"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?"
"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.
He looked at her, slightly startled. It was the first emotion she had
ever provoked in him, and her heart beat faster.
"I really do think it is giving over now," he said, gazing at her
sopping hat.
'Twas as if he had shaken the shrub again and drenched her with cold
water. He was mocking her, her and her dollars and her love.
"It is quite over," she said savagely, springing up, and growing
even angrier when she found the rain had really stopped, so that her
indignation sounded only like acquiescence. She strode ahead of him,
silent, through the wet bracken, her frock growing a limp rag as it
brushed aside the glistening ferns.
As she struck the broader path to the house, the cackling laugh of a
goat chained to a roadside log followed her cynically. Where had she
heard this bleat before? Ah, yes, from the Marquis of Woodham.