The Irrational Knot Part 48

"Oh! You have done it in three moves. That is not fair. I won't play any more unless you take back that."

"No, I a.s.sure you it is not checkmate. My bishop should be at the other side for that. There! of course, that will do."

"What a noise Marmaduke makes over his cards! I hope the people next door will not hear him swearing."

"Impossible. You must not move that knight: it exposes your king. Do you know, I think there is a great charm about this house."

"Indeed? Yes, it is a pretty house."

"And this sunset hour makes it additionally so; Besides, it is inexpressibly sad to see you here, a perfectly happy and perfectly beautiful mistress of this romantic foreign home."

"What do you mean, Sholto?"

"I call it a foreign home because, though it is yours, I have no part nor lot in it. Remember, we are only playing at old times to-night.

Everything around, from the organ to the ring on your finger, reminds me that I am a stranger here. It seems almost unkind of you to regret nothing whilst I am full of regrets."

"Check," said Marian. "Mind your game, sir."

"Flippant!" exclaimed Douglas, impatiently moving his king. "I verily believe that if your husband were at the bottom of the Thames at this moment, you would fly off unconcernedly to some other nest, and break hearts with as much indifference as ever."

"I wish you would not make suggestions of that sort, Sholto. You make me uncomfortable. Something _might_ happen to Ned. I wish he were home.

He is very late."

"Happy man. You can be serious when you think about him. I envy him."

"What! Sholto Douglas stoop to envy any mortal! Prodigious!"

"Yes: it has come to that with me. Why should I not envy him? His career has been upward throughout. He has been a successful worker in the world, where I have had nothing real to do. When the good things I had been dreaming of and longing for all my life came in his path, he had them for the mere asking. I valued them so highly that when I fancied I possessed them, I was the proudest of men. I am humble enough now that I am beggared."

"You are really talking the greatest nonsense."

"No doubt I am. Still in love, Marian, you see. There is no harm in telling you so now."

"On the contrary, it is now that there is harm. For shame, Sholto!"

"I am not ashamed. I tell you of my love because now you can listen to me without uneasiness, knowing that it is no longer a.s.sociated with hope, or desire, or anything but regret. You see that I do not affect the romantic lover. I eat very well; I play chess; I go into society; and you reproach me for growing fat."

Marian bent over the chessboard for a moment to hide her face. Then she said in a lower voice, "I have thoroughly convinced myself that there is no such thing as love in the world."

"That means that you have never experienced it."

"I have told you already that I have never been in love, and that I dont believe a bit in it. I mean romantic love, of course."

"I verily believe that you have not. The future has one more pang in store for me; for you will surely love some day."

"I am getting too old for that, I fear. At what age, pray, did you receive the arrow in your heart?"

"When I was a boy, I loved a vision. The happiest hours of my life were those in which I was slowly, tremulously daring to believe that I had found my vision at last in you. And then the dreams that followed! What a career was to have been mine! I remember how you used to reproach me because I was austere with women and proud with men. How could I have been otherwise? I contrasted the gifts of all other women with those of my elect, and the lot of all other men with my own. Can you wonder that, doing so, I carried my head among the clouds? You must remember how unfamiliar failure was to me. At school, at Oxford, in society, I had sought distinction without misgiving, and attained it without difficulty. My one dearest object I deemed secure long before I opened my lips and asked expressly for it. I think I walked through life at that time like a somnambulist; for I have since seen that I must have been piling mistake upon mistake until out of a chaos of meaningless words and smiles I had woven a Paphian love temple. At the first menace of disappointment--a thing as new and horrible to me as death--I fled the country. I came back with only the ruins of the doomed temple. You were not content to destroy a ruin: the feat was too easy to be glorious. So you rebuilt it in one hour to the very dome, and lighted its altars with more than their former radiance. Then, as though it were but a house of cards--as indeed it was nothing else--you gave it one delicate touch and razed it to its foundations. Yet I am afraid those altar lamps were not wholly extinguished. They smoulder beneath the ruins still."

"I wonder why they made you the Newdigate poet at Oxford, Sholto: you mix your metaphors most dreadfully. Dont be angry with me: I understand what you mean; and I am very sorry. I say flippant things because I must. How _can_ one meet seriousness in modern society except by chaff?"

"I am not angry. I had rather you did not understand. The more flippant you are, the more you harden my heart; and I want it to be as hard as the nether millstone. Your pity would soften me; and I dread that."

"I believe it does every man good to be softened. If you ever really felt what you describe, you greatly over-estimated me. What can you lose by a little more softness? I often think that men--particularly good men--make their way through the world too much as if it were a solid ma.s.s of iron through which they must cut--as if they dared not relax their hardest edge and finest temper for a moment. Surely, that is not the way to enjoy life."

"Perhaps not. Still, it is the way to conquer in life. It may be pleasant to have a soft heart; but then someone is sure to break it."

"I do not believe much in broken hearts. Besides, I do not mean that men should be too soft. For instance, sentimental young men of about twenty are odious. But for a man to get into a fighting att.i.tude at the barest suggestion of sentiment; to believe in nature as something inexorable, and to aim at being as inexorable as nature: is not that almost as bad?"

"Do you know any such man? You must not attribute that sort of hardness to me."

"Oh no; I was not thinking of you. I was not thinking of anyone in fact.

I only put a case. I sometimes have disputes with Ned on the subject.

One of his cardinal principles is that there is no use in crying for spilt milk. I always argue that as irremediable disasters are the only ones that deserve or obtain sympathy, he might as well say that there is no use in crying for anything. Then he slips out of the difficulty by saying that that was just what he meant, and that there is actually no place for regret in a well-regulated scheme of life. In debating with women, men brazen out all the ridiculous conclusions of which they are convicted; and then they say that there is no use in arguing with a woman. Neither is there, because the woman is always right."

"Yes; because she suffers her heart to direct her."

"You are just as bad as the rest of your s.e.x, I see. Where you cannot withold credit from a woman, you give it to her heart and deny it to her head."

"There! I wont play any more," said Miss McQuinch, suddenly, at the other end of the room. "Have you finished your chess, Marian?"

"We are nearly done. Ring for the lamps, please, Nelly. Let us finish, Sholto."

"Whose turn is it to move? I beg your pardon for my inattention."

"Mine--no, yours. Stop! it must be mine. I really dont know."

"Nor do I. I have forgotten my game."

"Then let us put up the board. We can finish some other night."

It had become dark by this time; and the lamps were brought in whilst Douglas was replacing the chessmen in their box.

"Now," said Marian, "let us have some music. Marmaduke: will you sing Uncle Ned for us? We have not heard you sing for ages."

"I believe it is more than three years since that abominable concert at Wandsworth; and I have not heard you sing since," said Elinor.

"I forget all my songs--havnt sung one of them for months. However, here goes! Have you a banjo in the house?"

"No," said Marian. "I will play an accompaniment for you."

"All right. See here: you need only play these three chords. When one sounds wrong, play another. Youll learn it in a moment."

Marmaduke's voice was not so fresh, nor his fun so spontaneous, as at Wandsworth; but they were not critical enough to appreciate the difference: they laughed like children at him. Elinor was asked to play; but she would not: she had renounced that folly, she said. Then, at Douglas's request, Marian sang, in memory of Wandsworth, "Rose, softly blooming." When she had finished, Elinor asked for some old melodies, knowing that Marian liked these best. So she began gaily with The Oak and the Ash and Robin Adair. After that, finding both herself and the others in a more pathetic vein, she sang them The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington, and The Banks of Allan Water, at the end of which Marmaduke's eyes were full of tears, and the rest sat quite still. She paused for a minute, and then broke the silence with Auld Robin Gray, which affected even Douglas, who had no ear. As she sang the last strain, the click of a latchkey was heard from without. Instantly she rose; closed the pianoforte softly; and sat down at some distance from it. Her action was reflected by a change in their behavior. They remembered that they were not at home, and became more or less uneasily self-conscious. Elinor was the least disturbed. Conolly's first glance on entering was at the piano: his next went in search of his wife.

"Ah!" he said, surprised. "I thought somebody was singing."

"Oh dear no!" said Elinor drily. "You must have been mistaken."