The Greater Trumps (10 page)

“You
must
see,” he answered, low and rapidly, “you especially. And the others too—it's why they're here.”

She took his “here” to mean at that door, and his agitation to be the promise of the mystery he had spoken of, and delighted to share it with him. “You'll tell me everything,” she whispered. “I'll do whatever you want.” Her eyes glowed at him as he looked at her. He met them, but his preoccupation was heavy upon him. “Your father,” he whispered back, “get your father to give me the cards.”

The door was open. Aaron said, “You'll excuse me if I go first; there's a curtain.” He stepped forward, passed between the hangings, stepped aside and raised them, so that, one by one, the others also came into the light of the inner chamber—Mr. Coningsby first, then Sybil, then the two young ones. Aaron let the curtain fall and joined them where they stood, he and Henry closing in on either side.

The light had been tinged with red when they entered; but it changed, so swiftly that only Aaron noticed it, to a lovely green, and then—more slowly—to an exquisite golden beauty. Aaron's eyes went to Henry's, but the young man was looking at the moving images; then they passed to the visitors—to Nancy, who also was raptly gazing at the spectacle; to Mr. Coningsby, who was surveying it with a benevolent generosity, as if he might have shown his host something similar in his own house, but hadn't thought it worthwhile; to Sybil, who was half-smiling in pure pleasure at the sight.

“These,” Aaron said, “are a very ancient secret among the folk from whom Henry and I come and they have never been shown to anyone outside our own people till now. But since we are to be so closely joined”—he smiled paternally at Nancy—“the reason against revealing them hardly exists.”

He had to pause for a moment, either because of his inner excitement or because (as, for a moment, he half suspected) some sense stronger than usual of the unresting marvel before them attacked him and almost beat him down. He mastered himself, but his age dragged at him, and his voice trembled as he went carefully on, limiting himself to what Henry and he had agreed should be said.

“You see those little figures? By some trick of the making they seem to hold—what we call—the secret of perpetual motion. You see—how they are dancing—they do it continually. They are—we believe—in some way magnetized—by the movements of the earth—and they—they vibrate to it.”

He could say no more. He signed to Henry to go on, but Mr. Coningsby unintentionally interrupted.

“Very curious,” he said, “very interesting indeed.” He looked all round the room. “I suppose the light comes from behind the curtains somehow?”

“The light comes from the figures,” Henry said.

“Does it indeed?” Mr. Coningsby said, as if he was perfectly ready to believe anything reasonable, and even to refrain from blaming his host for offering him something perfectly unreasonable. “From the figures? Well, well.” He settled his eyeglasses and leaned forward. “Are they moving in any order?” he asked, “or do they just”—he waggled his hand—“jump?”

“They certainly move in order,” Henry answered, “all but one, the one in the center. You may recognize them; the figures are those which are painted on the Tarot cards you showed us.”

“Oh, really?” Mr. Coningsby said, a small suspicion rising in him. “Just the same kind, are they? Well, well. But the cards aren't moving the whole time. At least,” he added, half in real amusement, half in superior sarcasm, “I hadn't noticed it.”

“No,” Henry agreed. “But, if you'll excuse me, sir, the point is rather that the cards explain—or anyhow may be supposed to explain—the movements of these figures. We think probably that that's what all fortune-telling by cards comes from, but the origin's been forgotten, which is why it's the decadent and futile thing it is.”

Nothing occurred to Mr. Coningsby in answer to this; he didn't understand it but he didn't want to be bothered with an explanation. He strolled forward till he stood by the table. “May one pick them up?” he asked. “It's difficult to examine the workmanship properly while they're all bustling round.”

“I don't think I should touch them, sir,” Henry said, checking his grandfather's movement with a fierce glance. “The balance that keeps them dancing must be very delicate.”

“Oh, just as you like,” Mr. Coningsby said. “Why doesn't the one in the middle dance?”

“We imagine that its weight and position must make it a kind of counterpoise,” Henry answered. “Just as the card of the Fool—which you'll see is the same figure—is numbered nought.”

“Has he a tiger by him for any particular reason?” Mr. Coningsby inquired. “Fools and tigers seem a funny conjunction.”

“Nobody knows about the Fool,” Aaron burst in. “Unless the cards explain it.”

Mr. Coningsby was about to speak again when Sybil forestalled him.

“I can't see this central figure,” she said. “Where is it exactly, Mr. Lee?”

Aaron, Henry, and her brother all pointed to it, and all with very different accents said, “There.” Sybil stepped slightly forward, then to one side; she moved her head to different angles, and then said apologetically, “You'll all think me frightfully silly, but I can't see any figure in the middle.”

“Really, Sybil!” her brother said. “There!”

“But, my dear, it isn't there,” she said. “At least, so far as I can possibly see. I'm sorry to be so stupid, Mr. Lee, because it's all quite the loveliest thing I ever saw in the whole of my life. It's perfectly wonderful and beautiful. And I just want, if I can, to see where you say this particular figure is.”

Henry leaned forward suddenly. Nancy put her left hand up to where his lay on her shoulder. “Darling,” she said, “please! You're hurting me.” He took no notice; he did not apparently hear her. He was looking with intense eagerness from Sybil to the golden images and back. “Miss Coningsby,” he said, reverting unconsciously to his earlier habit of address, “can you see the Fool and his tiger at all?”

She surveyed the table carefully. “Yes,” she said at last, “there—no, there—no—it's moving so quickly I can hardly see it—there—ah, it's gone again. Surely that's it, dancing with the rest; it seems as if it were always arranging itself in some place which was empty for it.”

Nancy took hold of Henry's wrist and pulled it; tears of pain were in her eyes, but she smiled at him. “Darling, must you squeeze my shoulder quite so hard?” she said.

Blankly he looked at her; automatically he let go, and though in a moment she put her own hand into the crook of his arm he did not seem to notice it. His whole attention was given to Sybil. “You can see it moving?” he uttered.

On the other side, Aaron was trembling and putting his fingers to his mouth as if to control it and them. Sybil, gazing at the table, did not see him. “But it seems so,” she said. “Or am I just distracted?”

Henry made a great effort. He turned to Nancy. “Can you see it?” he asked.

“It looks to me to be in the center,” she said, “and it doesn't seem to be moving—not exactly moving.”

“What do you mean—not exactly moving?” Henry asked, almost harshly.

“It isn't moving at all,” said Mr. Coningsby. “It's capitally made, though; the tiger's quite lifelike. So's the Fool,” he added handsomely.

“I suppose I meant not moving,” Nancy said. “In a way I feel as if I expected it to. But it isn't.”

“Why should you expect it to?” Henry asked.

“I can't think,” Nancy admitted. “Perhaps it was Aunt Sybil saying it
was
that made me think it ought to be.”

“Well,” Sybil said, “there we are! If you all agree that it's not moving, I expect it isn't. Perhaps my eyes have got St. Vitus' dance or something. But it certainly seems to me to be dancing everywhere.”

There was a short and profound silence, broken at last by Nancy. “What did you mean about fortune-telling?” she said, addressing ostensibly Mr. Lee, but in fact Henry.

Both of them came jerkily back to consciousness of her. But the old man was past speech; he could only look at his grandson. For a moment Henry didn't seem to know what to say. But Nancy's eager and devoted eyes were full on him, and something natural in him responded. “Why, yes,” he said, “it's here that fortunes can be told. If your father will let us use his pack of cards?” He looked inquiringly across.

Mr. Coningsby's earlier suspicion poked up again, but he hesitated to refuse. “Oh, if you choose,” he said. “I'm afraid you'll find nothing in it, but do as you like. Get them, Nancy; they're in my bag.”

“Right,” said Nancy. “No, darling,” as Henry made a movement to accompany her. “I won't be a minute; you stay here.” There had been a slight effect of separation between them, and she was innocently anxious to let so brief a physical separation abolish the mental; he, reluctant to leave Aaron to deal with Mr. Coningsby's conversation, assented.

“Don't be long,” he said, and she, under her breath, “Could I?” and was gone. As she ran she puzzled a little over her aunt's difficulty in seeing the motionless image, and over the curious vibration that it seemed to her to possess. So these were what Henry had meant; he would tell her more about them presently, perhaps, because he certainly hadn't yet told her all he meant to. But what part then in the mystery did the central figure play, and why was its mobility or immobility of such concern to him? Though—of course it wasn't usual for four people to see a thing quite still while another saw it dancing. Supposing anyone saw her now, could they think of her as quite still, running at this speed? Sometimes one had funny feelings about stillness and motion—there had been her own sensation in the car yesterday, but that had only been a feeling, not a looking, so to speak. No one ever saw a motionless car tearing along the roads.

She found the Tarot pack and ran back again, thinking this time how agreeable it was to run and do things for Henry. She wished she found it equally agreeable to run for her father. But then her father—it was her father's fault, wasn't it? Was it? Wasn't it? If she could feel as happy—if she
could
feel. Could she? Could she, not only do, but feel happy to do? Couldn't she? Could she? More breathless within than without, she came again to the room of the golden dance.

She was aware, as through the dark screen of the curtain she entered the soft spheral light and heard, as they had all heard, that faint sound of music, of something changed in three of those who waited for her. Henry and her father were standing near each other, as if they had been talking. But also they were facing each other, and it was not a friendly opposition. Mr. Coningsby was frowning, and Henry was looking at him with a dominating hostility. She guessed immediately what had been happening—Henry had himself raised the possibility of his buying or being given or otherwise procuring the cards. And her father, with that persistent obstinacy which made even his reasonable decisions unreasonable, had refused. He was so often in a right which his immediate personal grievance turned into a wrong; his manners changed what was not even an injury into something worse than an insult. To be so conscious of himself was—Nancy felt though she did not define it—an insult to everyone else; he tried to defy the human race with a plaintive antagonism—even the elder sons of the younger sons of peers might (he seemed to suggest) outrage his decencies by treading too closely on his heels. So offended, so outraged, he glanced at Henry now.

She came to them before either had time to speak. Aaron Lee and Sybil had been listening to the finished colloquy, and both of them willingly accepted her coming.

“Here we are,” she said. “Henry, how frightfully exciting!” It wasn't, she thought at the same moment, not in the least. Not exciting; that was wholly the wrong word for this rounded chamber, and the moving figures, and the strange pack in her hand by which the wonder of earth had happened, and the two opposed faces, and Aaron Lee's anxious eyes, and the immortal tenderness of Sybil's. No—not exciting, but it would serve. It would ease the moment. “Who'll try first?” she went on, holding out the Tarots. “Father? Aunt? Or will you, Mr. Lee?”

Aaron waved them on. “No, no,” he said hurriedly. “Pray one of you—they're yours. Do try—one of you.”

“Not for me, thank you. I've no wish to be amused so——” Her father hesitated for an adverb, and Sybil also with a gesture put them by.

“Oh, aunt, do!” Nancy said, feeling that if her aunt was in it things would be safer.

“Really, Nancy. I'd rather not—if you don't mind,” Sybil said, apologetic, but determined. “It's—it's so much like making someone tell you a secret.”

“What someone?” Henry said, anger still in his voice.

“I don't mean someone exactly,” Sybil said, “but things … the universe, so to speak. If it's gone to all this trouble to keep the next minute quiet, it seems rude to force its confidence. Do forgive me.” She did not, Nancy noticed, add, as she sometimes did, that it was probably silly of her.

Nancy frowned at the cards. “Don't you think we ought to?” she asked.

“Of course, if you can,” Sybil answered. “It's just—do excuse me—that I can't.”

“You sound,” Henry said, recovering a more normal voice, “on remarkably intimate terms with the universe. Mayn't it cheat you? Supposing it had something unpleasant waiting for you?”

“But,” said Sybil, “as somebody says in Dickens, ‘It hasn't, you know, so we won't suppose it.' Traddles, of course. I'm forgetting Dickens; I must read him again. Well, Nancy, it's between you and Henry.”

Nancy looked at her lover. He smiled at her at first with that slight preoccupation behind his eyes which always seemed to be there, she thought a little ruefully, since the coming of the Tarots. But in a moment this passed, and they changed, though whether she or that other thing were now the cause of their full, deep concentration, she could not tell. He laid his hand on hers that held the Tarots.