From Fraser's Magazine.

Once upon a time (oh, pleasant opening of the olden legends!) there dwelt in the village of Hestbank a schoolmaster, who was also a poet. That same village must have been noticed by every one who goes from London northward, as grouse-shooter or tourist; it lies on the Great North-Western Railway, close to the wide waste of Morecambe Sands, where, twice in the twenty-four hours, the waves of the sea ride tumultuously up to the hilly shores, and twice ebb so low, that coaches, and wagons, and horsemen can cross that damp Sahara.

Charles Arnold was, as we have said, a schoolmaster and poet. His verses were execrable; he had the true scholastic irritable temper; and was a great lover of old silver, old china, chess-playing, and the luxury of the meerschaum. This last he had learnt at the University of Leipsic, where he had studied in his youth.

He lived in the queerest old house imaginable. His two or three pupils (who learnt from him German, Latin, and a little music) used to play hide-and-seek continually in its tortuous corridors. It was probably quite as old as Lancaster Castle, whose builder was great John O'Gaunt the "time honored." Here Arnold lived, with his sister Abigail, a very demure, diminutive, middle-aged lady, who loved old china as well as her brother.

It was the cool twilight of a fervent July day. Arnold had played chess in the afternoon with the vicar's daughter, a young lady who learnt from him the glorious guttural language of Goethe, and now was sitting in his library--a room with walnut wainscoting, ill-furnished as to books--inditing verses on the subject. Thus he wrote:--

I.
Chess on the lawn beneath the pleasant trees,
When many roses flush the summer air,
And with a cooling breath the Atlantic breeze
Comes up the valleys fair.

II.
The leaves and blossoms fall upon the board,
The golden insects through the branches gleam;
While ivory kings and knights with crown and sword
Move through the magic dream.

"Magic dream!" The words seemed repeated by an echo, as he read them aloud in his solitary self-satisfaction. Arnold looked curiously into the darkness.

III.
Winds the fair pageant o'er the enchanted squares,
Touched softly by Titania fingers white;
The summer wind Arabian odor bears,
The sky is chrysolito.

"Pooh!" said somebody, from a dark corner of the library. Arnold looked round. There certainly was a movement in that particularly dim recess. "It can't be Abby," he muttered.

The form approached him. It was a young gentleman in the costume worn by beaux in Charles the Second's days of revel, with curiously broidered doublet and hose, and the whitest possible cambric, trimmed with magnificent Mechlin, encircling his throat.

"Vile verses, Mr. Arnold," said the young gentleman. "Untrue--absurd--hyperbolical! "Titania fingers!--why, they're red and dumpy." "Arabian odor!"--it's a most ancient and fish-like combination of shrimp and muscle perfumes. Vile verses, Mr. Arnold."

"You're a keen critic, Sir," replied the amazed pedagogue.

"Am I? They thought me so, some centuries back. But I want a game of chess with you, O poet and pedagogue!"

And therewith he produced a porcelain box, wrought in a style the most grotesque and quaint, put it on the table, and sat quietly down.

"A game of chess?" said Arnold.

"Yes; for these stakes. If I checkmate you, you shall have the chessmen, and perform three things which I shall require; if I lose, you shall have them unconditionally. A'n't they beauties?"

He poured them on the table from the velvet lined box. Beauties, indeed, they were; of red and white cornelian, and as elegant as if cut by Praxiteles.

"Three things!" said the schoolmaster. "Three nice things, they'd be, I expect. No, no; your chessmen might be bought for a five-pound note."

"Might they? Come, I'll tell you a little of their power. If you play with them, you'll win every game, with any odds, though your opponent were Carrera or Philidor."

"But the three things required?"

"Besides," continued the tempter, "they give you illimitable power over your antagonist ever after. You can do with him, or her, whatever you please."

"The vicar's daughter," thought Arnold.

"Nonsense!" said the young gentleman, as though replying to the thought. "You might marry a princess if you choose. Never mind the vicar's daughter."

"What are the three things stipulated?" asked the schoolmaster.

"Oh, nothing--nothing at all. Simply, that you never tell any one how you got the men--

"I'm to have the chessmen in either case; eh?"

"Precisely. Well--secondly, that you don't divulge their power to any one. And lastly, that if only a single piece be broken or lost, you shall become mine forever."

"A rascally compact," said Arnold.

"Not at all. The chessmen are worth a dozen such fellows as you; and if it weren't that I've taken a fancy to you, on account of your likeness to an uncle of mine, you shouldn't have them at any price. Why, the present Prime Minister of England offered me himself and all his relatives for them, unconditionally."

The schoolmaster pondered. The blue eyes of Miss Agnes Mansford gleamed for a moment on his solitude. The notion of being able to marry his fair pupil was too much for him. "Place the mean," he exclaimed.

The men were placed. Arnold lighted his meerschaum. The stranger, with an insouciant air, played his king's bishop's pawn. It was a delicate game, you may imagine.

The schoolmaster seemed likely to win. Several times, capital checkmates were only avoided by desperate losses. The stranger was at least reduced to a king, bishop, and knight, while against him were arrayed queen, castles, and a numerous host of lesser pieces. Arnold's victory seemed sure.

"You're a lucky fellow," said the young gentleman. "You may send your pupils home to-morrow morning, and order in a half-a-ton of old silver and china from the curiosity shops. Only invite Disraeli's Sidonia to a quiet game of chess, and you may get what money you like out of him afterwards. Check!"

Arnold was mated!

His hair stood on end. It was an unexpected catastrophe, and he fancied the young gentleman's feet would be visibly cloven immediately. But his visitor smiled benignantly, and thrusting his hands into his pockets as he rose, hummed, "Over the water to Charlie."

Our hero still gazed at the chessboard. Mated with a knight and bishop; Why Staunton couldn't do it; he would sent it to the Illustrated London News. While he was thus reflecting, his nonchalant opponent abruptly said, "Good bye, old fellow!" sprang out of the library window, and soon disappeared among the huge furze-bushes of Hestbank.

About the Author

This article is from the journal, THE LIVING AGE (Second series, Volume X, July, August, September 1855), which is in the public domain.

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