The Greater Trumps (14 page)

She felt, being strangely, and yet not strangely, conscious of his close neighborhood, Henry draw himself together as if to move. She felt him move—and between those two sensations she saw, or she thought she saw, a complete movement in the dance. Right up to the hitherward edge of the darkness the two lovers came; they wheeled back; her eyes followed them, and saw suddenly all the rest of the dancers gathering in on either side, so that the two went on between those lines towards where the Fool stood still as though he waited them. After them other opposing forms wheeled inward also, the Emperor with the Empress, the mitred hierophant with the woman who equaled him; and the first twain trod on the top of the Wheel of Fortune and passed over; before them rose the figure of the Hanged Man, and they disjoined to pass on either side and went each under his cross, and Death and the Devil ran at them, and they running also came to a tower that continually fell into ruin and was continually re-edified; they passed into it, and when they issued again they were running far from each other, but then the golden light broke from each and met and mingled, and over them stars and the moon and the sun were shining. Yet a tomb lay in their path, and the Fool—surely the motionless Fool!—stretched out his hand and touched it, and from within rose a skeleton; and it joined the lovers in their flying speed, and was with each, and the Fool was moving, was coming; but then she lost sight of lovers and skeleton, and of all the figures there was none left but the Juggler who appeared suddenly right under her eyes and went speedily up a single path which had late been multitudinous, and ran to meet the Fool. They came together; they embraced; the tossing balls fell over them in a shower of gold—and the golden mist covered everything, and swirled before her eyes; and then it also faded, and the hangings of the room were before her, and she felt Henry move.

8

CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE COUNTRY

I
T HAD
been settled at dinner on Christmas Eve that the three Coningsbys would go to the village church on Christmas Day. Mr. Coningsby theoretically went to church every Sunday, which was why he always filled up Census forms with the statement “Church of England.” Of the particular religious idea which the Church of England maintains he had never made any special investigation, but he had retained the double habit of going to church on Christmas morning and for a walk on Christmas afternoon. In his present state of irritation with the Lees he would rather have walked to church than not have gone, especially as Aaron pleaded his age and Henry professional papers as reasons for not going. But Aaron had put the car and chauffeur at his disposal for the purpose, so that he was not reduced to any such unseemly effort. Mr. Coningsby held strongly that going to church, if and when he did go, ought to be as much a part of normal life as possible, and ought not to demand any peculiar demonstration of energy on the part of the churchgoer.

Sybil, he understood, had the same view; she agreed that religion and love should be a part of normal life. With a woman's natural exaggeration, she had once said that they were normal life, that they were indeed life. He wasn't very clear whether she usually went to church or not; if she did, she said nothing much about it, and was always back in time for meals. He put her down as “Church of England” too; she never raised any objection. Nancy went under the same heading, though she certainly didn't go to church. But her father felt that she would when she got older; or that, anyhow, if she didn't she would feel it was right to do so. Circumstances very often prevented one doing what one wished; if one was tired or bothered, it was no good going to church in an improper state of mind.

Nancy's actual state of mind on the Christmas morning was too confused for her to know much about it. She was going with her father partly because she always had done, but even more because she badly needed a short refuge of time and place from these shattering new experiences. She felt that an hour or so somewhere where—just for once—even Henry couldn't get at her was a highly desirable thing. Her mind hadn't functioned very clearly during the rest of the time they had spent in the inner room; or else her memory of it wasn't functioning clearly now. Henry had explained something about the possibility of reading the fortunes of the world in the same manner as those of individuals could be read, but she had been incapable of listening; indeed, she had beaten a rather scandalous retreat, and (for all his earlier promises of sound sleep) had lain awake for a long time, seeing only that last wild rush together of the Fool and the Juggler, that falling torrent of balls breaking into a curtain of golden spray, which thickened into cloud before her. One last glance at the table had shown her upon it the figure of the Fool still poised motionless, so she hadn't seen what Aunt Sybil had seen. But she had seen the Fool move in that other vision. She wanted to talk to her aunt about it, but her morning sleep had only just brought her down for breakfast, and there had been no opportunity afterwards before church. She managed to keep Sybil between herself and her father as they filed into a pew, and sat down between her and a pillar with a sense of protection. Nothing unusual was likely to happen for the next hour or two, unless it was the vicar's new setting of the Athanasian Creed. Aaron Lee had remarked that the man was a musical enthusiast, doing the best he could with the voices at his disposal, assisted by a few friends whom he had down at Christmas. This Christmas, it seemed, he was attempting a little music which he himself had composed. Nancy was quite willing that he should—nothing seemed more remote from excitement or mystery than the chant of the Athanasian Creed. During the drive down her father had commented disapprovingly on the Church's use of that creed. Sybil had asked why he disliked it. Mr. Coningsby had asked if she thought it Christian; and Sybil said she didn't see anything very un-Christian about it—not if you remembered the hypothesis of Christianity.

“And what,” Mr. Coningsby said, as if this riddle were entirely unanswerable, “what do you call the hypothesis of Christianity?”

“The Deity of Love and the Incarnation of Love?” Sybil suggested, adding, “Of course, whether you agree with it is another thing.”

“Certainly I agree with Christianity,” Mr. Coningsby said. “Perhaps I shouldn't put it quite like that. It's a difficult thing to define. But I don't see how the damnatory clauses——”

However, there they reached the church, Nancy thought, as she looked at the old small stone building, that if Henry was right about the dance, then this member of it must be sitting out some part of the time on some starry stair. Nothing less mobile had ever been imagined. But her intelligence reminded her, even as she entered, that the apparent quiescence, the solidity, the attributed peace of the arched doorway was one aspect of what, in another aspect, was a violent and riotous conflict of … whatever the latest scientific word was. Strain and stress were everywhere; the very arch held itself together by extreme force; the latest name for matter was Force, wasn't it? Electrical nuclei or something of that sort. If this antique beauty was all made of electrical nuclei, there might be—there must be—a dance going on somewhere in which even that running figure with the balls flying over it in curves would be outpaced. She herself outpaced Sybil by a step and entered the pew first.

And she then, as she knelt decorously down, was part of the dance; she was the flying feet passing and re-passing; she was the conjunction of the images whose movements the cards symbolized and from which they formed the prophecy of her future. “A man shall owe you everything”—everything? Did she really want Henry to owe her
everything
, or did she—against her own quick personal desire—desire rather that there should be something in him to which she owed everything? “And a woman shall govern you”—that was the most distasteful of all; she had no use at all for women governing her; anyhow, she would like to see the woman who would do it. “And you shall die very rich”—by this time she had got up from her knees and had sat down again—well, that was very fortunate. If it meant what it said—“You shall die very rich”—but the forms of Death and the Devil and the Queen of Chalices had danced round her, and the words shook her with threat, with promise, with obscure terror. But what could even that do to harm her while Henry and she together dared it? While that went on, it was true in its highest and most perfect meaning; if that went on, she would die very rich.

A door opened; the congregation stirred; a voice from the vestry said, “Hymn 61. ‘Christians, awake,' Hymn 61.” Everyone awoke, found the place, and stood up. The choir started at once on the hymn and the procession. Nancy docilely sent her voice along with them.

Christians, awake, salute the happy morn
,

Whereon the Saviour of the world was born:

Rise to a
——

Her voice ceased; the words stared up at her. The choir and the congregation finished the line——

adore the mystery of love
.

“The mystery of love.” But what else was in her heart? The Christmas associations of the verse had fallen away; there was the direct detached cry, bidding her do precisely and only what she was burning to do. “Rise to adore the mystery of love.” What on earth were they doing, singing about the mystery of love in church? They couldn't possibly be meaning it. Or were they meaning it and had she misunderstood the whole thing?

The church was no longer a defense; it was itself an attack. From another side the waves of some impetuous and greater life swept in upon her. She turned her head abruptly towards Sybil, who felt the movement and looked back, her own voice pausing on “the praises of redeeming love.” Nancy, her finger pointing to the first of those great verses, whispered a question, “Is it true?” Sybil looked at the line, looked back at Nancy, and answered in a voice both aspirant and triumphant, “Try it, darling.” The tall figure, the wise mature face, the dark ineffable eyes, challenged, exhorted, and encouraged. Nancy throbbed to the voice that broke into the next couplet—“God's highest glory was their anthem still.”

She looked back at the hymn and hastily read it—it was really a very commonplace hymn, a very poor copy of verses. Only that one commanding rhythm still surged through her surrendered soul—“Rise to adore the mystery of love.” But now everyone else was shutting up hymn books and turning to prayer books; she took one more glance at the words, and did the same.

The two lovers had run straight on—not straight on; they had been divided. Separately they had run up the second part of the way, separately each had danced with the skeleton. She could see them now, but more clearly even than them she remembered the Juggler—“neither God nor not God,” Henry had said—running to meet the unknown Fool. “Amen,” they were singing all round her; this wasn't getting very far from the dance. It hadn't occurred to her that there was so much singing, so much exchanging of voices, so much summoning and crying out in an ordinary church service. Sybil's voice rose again—“As it was in the beginning, is now——” What was in the beginning and was now? Glory, glory.

Nancy sat down for the Proper Psalms, though she was aware her father had looked at her disapprovingly behind Sybil's back. It couldn't be helped; her legs wouldn't hold her up in the midst of these dim floods of power and adoration that answered so greatly to the power and adoration which abode in her heart, among these songs and flights of dancing words which wheeled in her mind and seemed themselves to become part of the light of the glorious originals of the Tarots.

She was still rather overwhelmed when they came to the Athanasian Creed, and it may have been because of her own general chaos that even that despised formulary took part in the general break-up which seemed to be proceeding within her. All the first part went on in its usual way; she knew nothing about musical setting of creeds, so she couldn't tell what to think of this one. The men and boys of the choir exchanged metaphysical confidences; they dared each other, in a kind of rapture—which, she supposed, was the setting—to deny the Trinity or the Unity; they pointed out, almost mischievously, that though they were compelled to say one thing, yet they were forbidden to say something else exactly like it; they went into particulars about an entirely impossible relationship, and concluded with an explanation that something wasn't true which the wildest dream of any man but the compiler of the creed could hardly have begun to imagine. All this Nancy half ignored.

But the second part—and it was of course the setting—for one verse held her. It was of course the setting, the chance that sent one boy's voice sounding exquisitely through the church. But the words which conveyed that beauty sounded to her full of sudden significance. The mingled voices of men and boys were proclaiming the nature of Christ—“God and man is one Christ”; then the boys fell silent, and the men went on, “One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the manhood into God.” On the assertion they ceased, and the boys rushed joyously in, “One altogether, not”—they looked at the idea and tossed it airily away—“
not
by confusion of substance, but by unity”—they rose, they danced, they triumphed—“by unity, by unity”—they were silent, all but one, and that one fresh perfection proclaimed the full consummation, each syllable rounded, prolonged, exact—“by unity of person.”

It caught the young listening creature; the enigmatic phrase quivered with beautiful significance. Sybil at her side somehow answered to it; she herself perhaps—she herself in love. Something beyond understanding but not beyond achievement showed itself, and then the choir were plunging through the swift record of the Christhood on earth, and once more the attribution of eternal glory rose and fell—“is now,” “is now—and ever shall be.” Then they were all kneeling down and the vicar was praying in ritual utterance of imperial titles for “our sovereign lord King George.”