The Greater Trumps (28 page)

Ralph was more doubtful, but, dutifully encouraging, he had just answered, “Perhaps you're right,” when he was startled by his father nearly falling. Mr. Coningsby's raised foot had come down on something that jerked and heaved under it. He cried out, staggered, recovered himself, and came to a halt as the thing rose in their pathway. It was in the shape of a man; it was a man; it was the fellow that had been with the witch; it was Stephen. He must have been lying across the threshold of the inner room. He looked at them with dull hostility.

“Get back,” he said. “You can't come here. She's there.”

“She is, is she?” Mr. Coningsby said. “Here, Ralph, move him.”

Ralph started to obey. He put a hand on Stephen and began to say, “Look here, you must let us by,” when Stephen leaped at him, and the two were locked in a wild struggle. Mr. Coningsby just avoided their first collision, and slipped past them as they swayed. Both of them, clutching and wrestling, went, under the impulse of Stephen's rush, back into the outer room; all the emotions of fear and anger that had been restrained in their separate solitudes now broke into activity through the means of that hostile embrace. In the mysterious liquefaction of everything which had distressed Ralph, in the outbreak of the mysteries of the vagrant goddess which had terrified Stephen, each of them found something recognizable, natural, and human, and attacked it. The beings who possessed the cloud were veiled by it from both of them; like primeval men of undeveloped capacities, they strove with whatever was near. So had dim tribe battled with tribe—and earlier yet, before tribes were, before the beasts that grew into tribes, when the stuff that is the origin of all of us had brought forth only half conscious shapes, such struggles had gone on. The nature of the battles of all the world was in them; to pass or not to pass—neither knowing clearly why, except that great command intensely swayed their spirits—was the center of their conflicting wills. The gateway was taboo, for the goddess had entered; mystical age, nourishing wisdom, had gone into the sanctuary and must be inviolate. The gateway must be forced, for kinship was in danger; mystical womanhood, unprotected helplessness, was abandoned within and must be saved. Religion had commanded, and the household: the unknowing champions of either domination panted and fought in the outer courts of the mystery. The mist rolled into and over them; it possessed and maddened them. Life strove with life, and life poured itself into them to maintain the struggle. In such unseeing obedience, at that very moment, in the wider world, armies poured to battle, for causes as obscurely known. They battered and struck; they had no hope but destruction and no place but war. Ignorant of all but simple laws, they closed and broke and struck and closed again, and the strength of earth fought in them for mastery.

But of that manifestation of primitive violence Mr. Coningsby saw nothing; he had glimpsed the inner doorway and went hurriedly through it. Within, all was clear: clear so that he could know, unknowing, another mystery of mankind. For there, in the room with the dark hangings, through or in which had appeared to the initiate the vision of the painted world, he saw the solemn intention of sacrifice, the attempted immolation of the victim to the god. Fate had fallen on deity, and only by bursting the doors of human life could deity be relieved. Humanity, caught up into dooms and agonies greater even than its own, was madly attempting to relieve them, and itself with them. Over the golden altar of blood the body of the girl lay stretched; on one side the hierophant clutched her wrist and tore at the mystery of the hand, which means so much in its gentle and terrible power; and on the altar itself, as if some god had descended to aid and quicken the sacrifice, the cat lay crouched in a beautiful and horrible suspense before its spring. As far as the struggling bodies without from the holy striving of joyous imaginations, so far within was the grotesque group from the sacred and necessary offering which (the testimony of the myths declares) releases, after some spiritual manner, the energies of the gods. But it was not wholly alien; and that which is common to all was the purpose of death.

Mr. Coningsby, as he broke into the charmed circle, saw the priestess, the cat, and the body of the sacrifice. It was on the last that his attention was concentrated, and he cried out in a voice rather of objection than of protest, but that was the result of fifty years of objection to life rather than of protest against it. He ran forward, grabbed the cat, lifted it, and flung it with violence at the doorway, much as Stephen had flung him away not long before. Joanna screeched at him, and he swore back at her. Dominant for the first time in his life, moved for the first time by those two great virtues, strength and justice, he commanded her, and for a moment she flinched. She was distracted from the hand she held by the hand that gripped her shoulder—before its owner had time to realize how offensive to his normal habits such a grip was. Nancy at the same moment twisted her wrist and jerked her own scratched hand away, standing once more upright on the other side of the table. Mr. Coningsby ran round the table to her. She put her arm round him and realized suddenly how much she owed to him—owed because she was a blundering servant of Love to this other blundering servant of Love, owed from her struggling goodwill to his struggling goodwill; and how full of goodwill his laboring spirit was. He was a companion upon the Way, and how difficult she had made the Way to him! She hugged his arm, not so much in gratitude for this single service as in remorse for her impatient past.

“Oh thank you, darling,” she said. “You did come just at the right time.”

“Are you all right?” Mr. Coningsby said. “Are you all right? Has she hurt you? What was she doing?”

“She was looking for something,” Nancy said, “and she thought I'd got it. But I haven't. If I only knew exactly what it was! Perhaps Aunt Sybil could find out if we could get them together. Ask her to come downstairs, won't you, father?”

“I'll ask her to come downstairs,” Mr. Coningsby said. “I'll ask her to come down into the cellars, and I'll ask her if she minds the doors being locked on her, and if she'd very much mind if we tied her up for the dancing, raving monstrosity of ugly hell that she is. Looking for something!”

At any rate, Nancy thought, that would give them a chance of finding Sybil on the way, and perhaps something more satisfactory than cellars would open. She couldn't feel, for all her smarting hand, that locking Joanna in a cellar would do any real good. Nothing but giving Joanna what she wanted or getting Joanna to change her wants would be any real good. She pressed her hand to her heart; it was smarting dreadfully; the blood stood along the scratches. She didn't want to show it in case her father became more annoyed with Joanna, but the sooner she could find Henry or (if needs must) bathe it herself the better. She began gently to edge Mr. Coningsby round the table. She said, “Let's go with her at least. I'm sure Aunt Sybil could help. She knows what the lost thing is.”

Mr. Coningsby felt a shock of truth. Sybil did seem to know—Sybil had quietened this old hag—the lost thing—he took an automatic step or two forward. Joanna had already retreated a little and was darting angry eyes round the room. She went back yet farther, and, as Nancy also moved, the golden cloud which hung behind the old woman rolled back, disclosing on the ground at her feet the paintings of the Tarots which had fallen from the hands of the lovers that evening. They lay there, throbbing and vibrating. With a scream of rage and delight she dropped to her knees and scraped them together in her hands.

“What——” Mr. Coningsby began, surprised, and ended in a different voice. “Are those my cards? What under heaven are my cards doing there?” He rushed round the table, and Nancy ran with him.

But they were too late. Joanna was on her feet again, had turned, was running off into the mist, clutching the paintings. The other two ran also, and, as if their movement was itself a wind, the mist rolled back from before them, driven to either side and about their feet and floating over their heads. But, as Joanna ran, her hands fingered the cards, and she cried out in ecstasy.

They broke into the outer room, and at the sound of that shrill rapturous voice the two combatants ceased to struggle. She was upon them, and both of them, startled at the coming of such a hierophant in such exaltation, released the other and fell back. But Stephen sent a word to her, and she answered, “I'm finding him, I'm finding him. I'll burn them first and then he'll come. He'll come in the fire; the fire is for Horus, Horus in the fire.”

She was by him and out of the room, and still she worked the magic in her hands, and by now, so swift and effective was her insanity, she had separated the suit of the swords from the rest, and was setting them in some strange order. She made of them a mass of little pointed triangles, three living symbols to each triangle, and the King of Swords, whose weapon quivered and glowed as if in flame, she thrust on top of them all, and laid her own hand over it, warming it into life. And as she came into the longer corridor, already the sparks went about her, and she was calling, “Little one, little one! I'm coming. They shan't hurt you any more. I'll drive them away—your mother'll save you. I can hear you—I'm coming.”

Behind her those who pressed were parted. At the door of the outer room Mr. Coningsby's strength went from him. He staggered and would have fallen had not Nancy held him, and Ralph, by whom they paused, sprang to her help. Nancy gave her brother one swift, delightful smile and exclaimed to him, “Look after him, there's a dear. I must go.”

“Right ho!” Ralph said, and took his father's arm as Nancy released it. Stephen uncertainly looked at them, then he left them and followed Nancy. She came into the longer corridor and saw before her Henry leaning on the balustrade at the top of the stairs. Joanna, checking as she went, had lifted the swords that were beginning to shoot from between her hands in little flames, and was thrusting them continually forward towards him in sharp spasms of motion. And about them the cloud gathered into shapes and forms, and through all the translucent house Nancy was aware of golden figures unceasingly intertwining in the steps of the fatal dance.

16

“
SUN, STAND THOU STILL UPON GIDEON
”

S
YBIL
, with a great deal of difficulty, although it did not occur to her to call it that, had managed to get Aaron downstairs and into the drawing-room. She had wanted him to be helped to his bedroom, but this he had altogether refused. He wouldn't go up those stairs; he wouldn't go back into the thicker mist; he would go down; he would get away if he could. She wasn't to leave him—everyone else had left him—and they would be on him.

“They?” Sybil asked as she helped him cautiously along. “Splendid, Mr. Lee. You
could
get upstairs almost as well, you know. Easier, in fact. No, all right—if you'd rather. They?”

“They,” Aaron babbled. “They're all round us; they always are, but we shall see them. I daren't see them. I daren't. I can't see anything; it's too bright.”

“It
is
very bright,” Sybil said. “If it wasn't so late, I should think the sun was shining. But I never heard of the sun shining at ten o'clock on Christmas night. Gently. That's perfect.”

“The sun!” Aaron said. “The sun's gone out forever; we're all blind. Lame and blind, so that we can't escape them.”

Sybil smiled at him. “Well, then,” she said, “I wouldn't worry about escaping. Leave that to Nancy and Henry, unless they're sensible enough not to worry either. I wasn't at their age. I tried to insist on escaping; fortunately, I didn't. That's the bottom.”

“How can you tell?” Aaron exclaimed. “Can you see? Can you see through the mist and the snow?”

“Fairly well,” Sybil said. “I wonder if Amabel—Amabel, could you give Mr. Lee your arm on the other side?”

The words reached Amabel where she was clasped with her companions. They reached her out of the bright cloud; she raised her head, felt it against her eyes, and promptly shut them again. Sybil looking across the hall at them—the hall that in this curiously golden-tinted snow looked more lovely, though more ruinous, than she had thought any mortal thing could look—considered a moment, and then in a firmer voice called again, “Amabel!” Snowstorms were all very well, but it was silly to get into a state of crouching hysterics over a snowstorm; Amabel's immediate job was to be of use. Normally one wouldn't order other people's servants about, and she said to Aaron between two calls, “Will you forgive me, Mr. Lee? Perhaps if you called her …?”

Aaron, however, it was clear, had no notion of doing anything of the sort; the words didn't seem to mean anything to him. Sybil called for the third time, with an imperious certainty, “Amabel! Will you come here?”

Amabel heard the voice and looked up again. In the awful vagueness of the hall, tumultuous with cloud and storm, she saw figures moving. A mingled sense of her duty and of wild adventure filled her. She released the cook and the other maid; she said, faintly but definitely, “I'm coming.”

“Well, come, then,” Sybil said, still slightly imperious. “My dear girl, do hurry. I know it's very unusual, but we may as well be useful.”

Amabel dashed through the mist, terrified but exultant. It swirled round her; it carried her along; she was swept, deliriously panting, to the side of the strange lady who walked in the cloud as others did by day, and laughed at the storm as others did at spring, and closed doors that the whole power of the world dashed open, and carried an old man safely through chaos to——

“Where to, madam?” she asked, an attentive executant once more.

Serenely Miss Coningsby smiled at her—a smile that Amabel felt to be even brighter than the golden glow about them, so much brighter that for a moment the glow was only the reflection of the smile.