THE WHITE ROOK.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 5, 29 April 1893, Page 13

THE WHITE ROOK.

(From Harper’s Weekly.) Chapter 111. To scan the future with profit, we must first look into the past. Certain commentaries on this text were bestowed one fine morning by Jason Willoughby upon a young electrical engineer, Thomas Dale. It was not altogether chance that brought Dale to the other’s notice. Willoughby was interested in a telephone company. He wanted some explanations, and the officers sent Dale to make them. Then Willoughby found that Dale, besides being a skilled electrician, was a fairish chess player. But he had known before that Dale was an admirer of his niece Bessie Willoughby. The two were playing chess on this occasion in Willoughby’s grim oldfashioned library, and their talk ran thus : “ Check!” “ Um —I see —but —” “You should have foreseen,” “ But against so strong a player —” “ The greater reason. You should do better. You have the mathematical faculty. You have also imagination. This is the essential combination.” “Yet you give me a rook and win with ease. There, were those who once gave a rook to Paul Morphy. It was not for long, truly. But even genius must creep before it walks.” The speakers were a man of seventy and a man of thirty. Sunset and sunrise. Each was studying the other. In this game, as in the other, the older man was at great advantage. He had lived, he had suffered, he had feminine intuitions, and he foresaw things. Early in life he had gone to California—for the golden fleece, as he laughingly said. He had brought back a great deal of money. Then he went into Wall Street, and, for a wonder, brought a great deal more out of that. No one knew how much in either case. There was one, however, who shrewdly suspected, Richard Barton, of whom we have seen something, and shall see more. Mr Barton, devoured by envy and curiosity as to this precious money, watched its owner like a lynx. Among other things contributing to his ends, he made some study of the science of catoptrics. He discovered that by the arrangement of mirrors in the library and the room adjoining, he could see, when the connecting door was open, Willoughby’s chess table. A white rook, the piece the old man usually gave as odds, was thus not in regular use. One day Barton thus saw Willoughby, who was alone, take this piece from a drawer. There was nothing strange in that. He might need it to set uj3 a position. What was strange, however, was the fact that Willoughby began apparently to dissect the chessman, or take it to pieces. The set was of the largest club size, and “loaded”—there was lead, that is to say, run into a cavity in the base.

Mr Barton was profoundly interested when he saw Willoughby detach the cloth that covered the bottom of the rook, and then, with some instrument, extract the lead; but the spy’s emotion become almost uncontrollable when he beheld the other place a compressed paper in the cavity, and, restoring .the lead, glue the cloth back in its original place. We may be sure that Mr Barton seized the first chance when alone in

the library to have a look at tbe White Rook. But it was gone. The drawer where it usually lay was empty. It was seen no more. But Barton, Very naturally, ' from that time forward connected’ the White Rook with the disposition of Jason Willoughby’s fortune. Willoughby was a handsome man, •with beautiful dark eyes, snow-white hair, heavy black eye-brows, and a complexion like old ivory. He was, moreover*, tall and erect, although he moved slowly, and, to add to his .other secrets, had an incurable disease. Bale was middle height, sturdy, •deep-voiced, with curling chestnut hair, and frank blue eyes. “You speak of great masters,” he said, “professionals. Of course no amateurs could ever compare with them.”

“ Oh, yes, often. Buckle made even {games with Staunton, when tbe English champion was at his best —the . time of his match with St. Amant; Cochrane often defeated the most formidable of the professionals ; Cunningham the historian was very Strong; and Morphy himself can hardly be classed with the professionals. He was bred a lawyer, and was drawn into chess by his astonishing skill, which early won him a towering reputation.” . “ I have, however, heard,” observed Bale, “ that he gave to study of chess a vast deal of time in his boyhood and youth.” True,” returned Willoughby; “and you touch there a grave danger about the game. 'lt is called' ‘ royal,’ but there is no royal road to success to it. Excellence at chess is apt to cost too much. It consumes time which, in most cases, 1 had better be given to other things. In my case, it matters little. lam old, and have nothing to gain or look for. Books and chess have become almost my sole mental resources. With you, it is different. In a word, I should be sorry to have you give the time to the game that you would have to give to overcome the odds at which you and I now play,” “Boes Mr Harding play?” asked Bale, as he rearranged the men. , “I think not,” answered the other. “He is a fashionable Hew-Yorker. He would probably say —: indeed I have heard him say—that it was too much like hard work.” “He does not look,” said Bale, without malice, “ as if he cared much for work.” “But,” pursued Willoughby, “don’t you think him a very elegant person ? ” . Bale hesitated. His native candour must shape his talk even about trifles. “ He is always very well dressed,” he said, tentatively.

“ Hot well di'essed,” corrected his companion. ' “ There is a current mistake about that. Over-precision in dress, like over-precision in speech, is not a sign of breeding or culture, but of the lack qf it.”

All this was in Willoughby, an uncommon communicativeness. In general he was ! studiously reticent. He listened much, spoke little. To try to draw him out was to court; defeat; the result was sure to be the other 'way. But with Bale it was different. Bale had a message for him, whether he knew it or not. He wanted to know all about Bale himself. He wanted more to know about Bessie Willoughby. Willoughby had lived and suffered. Like most of us, he had succeeded when success was of little worth to him, and failed when it was of great. The death of his wife—a handsome wayward woman, who had a supreme faculty of destroying the comfort and peace of mind of those nearest to her -r- left him literally alone. The orphan child of a sister, and , the daughter of a dead brother, were his sole living relations. The former he took into • his house ; of the latter, because of an alienation that had its source years before, he took little notice. At the time we write of she was a humble teacher in a Brooklyn public school. Solitary and unsocial, he had tried to build up in Imogene an interest, a companionship, a comfort for the future. He had tried to win her heart, but only to discover that there was none to win. Thus—partly from indolence, partly from habit—their lives. flowed till the last without change. She cherished indefinable dreads, but knew no certainties. He went on with his chess and his books.

Apart from these, one project of a beneficent sort he often deeply meditated upon. It was the construction of a kind of splendid apartment-house —large, and replete with all that the latest science could provide for it—where educated persons of all professions might, in the order of their selection by appropriate trustees, enjoy refined homes at a very low rent. He would have the control of it—or his estate should have it after him—but it was to be stipulated that the property should pay no more than three per cent, upon its cost. Such was the scheme which, when he found suitable instruments, he meant to carry out. When stricken at last, Jason Willoughby knew, if none others did, what was coming. He was seated alone in the library, in his leathern chair, studying a chess problem. Suddenly he grew ashy pale; then he gave a gasp or two, cried “ Checkmate! ” faintly, and —with a smile on his lips—died. (To be continued.)