Clara and her father were both chess-players, and at the time at which our history begins, Clara had been teaching Madge the game for about six months.

‘Check!’ said Clara.

‘Check! after about a dozen moves. It is of no use to go on; you always beat me. I should not mind that if I were any better now than when I started. It is not in me.’

‘The reason is that you do not look two moves ahead. You never say to yourself, “Suppose I move there, what is she likely to do, and what can I do afterwards?”’

‘That is just what is impossible to me. I cannot hold myself down; the moment I go beyond the next move my thoughts fly away, and I am in a muddle, and my head turns round. I was not born for it. I can do what is under my nose well enough, but nothing more.’

‘The planning and the forecasting are the soul of the game. I should like to be a general, and play against armies and calculate the consequences of manoeuvres.’

‘It would kill me. I should prefer the fighting. Besides, calculation is useless, for when I think that you will be sure to move such and such a piece, you generally do not.’

‘Then what makes the difference between the good and the bad player?’

‘It is a gift, an instinct, I suppose.’

‘Which is as much as to say that you give it up. You are very fond of that word instinct; I wish you would not use it.’

‘I have heard you use it, and say you instinctively like this person or that.’

‘Certainly; I do not deny that sometimes I am drawn to a person or repelled from him before I can say why; but I always force myself to discover afterwards the cause of my attraction or repulsion, and I believe it is a duty to do so. If we neglect it we are little better than the brutes, and may grossly deceive ourselves.’

At this moment the sound of wheels was heard, and Madge jumped up, nearly over-setting the board, and rushed into the front room. It was the four-horse coach from London, which, once a day, passed through Fenmarket on its road to Lincoln. It was not the direct route from London to Lincoln, but the Defiance went this way to accommodate Fenmarket and other small towns. It slackened speed in order to change horses at the ‘Crown and Sceptre,’ and as Madge stood at the window, a gentleman on the box-seat looked at her intently as he passed. In another minute he had descended, and was welcomed by the landlord, who stood on the pavement. Clara meanwhile had taken up a book, but before she had read a page, her sister skipped into the parlour again, humming a tune.

‘Let me see—check, you said, but it is not mate.’

She put her elbows on the table, rested her head between her hands, and appeared to contemplate the game profoundly.

‘Now, then, what do you say to that?’

It was really a very lucky move, and Clara, whose thoughts perhaps were elsewhere, was presently most unaccountably defeated. Madge was triumphant.

‘Where are all your deep-laid schemes? Baffled by a poor creature who can hardly put two and two together.’

‘Perhaps your schemes were better than mine.’

‘You know they were not. I saw the queen ought to take that bishop, and never bothered myself as to what would follow. Have you not lost your faith in schemes?’

‘You are very much mistaken if you suppose that, because of one failure, or of twenty failures, I would give up a principle.’

‘Clara, you are a strange creature. Don’t let us talk any more about chess.’

Madge swept all the pieces with her hand into the box, shut it, closed the board, and put her feet on the fender.

‘You never believe in impulses or in doing a thing just because here and now it appears to be the proper thing to do. Suppose anybody were to make love to you—oh! how I wish somebody would, you dear girl, for nobody deserves it more—’ Madge put her head caressingly on Clara’s shoulder and then raised it again. ‘Suppose, I say, anybody were to make love to you, would you hold off for six months and consider, and consider, and ask yourself whether he had such and such virtues, and whether he could make you happy? Would not that stifle love altogether? Would you not rather obey your first impression and, if you felt you loved him, would you not say “Yes”?’

‘Time is not everything. A man who is prompt and is therefore thought to be hasty by sluggish creatures who are never half awake, may in five minutes spend more time in consideration than his critics will spend in as many weeks. I have never had the chance, and am not likely to have it. I can only say that if it were to come to me, I should try to use the whole strength of my soul. Precisely because the question would be so important, would it be necessary to employ every faculty I have in order to decide it. I do not believe in oracles which are supposed to prove their divinity by giving no reasons for their commands.’

‘Ah, well, I believe in Shakespeare. His lovers fall in love at first sight.’

‘No doubt they do, but to justify yourself you have to suppose that you are a Juliet and your friend a Romeo. They may, for aught I know, be examples in my favour. However, I have to lay down a rule for my own poor, limited self, and, to speak the truth, I am afraid that great men often do harm by imposing on us that which is serviceable to themselves only; or, to put it perhaps more correctly, we mistake the real nature of their processes, just as a person who is unskilled in arithmetic would mistake the processes of anybody who is very quick at it, and would be led away by them. Shakespeare is much to me, but the more he is to me, the more careful I ought to be to discover what is the true law of my own nature, more important to me after all than Shakespeare’s.’

‘Exactly. I know what the law of mine is. If a man were to present himself to me, I should rely on that instinct you so much despise, and I am certain that the balancing, see-saw method would be fatal. It would disclose a host of reasons against any conclusion, and I should never come to any.’

Clara smiled. Although this impetuosity was foreign to her, she loved it for the good which accompanied it.

‘You do not mean to say you would accept or reject him at once?’

‘No, certainly not. What I mean is that in a few days, perhaps in a shorter time, something within me would tell me whether we were suited to one another, although we might not have talked upon half-a-dozen subjects.’

‘I think the risk tremendous.’

‘But there is just as much risk the other way. You would examine your friend, catalogue him, sum up his beliefs, note his behaviour under various experimental trials, and miserably fail, after all your scientific investigation, to ascertain just the one important point whether you loved him and could live with him. Your reason was not meant for that kind of work. If a woman trusts in such matters to the faculty by which, when she wishes to settle whether she is to take this house or that, she puts the advantages of the larger back kitchen on one side and the bigger front kitchen on the other, I pity her.’

Mrs Hopgood at this moment came downstairs and asked when in the name of fortune they meant to have the tea ready.