Children at their playing,
Straying, straying!
Little marsh fire
That the sun is,
Thou art a liar,
Little marsh fire!”
Somerville often made poems as he rode. Now he made this one.
The next day was foggy still, and the Abbot was not wont to ride abroad in fog. Yet he called for his white mule and for two Brothers to attend him, and rode, booted and wrapped warm, to Westforest.
There may be imagined a chessboard, and Prior Matthew, with Abbot Mark for backer, sitting studying, mouth covered by hand. He must play against Prior Hugh, invisible there, or perhaps against mere cosmic insensibility to advantages accruing from full streams of profit and glory, fuller than the Wander, flowing down Wander vale. Chess takes time and thought. If there come inspirational gleams take them as evidence that Nature begins to lean with you—but continue your study, mentally advancing now this piece and now that, going slow, going sure, making your combinations with more than grey spider’s skill! So Prior Matthew played. Abbot Mark was more impatient and would have things without working for them, which is to say without deserving them. In the mysterious cave of this world where all players must play, failure always impended. If it did not fall, that was because you were a good player. The Prior’s hollow cheek grew more hollow, his intent, small, deep-set eyes more intent.
On this day, folded as in wool, in the parlour that was warmed by blazing logs on stone hearth, that gave upon the autumn garden, much to-day like a ghost-garden, Prior indicated to Abbot move and then move and then move again.