I am becoming solitary. I think I’ll go and be solitary in the library.
Yes, the library was solitary. Not a soul was in it. It was a typical gentleman’s collection, he saw, his eyes roving along the shelves and his hands thrust in his pockets. He was bored with himself and, to that degree, was bored with life—until he reached the table in the window.
On it stood a small and exquisite chessboard, whose finely wrought miniature men were set out as though in the middle of a game. On one side of it was a pile of unused paper, on the other, another, smaller pile on which had been written lines of what appeared to be mathematical symbols.
Intrigued, Russell picked them up and studied them. It soon became plain to him, although it would not have done to many, that the symbols were the complete record of the game on the board until it had been abandoned for the time being.
The piece that was being studied on the last page was the white knight, and the calculations on the paper showed all the different consequences of moving it from its present position on the board—and the consequences for all the other pieces if each possible move it could make was analysed!
Russell could not prevent himself from picking up a clean sheet of paper and the pencil which had been left on the table and begin to list the further changes which followed on from those on the last sheet of paper. He was so absorbed in this task that he did not hear the door open and someone enter.
A cool voice said in his ear, ‘Pray, what are you doing with my work, m’lord?’
Russell started up. It was Mary standing beside him, Mary who had left the chessboard in the library, secure in the knowledge that no one would visit it, or, if they did, would stare goggle-eyed and uncomprehendingly at both the board and her papers.
‘Nothing,’ he said, his mind still on the ramifications of the latest move. ‘I am merely doing my own work—and not interfering with yours.’
She gave a little laugh which was neither kind, nor unkind, but neutral. ‘Then you haven’t forgotten our numbers since we worked together with my father.’
‘Indeed not, Mary, although I own I am a little rusty—but the rust is fast disappearing as I begin to work with them again. And pray call me Russell as you used to when we last played with numbers.’
‘I was not playing with numbers today, m’lord, I was working with them.’
Mary’s stress on the word m’lord was slow and deliberate. This troubled Russell not at all. Since he had sat down in front of the chess board something had happened to him, something which he had not felt for years. He felt not only liberated, but full of a sense of power, of achievement. The ennui which had marred his recent life had disappeared. He felt himself equal to anything.
‘Nor am I playing with numbers today, Mary. I am fascinated by what you have been doing, which is, I suppose, trying to work out a logical means of countering every move your opponent makes in a real game. That, if you could succeed, would be an achievement worthy of Newton or Pascal themselves. I have, in my own small way, been trying to see if I could join you in your exercise.’
His face was so eager, so alight with interest that for a moment time disappeared and they were boy and girl in her father’s study again. Time re-ordered itself, but the effect of that brief spasm was to set Mary answering him as she would have done then.
‘Perhaps you would allow me to examine your work, Russell?’
Russell! He had seen the slight quiver that had passed across her face before she answered him—and then she had called him Russell! He had said, or done, something which had unwittingly restored some of the rapport which they had once shared.
‘Willingly,’ he said, and handed her the sheets of paper which he had filled with his calculations.
Mary sat down beside him and began to inspect them. Presently she laid the papers carefully down on the table and looked at him for a long moment before saying slowly, ‘How long did it take you to do that, Russell—I mean, m’lord? I have only been absent a short time—’ She stopped and shook her head.
Russell was suddenly overwhelmed by a great sense of anticlimax. He took Mary’s shaking head to mean that she was disappointed by what he had done. The feeling was the more acute because he thought that what he had written down was worthwhile, the logical conclusion of her own calculations.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said humbly, ‘if what I have just done was all a nonsense. It is a long time since I did any serious work with numbers…’ Mary, her eyes shining, had put her hand on his arm to stop him from explaining himself.
‘Not at all,’ she exclaimed. ‘If you haven’t done anything like this lately then what you have accomplished here is remarkable. I could not have done all this in twice the time. It is an area where you always surpassed me in the past. I was better at looking at the principles involved, you were more accomplished with the detail. That is why Father said that we made such a good team: our strengths differed.’
She was speaking with all the eagerness of the girl who had sat by him in her father’s study. It was as though for Russell, too, that time had returned. He leaned forward, sharing her eagerness, saying, ‘You really mean that, Mary? You are not deceiving me to keep me in countenance?’
‘Not at all. Oh, if we could only work together again…what could we not do.’ Now it was her turn to stop briefly, before saying, ‘Forgive me. I am talking nonsense. You have a life of your own and we parted for good long ago.’
He wanted to say, I have no life which holds any meaning. Instead, without thinking, he took the hand which she had used to check him earlier and kissed it.
‘Tell me the ultimate of what you are trying to do, Mary, and perhaps, while we are at Markham Hall, we might find time to work together again.’ She made no attempt to resist him, but the light which had filled her face and make her look almost a child again was gradually fading.
Mary said sorrowfully, ‘You know full well, m’lord, why we may not do that. Any opportunity we once had to work together disappeared long ago.’
‘That was then, Mary, this is now.’
Russell’s ardour was all the greater because the strange combination of mathematics, the presence of Mary, and the notion that they could be together again, was having a profoundly erotic effect on him. He knew that most men and women would be amused by the notion that anything so dry, so abstract, as the higher mathematics could rouse a man as he was now roused!
Later he was to tell himself that power, and the sense of power, is an aphrodisiac, and if excelling at playing games with numbers made him feel powerful, then it was neither strange nor unnatural, but only to be expected, that he should become roused. When, added to all that, the woman who was with him was, in her quiet way, as beautiful as she was clever, it was no wonder that his breathing had begun to shorten dramatically.
He was a boy again and the world was opening up before him as it had done then.
‘You have just said that you were favourably impressed by what I have already done—how much more, then, could we not do if we worked together? Before we do, however, I think that we ought to play one another at chess. I have to confess that it is many years since I last engaged in a game.’
The sad truth was that after Mary had left him the mere sight of a chess
