that evening; I felt lonely and embittered. My heart ached for sympathy. I resolved that, if a partnership was not offered on New Year’s, I would propose a visit to my mother, for whose love and encouragement I longed. The event of going away, too, would give Mr. Argyll the opportunity of declaring himself in one way or another.
Lenore’s visit was a decided success—in the way, too, which I had hoped for. Her fine and spiritual nature was drawn toward Eleanor in a manner which made the latter love her, and grow to feel a consolation in the touch of the little hand, the unsought kiss, and the silent sympathy which brought the child to sit hours by her side, saying nothing, but looking with wonder and reverence at a sorrow too deep for her young heart to fathom. Lenore frolicked with Mr. Argyll, chatted and sung with Mary; but she was always ready to leave
