The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes Part 9

"You ought to be taking her an umbrella," he said coldly. Amber looked up at the sky. Had it been blue, she would have felt it grey. As it _was_ grey, she felt it black.

"Oh, if you're afraid of a drop of rain--" And Amber walked on witheringly. It was a clever move.

Walter followed in silence. Amber did not become aware of him till she was in the middle of an embryonic footpath through tall bracken that made way, courtseying, for the rare pedestrian.

"Oh!" She gave a little scream. "I thought you were studying the bees--or the moles."

"I have only been studying your graceful back."

"How mean! Behind my back!" She laughed, pleased. "I hope you haven't discovered anything Bismarckian about my back."

"Only in the sense that I followed it, and must follow--till the path widens."

"Ah, how you must hate following--you, so terrible ambitious."

"The path will widen," he said composedly.

She planted her feet firm on Mother Earth--as though it were literally her own mother--and turned a mocking head over a tantalising shoulder.

"I shall stay still right here."

He smiled maliciously. "And I, too; I follow you no farther."

"Oh, you are just too cute," she said with a laugh of vexation and pleasure. "You make me go on just to make you follow; but it is really you that make me lead. That's what you mean by Bismarckism, isn't it?"

"You put it beautifully."

She swung round to face him. "Is there nothing you admire but Force?"

"Not Force--Power!"

"What's the difference?"

"Force is blind."

"So is love," she said. "Do you scorn that?" And her smile was daring and dazzling.

Ere he could reply Nature outdid her in dazzlement, and superadded a crash of thunder.

"Yes," he said, as though there had been no interruption. "I scorn all that is blind--even this storm that may strike you and me. Ah! the rain," as the great drops began to fall. "Poor Lady Chelmer--without an umbrella."

"We can shelter by these shrubs." In an instant she was crouching amid the ferns on a carpet of autumn leaves, making s.p.a.ce for him beside her.

"Thank you--I will stand," he said coldly. "But I don't know if you're aware these are oak-shrubs."

"What of it?"

"I was only thinking of the Swiss proverb about lightning, 'Vor den Eichen sollst du weichen.' We ought to make for the beeches."

"I'm not going to leave my umbrella. I am sorry you won't accept a bit of it." And she bent the tall ferns invitingly towards him.

"I don't like cowering even before the rain," he laughed. "How it brings out the beautiful earthy smell."

"One enjoys the beautiful earthy smell the better for being nearer to the earth."

He did not reply.

"Oh, you dear fool," she thought. Hadn't she had heaps of Power from childhood--over her stern old father, over her weakling mother, over her governesses, and later over the whole tribe of "the boys," and now in Europe over Marquises and Honourables--and could it all compare in intensity to this delicious, poignant sense of being caught up into a masterful personality! No, not Power but Powerlessness was life's central reality; not to turn with iron hand the great wheels of Fate, but to faint at a dear touch, to be sucked up as a moth in the flame.

And for him, too, it were surely as sweet to leave this strenuous quest for dominance, or to be content with dominating her alone. Oh, she would bring him to clear vision, to live for nothing but her, even as she asked for nothing but him.

The harsh scream of a bluejay struck a discord through her reverie.

She remembered that he had yet to be won.

"But didn't you tell me people can't get power without money?" she said, forgetting the hiatus in the conversation.

"Nor with it generally," he replied, without surprise. "Money is but a lever. You cannot move the earth unless you have force and fulcrum, too."

"But I guess a man like you must get real mad to see so many levers lying about idle."

"Oh, I shall get on without a lever, like primitive man. I have muscles."

"But it seems too bad not to be able to afford machinery."

"I shall be hand-made."

"Yes, and by your own hand. But won't it be slow?"

"It will be sure."

Every one of his speeches rang like the stroke of a hammer. Yes, indeed he had muscles.

"But how much surer _with_ money! You ought to turn your career into a company. Surely it would pay a dividend to its promoters."

"The directors would interfere."

"You could be chairman--with a veto."

He shook his head. "The rain is dripping through your umbrella. Don't you think we might run to the house?"

"It's only an old hat." It was fresh from Paris, broad-brimmed, beautiful, and bewitching. "Why don't you find"--she smiled nervously--"a millionaire of means?"

"And what would be his reward?"

"Just Virtue's. Won't you be a light to England? And isn't it the duty of parishes and millionaires to supply light?" She was plucking a fern-leaf to pieces.

"Millionaires' minds don't run that way."

"Not male millionaires, perhaps," she said, turning her face from him so jerkily that she shook the oak-shrub and it became a shower-bath.