CHAPTER I.
Outside the city limits the country was glowing with garnet and gold, but within the boundary of walls and pavements, only here and there a solitary tree, or a vine trailing over a balcony, showed what October had been doing, and now the short autumn twilight was drawing its gray veil over even those. But nothing daunted, and as if determined to keep up for itself, the city began to sparkle here and there with an illumination of its own, and gas-lights began to gleam from one window after another, giving for the moment before the blinds were drawn, a free chance for a peep at the evening just beginning inside.
The light flashed from the windows of two houses at the same instant. One stood quite toward the outer limits of the city, and though its inmates and its furnishings were poor enough, it had a broad outlook over all the brilliant glory of the country round about, while a great old butternut-tree, knotted and gnarled by many a year, scattered its leaves in a golden shower over the roof and down the long yard leading to the road. The other fronted on one of the fashionable avenues of the city, where the square of grass before each door was only large enough for a single shrub, or a garden vase but inside, ivies twining fresh and green upon the walls, a conservatory window full of flowers, and the pleasant warmth of the crackling fire in the grate, seemed to balance the gayety of life outside, and make things very nearly equal again.
Whether the advantage was really on the side of the queer rambling old house under the butternut-tree, or belonged to himself, sitting in the ivied library of the brown stone front, Hal Fenimore was quite too busy to decide, as the servant reached his torch up to the chandelier, and with one burst after another the gas rushed to meet it, and the room flashed into a sudden burst of light.
“That’s good,” he exclaimed, as it flooded down upon the table where with elbows firmly planted, and his hands pushed through his hair, he had been impatiently waiting for his companion, Tom Haggarty, to make the next move in their game.
“I don’t know about it, though,” he added to himself, under his breath, as he discovered something to which he had been quite blind before, but which stood out so plainly now that he did not see how Tom could fail to see it for another moment. Everything had been going on swimmingly on his side, up to that moment; but there stood his queen in the very line of march of one of Tom’s bishops, and not a piece of any size to interfere! If Tom would only continue blind to his opportunity for one move more, till there should be time for a masterly retreat!
Poor little Tom! He did not look like an antagonist much to be dreaded, as he sat vis-a-vis to Hal, with not only an anxious, but a bewildered expression upon his face, first lifting a hand towards one of his pieces, and then withdrawing it, as if his uncertainty had only doubled by the movement. At last, in a sort of desperation, he made a plunge at his only remaining knight and moved it into a worse position than it occupied before. Then, still more hopelessly perplexed by Hal’s chuckle of triumph at the escape of his queen, and his taunting, “A’n’t you a bright fellow to play with!” he made two or three aimless moves, and Hal cried “Checkmate!” in a tone that completed his humiliation. It was very unpleasant somehow; he wondered if the player who did not checkmate always felt so. If he did, Tom certainly thought chess a very disagreeable game. So he slipped down from his chair and told Hal, who was still rejoicing in the conclusion of things, that he thought he must go.
“Don’t go,” said Hal, “let’s play another.”
“I guess I can’t; I guess I must go,” said Tom; and finding his hat, he got out of the front door, and heard it close behind him with a miserable feeling that seemed to run down to the very depths of his pockets, to the effect that Hal and himself had a clear understanding between them that he was a stupid little fellow, and that a good player was more than a match for him.
When Hal came back to the library, rubbing his hands with renewed triumph as he glanced at the chess-board, he also saw through the open door of the dining-room, that dinner had been brought in, and that his was the only vacant seat at the table.
So scrambling the pieces into their box, he made haste to take his place, apologizing for his tardiness by saying that he had been to the door with Tom.
“But, Hal,” said Mrs. Fenimore, as if a sudden thought struck her, “why don’t you sometimes invite one of the boys who know the game better? you seem always to have some little atom of a fellow who has not played three games in his life, and you have nothing to do but beat him.”
“That’s the very fun of it,” replied Hal; “I beat Tom all out just now, and sent him home feeling meaner than the fag end of nothing. That’s the way of course if you ever come across a fellow that isn’t smart enough to defend himself.”
“Why, Hal Fenimore! Do you say such a thing as that? You certainly never learned such principles at home, and I should be very sorry to think you had gathered them up since you came to be with your uncle and me.”
“I didn’t know it was principles,” said Hal, coming down a little from his high horse of complacency; “I never thought anything about it, in any way, only a fellow always likes to make another feel a little shabby if he can, because then he feels finer himself.”
“Why, Hal!” was all the lady could exclaim, as she turned to look closely in his face to see if he was really in earnest. “I wonder how you would have liked chess-playing if your uncle had taken that way to ‘feel fine’ as you call it, when he taught you? As far as I can recollect, he found his pleasure entirely in encouraging you, and helping you on over the rough places till you were able to stand by yourself.”
“Oh, that’s different,” said Hal. “Men don’t feel like boys. I suppose when I am a man, I shall teach my small nephews and nieces, and never see a mistake they make.”
“I don’t know about that,” said his uncle; “you’ll be pretty likely to find yourself a grown-up Hal Fenimore when that day comes, and your friends Tom Haggartys still, and nothing more or less. I give you fair warning. A good deal depends upon how you strike out with your pawns, in real life as well as in chess, my boy.”
“But men try to get ahead of each other, and they fight battles and get victories,” persisted Hal.
“I beg your pardon,” said his uncle, “high-minded men don’t like to fight battles with adversaries much weaker than themselves; and as for ‘getting ahead,’ that is a very different thing from standing still and crowing over some poor little companion that you have managed to push down.”
“Well,” said Hal, who found the discussion did not seem to turn very decidedly in his favor, “I only know how boys do; but one thing they have to look sharp for is having their lessons, and I must get to mine in a great hurry now, if you will excuse me.”
The library fire crackled and glowed in the grate until it almost seemed a pleasant thing that the evenings were getting frosty, and Hal soon forgot all questions of mutual rights, in the more pressing one of division of fractions, which took such complete possession of him that he started as if out of a dream, at the sound of his aunt’s voice saying, “I declare, Hal, I think I’ll invite Tom Haggarty here, and give him lessons every evening for a week. He’s a bright little fellow, and would be a match for you, if he didn’t beat you, in a very short time.”
Poor little Tom! If he could only have heard her say it, what a comfort it would have been! The miserable feeling that had come over him as he said Good-night to Hal, had stuck fast ever since, till he had fairly gone to bed to get rid of it, and was lying at that moment, with his little cold nose tucked away under the blankets, trying to smother the conviction that he was the stupidest and most insignificant fellow in the world, and that Hal would be sure to remind him of it at school the next day.
“Now, Aunt Melanie!” exclaimed Hal, “I can’t understand how you make so much of that game of chess. Tom will find a boy smaller than himself stumbling at his lesson to-morrow, and he’ll crow over him, as uncle calls it, and then that little one will find another pushed out at a game of ball and have his crow, and so they will all take their turns and come out even.”
“Take their turns at what?” said his uncle, looking up from his newspaper. “At putting on all manner of airs with themselves, when they have really done something contemptible, and then at being made to feel contemptible when perhaps they have done the best they could. It hurts either way, my boy, and it isn’t starting with your pieces in good range, let me tell you once more.”
“Well,” said Hal, growing a little uncomfortable again, “I wish I could get these figures into range, at all events. I believe there’s no battleground where things go quite so hard as they do on a fellow’s slate;” and plunging in again amid rules and examples, he thought little more of poor Tom or his woes, until he went to join him in the land of dreams.