The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes

said.

'But the ball is always driven,' she said.

'Oh, I dare say it has the illusion of freewill. Doubtless the pieces in that chess game, which Eastern monarchs are said to play with human figures, come to think they move of themselves. The knight chuckles as he makes his tortuous jump at the queen, and the bishop swoops down on the castle with holy joy.'

She came imperceptibly closer to him. 'Then you don't think any of us move of ourselves?'

'One or two of us in each generation. They make the puppets dance.'

'You admire Bismarck, I see.'

'Yes. A pity he didn't emigrate to your country, like so many Germans.'

'Do you think we need him? But he couldn't have been President. You must be born in America.'

'True. Then I shall remain on here.'

'You're terrible ambitious, Mr. Bassett.'

'Yes, terrible,' he repeated mockingly.

'Then come and help me pick blackberries,' she said, and caught him by his own love of the unexpected. They left the formal garden, and came out into the rabbit-warren, and toiled up and down hillocks in search of ripe bushes, paying, as Walter said, 'many pricks to the pint.' And when Amber urged him to scramble to the back of tangled bushes, through coils of bristling briars, 'You were right,' he laughed; 'this is terrible ambitious.' The best of the blackberries plucked, Amber began a new campaign against mushrooms, and had frequent opportunities to rebuke his clumsiness in crumbling the prizes he uprooted. She knelt at his side to teach him, and once laid her deft fingers instructively upon his.

And just at that moment he irritatingly discovered a dead mole, and fell to philosophising upon it and its soft, velvet, dainty skin-as if a girl's fingers were not softer and daintier! 'Look at its poor little pale-red mouth,' he went on, 'gaspingly open, as in surprise at the strange great forces that had made and killed it.'

'I dare say it had a good time,' said Amber, pettishly.

After the harvest had been carried indoors they scarcely exchanged a word till she found him watching the bees the next morning.

'Are you interested in bees?' she inquired in tones of surprise.

'Yes,' he said. 'They are the most striking example of Nature's Bismarckism-her habit of using her creatures to work her will through their own. Sic vos non vobis.'

'I learnt enough Latin at College to understand that,' she said; 'but I don't see how one finds out anything by just watching them hover over their hives. I've never even been able to find the queen bee. Won't you come and see what beautiful woods there are behind the house? Lady Chelmer is walking there, and I ought to be joining her.'

'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 space 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?'