The Greater Trumps (30 page)

Authors: Charles Williams

BOOK: The Greater Trumps

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Sybil dropped her hand towards it and dropped it a soft word; it jumped delicately towards her hand and played round her foot, and jumped again. As it rushed, as it stayed, Joanna's cry also ceased. The power of it was withdrawn; all power, all utterance, was withdrawn. The unexpected silence was more awful than even the wailing, for it was not a silence of relief but of impotence. The cry of the world was choked; the ball, tossed from the Juggler's hand, revolved in unspoken anguish. The madwoman reeled once, as if she had been struck on the mouth; then, recovering, turned darting eyes to Sybil in the hall below. Through the silence Sybil called to her, “The child's found, Joanna; the child's alive and lovely. All's well; the child's found.” Joanna tried to speak and could not. She shuffled towards the stair; she turned her pointing hands, bearing their fiery weapon, as if she herself carried the sword of the crowned chieftain of fire, downward towards that other confronting form. Sybil took a step forward, the cat leaping up against her, and called again, “He's here. Come and adore.”

In a forced and horrible croak, as if speech broke through against commandment and against control, Joanna said, “It's you all the time. I shall see him when you're dead. When you're dead and the world's destroyed, I'll see my desire.”

Amabel, crouching by the drawing-room door, saw the strange lady, her left hand rising and falling in a dance with the leaping cat, stretch out the right as if in invitation. The open palm, the curved fingers, the arching thumb, took on a reflection of the cloud that hung over all things. It seemed to Amabel that Miss Coningsby held out a golden hand towards the staircase down which Joanna was beginning to creep. The hand which had helped Lothair and comforted Nancy and healed Aaron, which had picked up the kitten and closed the door and controlled the storm, was stretched to gather in this last reverted madness of man. It lay there, very still, the center of all things, the power and the glory, the palm glowing with a ruddy passion veiled by the aureate fleshâthe hand of all martyrs, enduring; of all lovers, welcoming; of all rulers, summoning. And, as if indeed it summoned, the cloud of gold rushed down towards it, but it moved in shapes and figures, the hands of all the symbols stretched towards the hand that, being human, was so much more than symbol.

Nancy and Henry from above beheld them, hands imperial and sacerdotal, single and joined, the working hands that built the Tower, the helpless hands that formed the Wheel, white hands stretching from the snow, fiery hands thrusting from between Joanna's that burned downwards and vanished, all activities rushing towards that repose through which activity beat in the blood that infused it. So the hand of the Juggler had been stretched to cast and catch the tossed balls of existence; so the hand of the Fool had at last fulfilled the everlasting promise and yielded its secrets to the expected hour. The cloud swirled once around that open palm, as the intermingling shapes trod out a last circling measure, hiding all other forms, so that the hand itself was all that could be seen as the rapturous powers wheeled inwards to it. For an infinitesimal fraction of time the immortal dance stood still to receive the collection of that ever-moving and never-broken repose of sovereign being. Then suddenly they were gone, and the cloud was gone, and everywhere, breaking from Sybil's erect figure, shone a golden light, as of the fullness of the sun in his glory, expanding in a rich fruition. Over the snow spread and heaped around, over Aaron and the others by him, over the stairs and the landing and those who were on it, and so over and through the whole house, the light shone, exquisite and full of promise, radiant and full of perfection.

The chaos of the hall was a marvel of new shape and color; the faces of those who stood around were illumined from within. It was Christmas night, but the sunlight shed itself about the whole house, and in the sunlight, between Sybil and Joanna, seriously engrossed, two small strange children played. The mystery which that ancient seer had worked in the Greater Trumps had fulfilled itself, at that time and in that place, to so high a point of knowledge. Sybil stood there, and from her the sun of the Tarots ruled, and the holy children of the sun, the company of the blessed, were seen at least by some of the eyes that watched. For Amabel saw them and was ignorantly at peace; and Aaron saw them and was ashamed; and Nancy and Henry saw them, and Nancy laughed for mere joy of seeing, and when he heard it Henry felt his heart labor as it had never done before with the summons and the power; and Sybil saw them and adored, and saw beyond them, running down the stairs between herself and Nancy as if he were their union, and poised behind Joanna as if he supported and protected her, the vivid figure of the Fool. He had come from all sides at once, yet he was but one. All-reconciling and perfect, he was there, running down the stairs as he had run down the storm. And as he passed, receiving and bestowing light, Nancy, on an impulse, turned and kissed Henryâbefore the light should vanish, so that she might have done it, might have done it if in days to come she should ever find herself a part of that dreadful cry which had gone up from the world. But even in the kiss she felt her smarting hand throbbing an answer, an answer and an oath that years should see valiantly kept. When she looked back, the figure of the Fool was gone; she heard Joanna cry out in a natural voice, and she saw the children cease from their play and look up, and then Joanna ran down the rest of the stairs, and, as she reached the bottom, cried out once more as if in pain, and stumbled and fell.

The cry shook the golden light; it vanished. Amabel, gazing, saw Miss Coningsby in the hall and the old woman lying in a heap at the foot of the stairs, and before she had time to move she saw the other visitors come flying down them. They came very swiftly, but as if they also came in order; the lovers first, still hand in hand, and after them Mr. Coningsby, still anxiously watching Nancy, and thinking as fast as he could that he must keep in touch with her, whatever happened. And after him again came Ralph and Stephen, distracted from their mutual hostility, but with all their strength ready and vigilant. The three great orders of grace and intellect and corporeal strength, in those immature servants of their separate degrees, gathered round the place where Sybil knelt by Joanna, and the search within and the search without were joined.

Mr. Coningsby peered over Henry's shoulder. “Has she collapsed?” he said hopefully.

Nancy had knelt down also, and Sybil's hands and hers were busy with easing and helping. Amabel, released at last from what she felt must have been a deliciously thrilling nightmare, ran of her own accord to get some water. Aaron came over to the rest. Joanna opened her eyes, and they fell on Nancy. She looked, uncertainly and then eagerly, at the grave young face bending over her, then a great gladness shone in her own. She put out a trembling hand, and Nancy clasped it. She murmured something, and Nancy in similar indistinguishable words answered. Sybil stood up, and Mr. Coningsby edged round to her.

“What's she doing?” he asked, not quite knowing why he was speaking in a whisper. “Is she apologizing or what?”

Sybil did not immediately answer. She looked at him with a smile; then with the same smile she looked round the hall, and her eyes lingered on a little heap that lay where she had been standing just before, a little heap of golden dust, strewn with charred and flimsy scraps, so light that already one or two were floating away in the mere stir of the air. She looked at them tenderly; then she turned back to her brother, and said, “She has found her child.”

“Has she?” Mr. Coningsby said. “Where?” And he also looked round the hall, as if he suspected that Joanna's child was likely to be a fresh nuisance.

“She thinks Nancy is her child,” Sybil said.

Mr. Coningsby stared, tried to grasp it, moved a little, was gently pushed out of the way by Amabel with an “Excuse me, sir,” glowered after her, and said, “Nancy?”

“She thinks so,” Sybil answered.

“But â¦ but, I mean â¦ what about the age?” her brother protested. “She can't think a girl of twentyâforty, perhaps, if she thought she'd grown up, or four if she hadn't. But not twenty.”

“She's looking at something immortal,” Sybil said. “Age â¦” She delicately shrugged it away.

Mr. Coningsby stared at her, and then realized that he was a little frightened of her though he couldn't think why. “But,” he began again, and suddenly remembered a single simple fact, “but I thought her child was a
boy
. I'm sure someone told me it was a boy. She doesn't think Nancy's a boy, does she? Don't you mean Henry?”

“No,” Sybil said, “I mean Nancy. I don't think it much matters about girl or boy. She thought her child was Messias.”

“Oh!” Mr. Coningsby said. “And is Nancy Messias?”

“Near enough,” Sybil answered. “There'll be pain and heart-burning yet, but, for the moment, near enough.”

About the Author

Charles Williams (1886â1945) was a British author and longtime editor at Oxford University Press. He was one of the three most prominent members of the literary group known as the Inklingsâthe other two being C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Williams wrote poetry, drama, biography, literary criticism, and more, but is best known for his novels, which explored the primal conflict between good and evil. T. S. Eliot, who wrote an introduction to Williams's
All Hallows' Eve
, praised the author's “profound insight into â¦ the heights of Heaven and the depths of Hell, which provides both the immediate thrill, and the permanent message of his novels,” and
Time
magazine called him “one of the most gifted and influential Christian writers England has produced this century.”

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Kat Lee

ISBN: 978-1-5040-0660-6

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