John Sherman and Dhoya by William Butler Yeats

Author:William Butler Yeats [W. B. Yeats]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781843513803
Publisher: The Lilliput Press
Published: 2013-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

IV

ON the evening of the 20th of June, after the blinds had been pulled down and the gas lighted, Sherman was playing chess in the smoking-room, right hand against left. Howard had gone out with a message to the Lelands. He would often say, “Is there any message I can deliver for you? I know how lazy you are, and will save you the trouble.” A message was always found for him. A pile of books lent for Sherman’s improvement went home one by one.

“Look here,” said Howard’s voice in the doorway, “I have been watching you for some time. You are cheating the red men most villainously. You are forcing them to make mistakes that the white men may win. Why, a few such games would ruin any man’s moral nature.”

He was leaning against the doorway, looking, to Sherman’s not too critical eyes, an embodiment of all that was self-possessed and brilliant. The great care with which he was dressed and his whole manner seemed to say, “Look at me; do I not combine perfectly the zealot with the man of the world?” He seemed excited to-night. He had been talking at the Lelands, and talking well, and felt that elation which brings us many thoughts.

“My dear Sherman,” he went on, “do cease that game. It is very bad for you. There is nobody alive who is honest enough to play a game of chess fairly out — right hand against left. We are so radically dishonest that we even cheat ourselves. We can no more play chess than we can think altogether by ourselves with security. You had much better play with me.”

“Very well, but you will beat me; I have not much practice,” replied the other.

They reset the men and began to play. Sherman relied most upon his bishops and queen. Howard was fondest of the knights. At first Sherman was the attacking party, but in his characteristic desire to scheme out his game many moves ahead, kept making slips, and at last had to give up, with his men nearly all gone and his king hopelessly cornered. Howard seemed to let nothing escape him. When the game was finished he leant back in his chair and said, as he rolled a cigarette —

“You do not play well.” It gave him satisfaction to feel his proficiency in many small arts. “You do not do any of these things at all well,” he went on, with an insolence peculiar to him when excited. “You have been really very badly brought up and stupidly educated in that intolerable Ballah. They do not understand there any, even the least, of the arts of life; they only believe in information. Men who are compelled to move in the great world, and who are also cultivated, only value the personal acquirements — self-possession, adaptability, how to dress well, how even to play tennis decently — you would be not so bad at that, by the by, if you practised — or how to paint or write effectively.

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