Chapter VII: A Game at Chess

When Kate Rothwell promised to be Sidney Harding's wife she was very honestly in love with the handsome young fellow. But this happy frame of mind had been preceded by a period of revolt and disgust when she did not know him, and had resolved vaguely on a marriage--any marriage--which should fulfil certain conditions. And that she should be in love with the man she married was not one of them. In fact, the conditions were almost all negative ones. She had decreed that her husband should not be a conspicuous fool, should not be vicious, should not be repulsively vulgar, and should not be an unendurable bore. On the other hand he should be fairly well off. She did not demand a large fortune, she was inclined to rate the gift and prospect of making money as something more than the possession of a certain sum which its owner could do nothing but guard. Given a fairly cultivated man, and she felt that she would absolutely prefer that he should be engaged in some business which might grow and expand, stimulating the hopes and energies of all connected with it. The sterility and narrowness of life at Mitchelhurst had sickened her very soul. She was conscious of a fund of rebellious strength, and she demanded liberty to develop herself, liberty to live. She knew very well how women fared among the Rothwells. She had seen two of her father's sisters, faded spinsters, worshipping the family pride which had blighted them. Nobody wanted them, their one duty was to cost as little as possible. That they would not disgrace the Rothwell name was taken for granted. Kate used to look at their pinched and dreary faces, and recognise some remnants of beauty akin to her own. She listened to their talk, which was full of details of the pettiest economy, and remembered that these women had been intent on shillings and half-pence all their lives, that neither of them had ever had a five-pound note which she could spend as it pleased her. And their penurious saving had been for--what? Had it been for husband or child it would have been different, the half-pence would have been glorified. But they paid this life-long penalty for the privilege of being the Misses Rothwell of Mitchelhurst. Life with them was simply a careful picking of their way along a downward slope to the family vault, and it was almost a comfort to think that the poor ladies were safely housed there, with their dignity intact, while Kate was yet in her teens.

Later came the little episode of Minnie Newton and her admirer. Kate perceived her brother's indifference to the girl's welfare, and the brutality of his revenge on the man whose crime was his habit of chinking the gold in his waistcoat pocket. Probably, with her finer instincts, she perceived all this more clearly than did John Rothwell himself. She did not actively intervene, because, in her contemptuous strength, she felt very little pity for a couple whose fate was ostensibly in their own hands. Minnie was not even in love with Hayes, and Kate did not care to oppose her brother in order to force a pliant fool to accept a fortunate chance. She let events take their course, but she drew from them the lesson that her future depended on herself. And, miserably as life at Mitchelhurst was maintained, she was, perhaps, the first of the family to see that the time drew near when it would not be possible to maintain it at all, partly from the natural tendency of all embarrassments to increase, and partly from John Rothwell's character. He could not be extravagant, but he had a dull impatience of his father's minute supervision. Kate made up her mind that the crash would come in her brother's reign.

She had already looked round the neighbourhood of her home and found no deliverer there. Had there been any one otherwise suitable the Rothwell pride was so notorious that he would never have dreamed of approaching her. An invitation from a girl who had been a school friend offered a possible chance, and Kate coaxed the necessary funds from the old squire, defied her brother's grudging glances, and went, with a secret, passionate resolve to escape from Mitchelhurst for ever. She saw no other way. She was not conscious of any special talent, and she said frankly to herself that she was not sufficiently well educated to be a governess. Moreover, the independence which achieves a scanty living was not her ideal. She was cramped, she was half-starved, she wanted to stretch herself in the warmth of the world, and take its good things while she was young.

Fate might have decreed that she should meet Mr. Robert Harding, a successful man of business in the city, twenty years older than herself, slightly bald, rather stout, keen in his narrow range, but with very little perception of anything which lay right or left of the road by which he was travelling to fortune. The beautiful Miss Rothwell would have thanked Fate and set to work to win him. But it is not only our good resolutions that are the sport of warring chances. Our unworthy schemes do not always ripen into fact. Kate did not meet Mr. Robert Harding, she met his brother Sidney, a tall, bright-eyed, red-lipped young fellow, with the world before him, and the pair fell in love as simply and freshly as if the croquet ground at Balaclava Lodge were the Garden of Eden, or a glade in Arcady. In a week they were engaged to be married, and were both honestly ready to swear that no other marriage had ever been possible for either. To her he appeared with the golden light of the future about his head; to him she came with all the charm and shadowy romance of long descent, and of a poverty far statelier than newly-won wealth. Friends reminded Sidney that with his liberal allowance from his brother, and his prospect of a partnership at twenty-five, he might have married a girl with money had he chosen. Friends also mentioned to Kate, with bated breath, that the Hardings' father, dead twenty years earlier, had been a pork-butcher. Sidney laughed, and Kate turned away in scorn. She was absolutely glad that she could make what the world considered a sacrifice for her darling.

At Mitchelhurst her engagement, though not welcomed, was not strongly opposed. John Rothwell sneered as much as he dared, but he knew his sister's temper, and it was too like his own for him to care to trifle with it. So he stood aside, very wisely, for there was a touch of the lioness about Kate with this new love of hers, and he saw mischief in the eyes that were so sweet while she was thinking about Sidney. It was at that time that she spoke her word of half-scornful sympathy to Herbert Hayes.

And in a year her married life, with all its tender and softening influences, was over. An accident had killed Sidney Harding before he was twenty-five, before his child was born, and Kate was left alone in comparatively straitened circumstances. For her child's sake she endured her sorrow, demanding almost fiercely of God that He would give her a son to grow up like his dead father, and when the boy was born she called him Reynold. Sidney was too sacred a name; there could be but one Sidney Harding for her, but she remembered that he had once said that he wished he had been called Reynold, after his father.

It was pathetic to see her dark eyes fixed upon the baby features, trying to trace something of Sidney in them, trying hard not to realise that it was her own likeness that was stamped upon her child. "He is darker, of course," she used to say, "but--" He could not be utterly unlike his father, this child of her heart's desire! It was not possible--it must not be--it would be too monstrous a cruelty. But month by month, and year by year, the little one grew into her remembrance of her brother's solitary boyhood, and faced her with a moody temper that mocked her own. No one knew how long she waited for a tone or a glance which should remind her of her dead love, remind her of anything but the old days that she hated. None ever came. The boy grew tall and slim, handsome after the Rothwell type, with a curious instinctive avidity for any details connected with Mitchelhurst and his mother's people. He would not confess his interest, but she divined it and disliked it. And Reynold, on his side, unconsciously resented her eternal unspoken demand for something which he could not give. He would scowl at her over his shoulder, irritated by his certainty that her unsatisfied eyes were upon him. Mother and son were so fatally alike that they chafed each other continually. Every outbreak of temper was a pitched battle, the combatants knew the ground on which they fought, and every barbed speech was scientifically planted where it would rankle most.

A crisis came when it was decided that Reynold should leave school and go into his uncle's office. The boy did not oppose it by so much as a word; but as he stood, erect and silent, while Mr. Harding enlarged on his prospects, he looked aside for a moment, and Kate's keener eyes caught his contemptuous glance. To her it was an oblique ray, revealing his soul. He despised the Hardings; he was ashamed of his father's name. She did not speak, but in that moment with a pang of furious anguish she chose once and for ever between her husband and her son, and sealed up all her tenderness in Sidney's grave.

Reynold's stay in Robert Harding's office was short, but it was not unsatisfactory while it lasted. He never professed to like his work, but he went resignedly through the daily routine. He was not bright or interested, but he was intelligent. What was explained to him he understood, what was told him he remembered, as a mere matter of course. He acquiesced in his life in a city counting-house, as his grandfather at Mitchelhurst had acquiesced in his narrow existence there. It seemed as if the men of the family were apathetic and weary by nature, and only Kate had had energy enough to revolt.

An unexpected chance, the freak of a rich old man who had business relations with Robert Harding, and who remembered Sidney, made Reynold the possessor of a small legacy a few months after he had entered his uncle's service. He at once announced his intention of going to Oxford. Of course, as he said, without his mother's consent he could not go till he was of age, and if she chose to refuse it he must wait. Kate hesitated, but Mr. Harding, who was full of schemes for the advancement of his own son, did not care for an unwilling recruit, and the young fellow was coldly permitted to have his way. His mother, in spite of her disapproval, watched his course with an interest which she would never acknowledge. Was he really going to achieve success in his own fashion, perhaps to make the name she loved illustrious?

Nothing was ever more commonplace and unnoticeable than Reynold's university career. He spent his legacy, and came back as little changed as possible. It seemed as if he had felt that he owed himself the education of a gentleman, and had paid the debt, as a mere matter of course, as soon as he had the means. "What do you propose to do now?" Kate inquired. He answered listlessly that he had secured a situation as under-master in a school. And for three or four years he had maintained himself thus, making use of his mother's house in holiday time, or in any interval between two engagements, but never taking anything in the shape of actual coin from her. She suspected that he hated his drudgery, but he never spoke of it.

Thus matters might have remained if it had not been for Robert Harding's son. The old man, whose dream had been to found a great house of business which should bear his name when he was gone, was unlucky enough to have an idle fool for his heir. Reynold's record was not brilliant, but it showed blamelessly by the side of his cousin's folly and extravagance. Mr. Harding hinted more than once that his nephew might come back if he would, but his hints did not seem to be understood. Little by little it became a fixed idea with him that Reynold alone could save the name of Harding, and keep his cousin from utter ruin. He recognised a kind of scornful probity in his nephew, which would secure Gerald's safety in his hands, and perhaps he exaggerated the promise of Reynold's boyhood. At last he stooped to actual solicitation. Kate gave the letter to her son, silently, but with a breathless question in her eyes.

The old man offered terms which were almost absurdly liberal, but he tried to mask his humiliation by clothing the proposal in dictatorial speech. He gave Reynold a clear week in which to consider his reply, and almost commanded him to take that week. But Mr. Harding wrote, if in ten days he had not signified his acceptance, the situation would be filled up. He should give it, with the promise of the partnership, to a distant connection of his wife's. "Understand," said the final sentence, "that I speak of this matter for the first and last time."

"I think," said Reynold, looking round for writing materials, "that I had better answer this at once."

"Not to say 'No!'" cried Kate. "You shall not!" She stood before him, darkly imperious, with outstretched hand. It seemed to her as if the whole house of Harding appealed to her son for help. He was asked to do the work that Sidney would have done if he had lived. "You shall not insult him by refusing his offer without a moment's thought--I forbid it!" she exclaimed.

"Very well," said Reynold. "I will wait." He turned aside to the fire-place, and stood gazing at the dull red coals.

His mother followed him with her glance, and after a moment's silence she made an effort to speak more gently. "He is your father's brother," she said.

"Yes," Reynold replied, in an absent tone. "Such an offer couldn't come from the other side."

The words were a simple statement of fact, the utterance was absolutely expressionless, but a sudden flame leapt into Kate's eyes. "Answer when and as you please!" she cried. Her son said nothing.

He was waiting at the time to hear about a tutorship which had been mentioned to him. The matter was not likely to be settled immediately, and the next morning he appeared with his bag in his hand, and announced that he was going into the country for a few days, and would send his address. In due time the letter came with "Mitchelhurst" stamped boldly on it, like a defiance.

When Barbara Strange bade young Harding go and make his fortune, she did not know the curious potency of her advice. The words fell, like a gleam of summer sunshine, across a world of stony antagonisms and smouldering fires. And, with all the bright unconsciousness of sunshine, they transformed it into a place of life and hope. She had called her little cross her talisman, but Harding's talisman--for there are such things--was the folded letter in his pocketbook. As she stood beside him, flushed, eager, radiant, pleading with him, "Could not you care for Mitchelhurst, _if_--" she awakened a sudden craving for action, a sudden desire of possession in his ice-bound heart. To any other woman he could have been only Reynold Harding, a penniless tutor, recognised, perhaps, as a kind of degenerate offshoot of the Rothwell tree. But to Barbara he was the one remaining hope of the old family of which she had thought so much; he was the king who was to enjoy his own again, and her shining glances bade him go and conquer his kingdom without delay. And in Mitchelhurst Church, as he stood among his dead people, with the rain beating heavily on--

"The lichen-crusted leads above,"

he had made up his mind. He would cast in his lot with the Hardings till he should have earned the right to come back to the Rothwells' inheritance. He would do it, but not for the Rothwells' sake--for a sweeter sake--breathing and moving beside him in that place of tombs. He looked up at the marble countenance of his wigged ancestor, considering it thoughtfully, yet not asking himself if that dignified personage would have approved of his resolution. Reynold, as he stared at the aquiline features, wondered idly whether the lean-faced gentleman had ever known and loved a Barbara Strange, and whether he had kissed her with those thin, curved lips of his. Of course they were not as grimy and pale in real life as in their sculptured likeness. And yet it was difficult to picture him alive, with blood in his veins, stooping to anything as warm and sweet as Barbara's damask-rose mouth. It seemed to Reynold that only he and Barbara, in all the world, were truly alive, and he only since he had known her.

When he went back into the lanes alone, after leaving her at the gate, the full meaning of the decision which had swiftly and strangely reversed the whole drift of his life rushed upon him and bewildered him. He hastened away like one in a dream. It was as if he had broken through an encircling wall into light and air. Ever since his boyhood he had held his fancy tightly curbed, he had reminded himself by night and day that he had nothing, was nothing, would be nothing; in his fierce rejection of empty dreams he had chosen always to turn his eyes from the wonderful labyrinthine world about him, and to fix them on the dull grey thread of his hopeless life. Now for the first time in his remembrance he relaxed his grasp, and his fancy, freed from all control, flashed forward to visions of love and wealth. He let it go--why should he hinder it, since he had resolved to follow where it led? In this sudden exaltation his resolution seemed half realised in its very conception, and as he gathered the berries from the darkening hedgerows he felt as if they were his own, the first-fruits of his inheritance. He hurried from briar to briar under the pale evening sky, tearing the rain-washed sprays from their stems, hardly recognising himself in the man who was so defiantly exultant in his self-abandonment. Nothing seemed out of reach, nothing seemed impossible. When the darkness overtook him he went back with a triumphant rhythm in his swinging stride, feeling as if he could have gathered the very stars out of the sky for Barbara.

This towering mood did not last. It was in the nature of things that such loftiness should be insecure, and indeed Reynold could hardly have made a successful man of business had it been permanent. It would not do to add up Barbara and the stars in every column of figures. But the very fact of passing from the open heavens to the shelter of a roof had a sobering effect, the process of dressing for dinner recalled all the commonplace necessities of life, and in his haste he had a difficulty with his white necktie, which was distinctly a disenchantment. The shyness and reserve which were the growth of years could not be shaken off in a moment of passion. They closed round him more oppressively than ever when he found himself in the yellow drawing-room, face to face with Mr. Hayes, and, being questioned about his walk, he answered stiffly and coldly, and then was silent. Yet enough of the exaltation remained to kindle his eyes, though his lips were speechless, when he caught sight of Barbara standing by the fireside, with a cluster of blood-red berries in her hair, and another nestling in the dusky folds of lace close to her white throat. The vivid points of colour held his fascinated gaze, and seemed to him like glowing kisses.

He had a game of chess with his host after dinner. As a rule he was a slow and meditative player, scanning the pieces doubtfully, and suspecting a snare in every promising chance. But that evening he played as if by instinct, without hesitation. Everything was clear to him, and he pressed his adversary closely. Mr. Hayes frowned over his calculations, apprehending defeat, though the game as yet had taken no decisive turn. Presently Barbara came softly sweeping towards them in her black draperies, set down her uncle's coffee-cup at his elbow, and paused by Harding's side to watch the contest. Her presence sent a thrill through him which disturbed his clear perception of the game. It made a bright confusion in his mind, such as a ripple makes in lucid waters. He put out his hand mechanically towards the pawn which he had previously determined to move.

"Dear me!" said Barbara, strong in the traditional superiority of the looker-on, "why don't you move your bishop?"

Reynold moved his bishop.

Quick as lightning Mr. Hayes made his answering move, and, when it was an accomplished fact, he said--

"Thank you, Barbara."

Reynold and Barbara looked at each other. The aspect of affairs was entirely changed. A white knight occupied a previously guarded square, and simply offered a ruinous choice of calamities.

"Oh, what have I done?" the girl exclaimed.

Reynold laughed his little rough-edged laugh.

"Nothing," he said. "Don't blame yourself, Miss Strange. You only asked me why I didn't move my bishop. I ought to have explained why I _didn't_. Instead of which--I _did_. It certainly wasn't your fault."

Barbara lingered and bit her under-lip as she gazed at the board.

"I've spoilt your game," she said remorsefully. "I think I'd better go now I've done the mischief."

"No, don't go!" Harding exclaimed, and Mr. Hayes, rubbing his hands, chimed in with a mocking--

"No, don't go, Barbara!"

The girl looked down with an angry spark in her eyes.

"Well, I'll give you some coffee," she said to the young man; "you haven't had any yet."

"And then come back, Barbara!" her uncle persisted.

She did come back, flushed and defiant, determined to fight the battle to the last. But for her obstinacy Mr. Hayes would have had an easy triumph, for young Harding's defence collapsed utterly. Apparently he could not play a losing game, and a single knock-down blow discouraged him once for all. Barbara, taking her place by his side, showed twice his spirit, and at one time seemed almost as if she were about to retrieve his fallen fortunes. Mr. Hayes ceased to taunt her, and sat with a puckered forehead considering his moves. He kept his advantage, however, in spite of all she could do, and presently unclosed his lips to say "Check!" at intervals. But it was not till he had uttered the fatal "Mate!" that his face relaxed. Then he got up, and made his niece a little bow.

"Thank you, Barbara!" he said, and walked away to the fire-place.

The young people remained where he had left them. Barbara trifled with the chessmen, moving them capriciously here and there. Reynold, with his head on his hand, did not lift his eyes above the level of the board, but watched her slim fingers as they slipped from piece to piece, or lingered on the red-stained ivory. She brought back all their slain combatants, and set them up upon the battle-field.

"I wish I hadn't meddled!" she said suddenly. "I spoilt your game."

She spoke in a low voice, and Reynold answered in the same tone,

"What _did_ it matter?"

"No, but I hate to be beaten. I wanted you to win."

"Well," said he, still with his head down, "you set me to play a bigger game to-day."

"Ah!" said Barbara, decidedly. "I won't meddle with that!"

"No?" he said, looking up with a half-hinted smile. Her cheeks were still burning with the excitement of her long struggle, and her bright eyes met his questioning glance.

"Perhaps you think I can't help meddling?" she suggested.

"Perhaps you can't. You are superstitious, aren't you? You believe in amulets and that kind of thing--or half believe. Perhaps you are foredoomed to meddle, and destiny won't let you set me down to the game and go quietly away."

Barbara was holding the king between her fingers. She replaced it on its square so absently, while she looked at Reynold, that it fell. His words seemed to trouble her.

"Well, if this game is an omen, you had better not _let_ me meddle," she said at last.

"How am I to help it?"

"Thank you!" she exclaimed resentfully; "I'm not so eager to interfere in your affairs as you seem to take for granted!"

"Indeed I thought nothing of the kind. I thought we were talking of destiny. And, you see, you were good enough to take a little interest this afternoon."

She uttered a half-reluctant "Yes." She had a dim feeling that she was, in some inexplicable way, becoming involved in young Harding's fortunes.

The notion half-frightened, half-fascinated her. When they began their low-voiced talk she had unconsciously leaned a little towards him. Now she did not precisely withdraw, but she lifted her face, and there was a touch of shy defiance in the poise of her head.

Mr. Hayes, as he stood by the fire, was warming first one little polished shoe, and then the other, and contemplating the blazing logs.

"Barbara," he said suddenly, "did we have this wood from Jackson? It burns much better than the last."

Barbara was the little housekeeper again in a moment. She crossed the room, and explained that it was not Jackson's wood, but some of a load which Mr. Green had asked them to take. "You said I could do as I pleased," she added, "and I thought they looked very nice logs when they came."

"Green--ah! Jacob Green knows what he's about. Made you pay, I dare say. No, no matter." The girl's eyes had gone to a little table, where an account-book peeped out from under a bit of coloured embroidery. "I'm not complaining; I don't care about a few extra shillings, if things are good. Get Green to send you some more when this is burnt out."

Reynold had risen when Barbara left him, and after lingering for a moment, a tall black and white figure, in the lamplight by the chessboard, he followed her, and took up his position on the rug. The interruption to their talk had been unwelcome, but it was not, in itself, unpleasant. He liked to see Barbara playing the part of the lady of the Place. It was a sweet foreshadowing of the home, the dear home, that should one day be. There should be logs enough on the hearths of Mitchelhurst in October nights to come, and, though the fields and copses round might be wet and chill, the old house should be filled to overflowing with brightness and warmth and love. Some wayfarer, plodding along the dark road, would pause and look up the avenue, and see the lights shining in the windows beyond the leafless trees. Reynold pictured this, and pictured the man's feelings as he gazed. It was curious how, by a kind of instinct, he put himself in the outsider's place. He did not know that he always did so, but in truth he had never dreamed anything for himself till Barbara taught him, and his old way of looking at life was not to be unlearnt in a day. Still he was happy enough as he stood there, staring at the fire, and thinking of those illuminated windows.

He could not sleep when he went to bed that night. The head which he laid on the chilly softness of his pillow was full of a joyous riot of waking visions, and he closed his eyes on the shadows only to see a girl's shining glances and rose-flushed cheeks.