The Greater Trumps (21 page)

“In my sister's room, as a matter of fact,” Aaron answered. “If you want it——”

She signed a negative. “Why, no,” she said, “of course not. Did I tell you that I found it in the snow? I thought it must belong to the house.”

Aaron shook his head. “Not here,” he answered. “We never have any animals here, especially not cats.”

“Really?” Sybil said. “Don't you like them, Mr. Lee? Or doesn't the air suit them? Or do they all refuse to live in the country and want to get to London, to the theaters and the tubes? Are the animals also forsaking the countryside?”

He smiled, saying, “It isn't a social law, Miss Coningsby, but it's a rather curious fact. They—the cats we've had from time to time, for one reason or another—they spend all their time round my study door, mewing to get into the room of the images.”

Ralph looked up; this was the first he had heard of a room with images.

“Dogs too,” Aaron went on, “they do the same thing. In fact, we've had a mighty business sometimes, getting them away—when we've had one. It's snarl and bite and go almost mad with rage before it'd be taken back to its kennel. And there was a parrot Henry had when he was a boy—a cousin of mine gave it to him, a magnificent bird—Henry left the door of its cage unfastened by accident one night, and we found it the next morning dead. It had gone on dashing itself against the door of the room till it killed itself.”

There was a moment's silence, then Ralph said, “Parrots are jolly useful things. I know a man—he's at Scotland Yard, as a matter of fact, and he has to see all sorts of cranks and people who think other people are conspiring or fancy they're on the track of dope-gangs … Of course not the very silliest kind, but those that there just might be something in—well, he got so fed up that he had a parrot in his room, put it away in the window opposite his table so that it was at the back of anyone else, and he taught it, when he stroked his nose several times to say, ‘And what about—last—Tuesday—?' It had an awfully sinister kind of croak in its voice, if you know what I mean, and he swore that about half his people just cleared out of the room without stopping to ask what it meant, and even most of those that didn't were a bit nervy most of the rest of the time. He got a shock once though, because there was a fellow who'd lost a lot of money racing the Tuesday before, and when he was reminded of it suddenly like that, he just leaped up and cursed for about twenty minutes straight off before getting down to his business again.”

“That,” said Sybil with conviction, “was an admirable idea. Simple, harmless, and apparently effective. What happened to the parrot, Ralph?”

“Oh well, it got all out of hand and a bit above itself,” Ralph answered. “It kept on all the time asking ‘What about last Tuesday?' till my friend got sick of it. Especially after some fellow tried to do him in one Tuesday with a hammer. So he had to get rid of it. But he always thought it'd be a brainy notion for solicitors and businessmen and vicars and anybody who had a lot of callers.”

“Beautiful!” Sybil said. “The means perfectly adapted to the end—and no fuss. Would you jump, Mr. Lee, if someone asked you what you were doing last Tuesday week?”

“Alas, I am always leading the same life,” Aaron said. “There hasn't been a day for years—until this Christmas—that I've had cause to remember more than any other. No, I shouldn't jump.”

“And you, Ralph?” Sybil asked.

“Well—no,” Ralph said, “I should have just to think for a minute … I mean, in Scotland Yard and all. But—no, not after a second.”

“How innocent the old are,” Sybil said, smiling to Aaron. “I shouldn't jump either.”

“No, but then you never
do
jump, do you, Aunt Sybil?” Ralph protested. “When that girl we had smashed a whole trayful of china in the hall, you just said, ‘Oh, poor dear, how worried she'll be!' and dipped out there like a homing-pigeon.”

“Well, so she was worried,” Sybil answered. “Frightfully worried. But about your animals, Mr. Lee. What's the explanation, do you think?”

Aaron shrugged delicately and moved his hands. “Who knows?” he answered. “It sounds fantastic to say the images draw them, but what other cause can there be? Some mesmeric power … in the balance, in the magnetic sympathies.”

“Magnetic sympathy over cats?” Sybil said, a little dubiously. “Cats never struck me like that. But you won't let my kitten bang itself against the door, will you? Or not till we've tried to amuse it in other ways first.”

“I'll see to its safety myself,” Aaron said. “I shall be looking in on Joanna, and I'll either bring it away or warn her to keep it safe. She'll treat it carefully enough, with her unfortunate delusions about Egypt. Isn't Ra the Sun God shown in a cat's form?”

“I haven't any idea,” Sybil answered, smiling. “Perhaps the kitten is Ra, and I carried the Sun God home this afternoon. It doesn't, if one might say so, seem exactly the Sun God's best day.”

They listened to the blizzard for a minute or two; then Sybil looked at her watch. “I think, if you'll pardon me, Mr. Lee,” she said, “I'll just run and look in on my brother. He might be glad of a word.” The three of them rose together.

“Present my regrets again,” Aaron bowed. “It was an entirely unexpected accident and a most regrettable result.”

Sybil curtsied back. “Thank you so much,” she murmured. “Lothair will—or will not—think so. But I can't altogether think so myself, if (you don't mind me being frank?), if Henry
did
arrange for the storm.”

He stepped back, startled. “The storm,” he cried more loudly, “the storm's only winter snow.”

“But is all winter snow the same storm?” she asked. “That is, if I've got it right. But isn't it divinely lovely? Do excuse me; I must just see Lothair.” She turned and went.

“Aunt Sybil,” Ralph said in the pause after her departure, “would find a torture chamber divinely lovely, so long as she was the one on the rack. Or a broken down Ford. Or draughts. Or an anaconda.”

12

THE FALLING TOWER

I
N
A
ARON
'
S
workroom the noise of the blizzard was very high. The two who crossed the room heard it and heard it roaring still higher as Henry unlocked the inner door. But when they had entered that other room, just as they passed through the curtains, there was a change. The high screech of the wind altered by an infinitely small but complete variation. Nancy heard it no longer screaming, but singing. Her hand in Henry's, she paused between the hangings.

“Do you hear? My dear, do you hear?” she exclaimed. Holding the hangings for her, and listening, he looked back. “I hear,” he said. “It's catching us up, Nancy.”

“No, but that's gone,” she protested. “It sounds different here. Hark!”

As he dropped the curtain, the habitual faint music of the room greeted them. It seemed to the girl that the roar of the wind was removed to an infinite distance, where it mingled with other sounds, and was received into the feet of the dancers, and by them beaten into fresh sound. She stood; she looked; she said to Henry, “Have you the Tarots, darling?”

He held them out, the suit of scepters, the suit of deniers, the princely cards of cups and staves.

“I wonder,” she said, “if we shall be able to find our way in by them alone.”

He looked at her fully for the first time since on the terrace their eyes had beheld each other in the snow.

“I can't tell; this has never happened before,” he said. “What I tried to do has failed; perhaps it was better that it failed. I did what seemed wise——”

“I know you did,” she said. “Dearest Henry, I know you did. I do understand that, though I understand so little. There's nothing between us at all. You did—and I did—and now here we are. But you've always talked as if there was a way to—what do you call them?—the Greater Trumps, and as if the Greater ruled the Lesser.”

“Certainly they do,” he answered, “and therefore the suits are less than the Trumps. But it may be a very dangerous thing to thrust among them as we are, so—half prepared.”

“Still, we can't wait, can we?” she said. “And if time would let us, my heart won't—it's beating too hard. Kiss me, Henry, and, in case we are divided, remember that
I
always wanted to love. And now for the cards. Look, will you hold them or shall I? and what's the best thing to do?”

“Do as you did the other night,” he said, “and I will put my hands round yours and hold the eight high cards that are left to us; and then let's move towards the table as you did, but this time we will not stop till we are compelled. And God help us now—if there be a God—for I do not know what we can do or say if we come knowingly into the measure of the dance.”

“All is well; all is most well,” she murmured, and they put themselves in the order he had proposed, but he more fearfully than she. Then, the Tarots pointed towards the dancers, they took the first slow step forward together.

As they did so, the golden mist flowed out again to meet them and flowed round them as it had compassed her but two nights before. This time, so intent was her will upon its work, she did not look up to him at all, and it was he who was startled by the apparent distortion of her face below his, by the huge enlargement of their hands, by the gigantic leaves that shook and quivered in their clasp, trembling till the very colors upon them seemed to live and move, and the painted figures floated as if of their own volition from the mortal grasp that held them. He did not dare pause, nor could he feel a trace of faltering in the girl who stepped forward, foot by foot, so close to him; only there passed through his mind a despairing ironic consciousness that not thus, certainly not thus, had he purposed to attempt the entrance into the secret dance. He had meant to go victoriously, governing the four elemental powers, governing the twin but obedient heart and mind that should beat and work in time with his, lover and friend but servant also and instrument. By her devotion to his will he had hoped to discover the secret of domination, and of more—of the house of life where conquerors, heroes, and messiahs were sent out to bear among men the signs of their great parentage. And now he was drawn after her. It had been she who had pointed the way, the thought of which had been driven from his mind by the catastrophe that had overwhelmed it. It was she who went first, not by his will but by her own—nor could he then guess how much, to Nancy's own heart, her purpose and courage seemed to derive from him. His power was useless till she drew it forth; it worked through her, but it was from him that it still obscurely rose. Though she ruled instead of him in the place of the mist, it was he who had given her that sovereignty, and it seemed to her then that, though all dominions of heaven and earth denied it, she would acknowledge that profound suzerainty while her being had any knowledge of itself at all.

She pressed on. The great leaves shook and parted and drifted upon the wind, which, as before, seemed to stir in the golden cloud. As one by one they were carried off they took on the appearance of living forms; the transparency which was illumined with the crimson and azure tints of the Queen of Chalices floated before her, farther and farther away, and was indeed a crowned and robed woman bearing the crimson cup. The black and purple of the Esquire of deniers showed for a moment before it was swallowed up in the cloud as a negro youth in an outlandish garment holding aloft a shining bronze coin, and all surrounded by a halo of light which had once been the papyrus where had been figured the now-living shape. Her hands below her were lucent and fiery in the mist; the golden cloud above those pale shapes, infused with crimson fire of blood, dazzled and dazed her; they were more splendid and terrific even than the visions that rose from them and fled upon the wind. Around them, closing them in, supporting them, were other mighty hands—his. Of his presence otherwise she was by now unaware; she might, but for those other hands, have been alone. But those four hands that by mischance had loosed the winds and the waters on earth were stretched out to recover the power they had inadvertently cast away. The power within her, the offspring of her transmuted love, longed in itself, beating down her own consciousness, for some discovery beyond where mightier power should answer it. She pressed on.

It was at the fourth step that Henry lost her. Still aware of the irony of their movement, still aware of himself as against her, and of both of them as against the mystery of paintings and images, he lost himself for less than a moment in a regret that things should have turned to this result. This was not what he had meant to be; his mind added that this was not what should have been, and almost before his reproach had grown from his pulse into his thought she was gone. His hands were empty; the cloud swirled about him, but he had now no companion. He took a single solitary step; then he ceased to move. He hesitated in the mist; the wind struck him as if it had swept the girl away and was minded to fling him into ruin. He pressed back and fought against it, but not for his own sake then so much as for hers. It pressed him, not in sudden blasts, but with a steady force, so that he could, by leaning against it, just maintain himself. As if he were still on the terrace fighting the storm, he set himself against this oppression, as if indeed all that had chanced since had never been, but for one unrealized change. On the terrace his danger and hers had been known to him with equal urgency. But in fact, since then much had happened. His own schemes had been scattered; her love for him, her love for something greater than him, had shone in his darkness; her laughter had stirred it, her voice had called him from it. Following her, he had come so far; he filled his mind now with desire for her salvation. Let himself go, let the world perish, so only that she walked safely among the perils of this supernatural world. He had mocked at her fear, and now fear for her was in his heart. The mist was in his throat and nostrils; he was choking in it. His eyes were blind, his head swam, in that terrible golden cloud. But, more than that, he knew chiefly that her hands were gone, and that she also was alone.