by Thomas Hardy
The two cautious elders suggested an immediate return, and proceeded to put it in practice as regarded themselves.
‘Dear me, I wish I had not come up,’ exclaimed Mrs. Swancourt.
‘We shall be slower than you two in going down,’ the vicar said over his shoulder, ‘and so, don’t you start till we are nearly at the bottom, or you will run over us and break our necks somewhere in the darkness of the turret.’
Accordingly Elfride and Knight waited on the leads till the staircase should be clear. Knight was not in a talkative mood that morning. Elfride was rather wilful, by reason of his inattention, which she privately set down to his thinking her not worth talking to. Whilst Knight stood watching the rise of the cloud, she sauntered to the other side of the tower, and there remembered a giddy feat she had performed the year before. It was to walk round upon the parapet of the tower — which was quite without battlement or pinnacle, and presented a smooth flat surface about two feet wide, forming a pathway on all the four sides. Without reflecting in the least upon what she was doing she now stepped upon the parapet in the old way, and began walking along.
‘We are down, cousin Henry,’ cried Mrs. Swancourt up the turret. ‘Follow us when you like.’
Knight turned and saw Elfride beginning her elevated promenade. His face flushed with mingled concern and anger at her rashness.
‘I certainly gave you credit for more common sense,’ he said.
She reddened a little and walked on.
‘Miss Swancourt, I insist upon your coming down,’ he exclaimed.
‘I will in a minute. I am safe enough. I have done it often.’
At that moment, by reason of a slight perturbation his words had caused in her, Elfride’s foot caught itself in a little tuft of grass growing in a joint of the stone-work, and she almost lost her balance. Knight sprang forward with a face of horror. By what seemed the special interposition of a considerate Providence she tottered to the inner edge of the parapet instead of to the outer, and reeled over upon the lead roof two or three feet below the wall.
Knight seized her as in a vice, and he said, panting, ‘That ever I should have met a woman fool enough to do a thing of that kind! Good God, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!’
The close proximity of the Shadow of Death had made her sick and pale as a corpse before he spoke. Already lowered to that state, his words completely over-powered her, and she swooned away as he held her.
Elfride’s eyes were not closed for more than forty seconds. She opened them, and remembered the position instantly. His face had altered its expression from stern anger to pity. But his severe remarks had rather frightened her, and she struggled to be free.
‘If you can stand, of course you may,’ he said, and loosened his arms. ‘I hardly know whether most to laugh at your freak or to chide you for its folly.’
She immediately sank upon the lead-work. Knight lifted her again. ‘Are you hurt?’ he said.
She murmured an incoherent expression, and tried to smile; saying, with a fitful aversion of her face, ‘I am only frightened. Put me down, do put me down!’
‘But you can’t walk,’ said Knight.
‘You don’t know that; how can you? I am only frightened, I tell you,’ she answered petulantly, and raised her hand to her forehead. Knight then saw that she was bleeding from a severe cut in her wrist, apparently where it had descended upon a salient corner of the lead-work. Elfride, too, seemed to perceive and feel this now for the first time, and for a minute nearly lost consciousness again. Knight rapidly bound his handkerchief round the place, and to add to the complication, the thundercloud he had been watching began to shed some heavy drops of rain. Knight looked up and saw the vicar striding towards the house, and Mrs. Swancourt waddling beside him like a hard-driven duck.
‘As you are so faint, it will be much better to let me carry you down,’ said Knight; ‘or at any rate inside out of the rain.’ But her objection to be lifted made it impossible for him to support her for more than five steps.
‘This is folly, great folly,’ he exclaimed, setting her down.
‘Indeed!’ she murmured, with tears in her eyes. ‘I say I will not be carried, and you say this is folly!’
‘So it is.’
‘No, it isn’t!’
‘It is folly, I think. At any rate, the origin of it all is.’
‘I don’t agree to it. And you needn’t get so angry with me; I am not worth it.’
‘Indeed you are. You are worth the enmity of princes, as was said of such another. Now, then, will you clasp your hands behind my neck, that I may carry you down without hurting you?’
‘No, no.’
‘You had better, or I shall foreclose.’
‘What’s that!’
‘Deprive you of your chance.’
Elfride gave a little toss.
‘Now, don’t writhe so when I attempt to carry you.’
‘I can’t help it.’
‘Then submit quietly.’
‘I don’t care. I don’t care,’ she murmured in languid tones and with closed eyes.
He took her into his arms, entered the turret, and with slow and cautious steps descended round and round. Then, with the gentleness of a nursing mother, he attended to the cut on her arm. During his progress through the operations of wiping it and binding it up anew, her face changed its aspect from pained indifference to something like bashful interest, interspersed with small tremors and shudders of a trifling kind.
In the centre of each pale cheek a small red spot the size of a wafer had now made its appearance, and continued to grow larger. Elfride momentarily expected a recurrence to the lecture on her foolishness, but Knight said no more than this —
‘Promise me NEVER to walk on that parapet again.’
‘It will be pulled down soon: so I do.’ In a few minutes she continued in a lower tone, and seriously, ‘You are familiar of course, as everybody is, with those strange sensations we sometimes have, that our life for the moment exists in duplicate.’
‘That we have lived through that moment before?’
‘Or shall again. Well, I felt on the tower that something similar to that scene is again to be common to us both.’
‘God forbid!’ said Knight. ‘Promise me that you will never again walk on any such place on any consideration.’
‘I do.’
‘That such a thing has not been before, we know. That it shall not be again, you vow. Therefore think no more of such a foolish fancy.’
There had fallen a great deal of rain, but unaccompanied by lightning. A few minutes longer, and the storm had ceased.
‘Now, take my arm, please.’
‘Oh no, it is not necessary.’ This relapse into wilfulness was because he had again connected the epithet foolish with her.
‘Nonsense: it is quite necessary; it will rain again directly, and you are not half recovered.’ And without more ado Knight took her hand, drew it under his arm, and held it there so firmly that she could not have removed it without a struggle. Feeling like a colt in a halter for the first time, at thus being led along, yet afraid to be angry, it was to her great relief that she saw the carriage coming round the corner to fetch them.
Her fall upon the roof was necessarily explained to some extent upon their entering the house; but both forbore to mention a word of what she had been doing to cause such an accident. During the remainder of the afternoon Elfride was invisible; but at dinner-time she appeared as bright as ever.
In the drawing-room, after having been exclusively engaged with Mr. and Mrs. Swancourt through the intervening hour, Knight again found himself thrown with Elfride. She had been looking over a chess problem in one of the illustrated periodicals.
‘You like chess, Miss Swancourt?’
‘Yes. It is my favourite scientific game; indeed, excludes every other. Do you play?’
‘I have played; though not lately.’
‘Challenge him, Elfride,’ said the vicar heartily. �
��She plays very well for a lady, Mr. Knight.’
‘Shall we play?’ asked Elfride tentatively.
‘Oh, certainly. I shall be delighted.’
The game began. Mr. Swancourt had forgotten a similar performance with Stephen Smith the year before. Elfride had not; but she had begun to take for her maxim the undoubted truth that the necessity of continuing faithful to Stephen, without suspicion, dictated a fickle behaviour almost as imperatively as fickleness itself; a fact, however, which would give a startling advantage to the latter quality should it ever appear.
Knight, by one of those inexcusable oversights which will sometimes afflict the best of players, placed his rook in the arms of one of her pawns. It was her first advantage. She looked triumphant — even ruthless.
‘By George! what was I thinking of?’ said Knight quietly; and then dismissed all concern at his accident.
‘Club laws we’ll have, won’t we, Mr. Knight?’ said Elfride suasively.
‘Oh yes, certainly,’ said Mr. Knight, a thought, however, just occurring to his mind, that he had two or three times allowed her to replace a man on her religiously assuring him that such a move was an absolute blunder.
She immediately took up the unfortunate rook and the contest proceeded, Elfride having now rather the better of the game. Then he won the exchange, regained his position, and began to press her hard. Elfride grew flurried, and placed her queen on his remaining rook’s file.
‘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 should not rest if I did not know the result at once. It is your move.’
Ten minutes passed.
She started up s
uddenly. ‘I know what you are doing?’ she cried, an angry colour upon her cheeks, and her eyes indignant. ‘You were thinking of letting me win to please me!’
‘I don’t mind owning that I was,’ Knight responded phlegmatically, and appearing all the more so by contrast with her own turmoil.
‘But you must not! I won’t have it.’
‘Very well.’
‘No, that will not do; I insist that you promise not to do any such absurd thing. It is insulting me!’
‘Very well, madam. I won’t do any such absurd thing. You shall not win.’
‘That is to be proved!’ she returned proudly; and the play went on.
Nothing is now heard but the ticking of a quaint old timepiece on the summit of a bookcase. Ten minutes pass; he captures her knight; she takes his knight, and looks a very Rhadamanthus.
More minutes tick away; she takes his pawn and has the advantage, showing her sense of it rather prominently.
Five minutes more: he takes her bishop: she brings things even by taking his knight.
Three minutes: she looks bold, and takes his queen: he looks placid, and takes hers.
Eight or ten minutes pass: he takes a pawn; she utters a little pooh! but not the ghost of a pawn can she take in retaliation.
Ten minutes pass: he takes another pawn and says, ‘Check!’ She flushes, extricates herself by capturing his bishop, and looks triumphant. He immediately takes her bishop: she looks surprised.
Five minutes longer: she makes a dash and takes his only remaining bishop; he replies by taking her only remaining knight.
Two minutes: he gives check; her mind is now in a painful state of tension, and she shades her face with her hand.
Yet a few minutes more: he takes her rook and checks again. She literally trembles now lest an artful surprise she has in store for him shall be anticipated by the artful surprise he evidently has in store for her.
