The Greater Trumps (5 page)

“Wouldn't he give it to his daughter?” Aaron asked more hopefully. “Are you going to marry her?”

“He can't easily give her one pack out of the whole collection, and the rest to the Museum,” Henry answered. “Yes—I shall marry her. I think perhaps—but that doesn't matter. But if he gives her the whole lot he will be bothered by his friend's wish; and if he gives her one pack he will be bothered by the explanations; and if he leaves it all to the Museum he will be bothered by losing it.”

“But how will he lose it, if he keeps it while he's alive?” the old man asked.

“I think he's already unhappy, even while he's alive, at the idea of losing at his death so much that he could never enjoy,” Henry said. “He is forever waiting for satisfaction.”

Aaron Lee leaned forward. “But it's necessary that he should sell it or give it—or lose it somehow,” he said anxiously.

“It would be very difficult for him to lose it,” the other answered. “And how do you know what virtue might pass from the cards?”

“Only violence … that's unwise,” Aaron answered. “But to take them … to take them for this purpose … I don't see the wrong.”

“Mr. Lothair Coningsby would see the wrong,” Henry said drily. “And I doubt if I could persuade Nancy.”

“What's she to do with it?” his grandfather asked contemptuously.

Henry smiled again, a bright but almost threatening flash of amusement. “I wonder,” he said. “But, whatever I wonder, be certain, grandfather, that I'm determined not to go against her till …”

He stopped for so long that Aaron said, “Till—till when?”

“Till I've seen whether the image of the Lovers has another use,” Henry finished. “To know—to see from within—to be aware of the dance. Well, we shall see.” His eyes fixed on the inner door, he added slowly, “Nancy—Nancy—Nancy.”

Aaron said, “But you must do something soon. We can't run any risk. An accident—”

“Or a spasm of gloom,” Henry added, “and the cards would be in the Museum. Yes, you're right; we can't wait. By the way, do you ever see anything of Joanna?”

“I haven't seen her for months,” the old man answered, with a slight shudder. “She came here in the summer—I told you.”

“I know you did,” Henry said. “Is she still as mad as ever? Is she still crying out on the names of the old dead gods?”

The other moved uneasily. “Don't let's talk of it. I am afraid of Joanna.”

“Afraid of her?” Henry said scornfully. “Why, what can she do to harm us?”

“Joanna's mad, with a terrifying madness,” Aaron said. “If she knows that the Tarots might be brought back to their originals and the working of the mystery be complete——”

“What could an old woman and an idiot boy do?” Henry asked.

“Call them an insane prophetess and a young obedient Samson,” Aaron answered. “I dream of her sometimes as if she belonged to
them
. If she thought the body of her child was found and formed and vivified … and if she knew of the cards, she might … A mad hierophant … a hieratic hate …”

“Mightn't she be appeased if she thought her child was found?” Henry asked.

“If she thought that we kept it from her?” the old man said. “Ask your own blood, Henry, what your desire would do. Your spirit is more like hers than mine. When she and I were young together, I set myself to discover the prophetic meaning of the dance, but she imagined herself a partner in it and she studied the old tales and myths of Egypt. Thirty years she studied them, and her child was to be a Mighty One born within the measure. It was born, and the same day it died.”

Henry interrupted him sharply. “You've never told me this,” he said. “Did Joanna mean knowingly to create life within the dance? Why did the child die? Who was the father?”

“Because its heart was too great, perhaps, or its body too feeble; how should I know?” his grandfather answered. “She married a man who was reckoned knowledgeable, but he led an evil life and he was a plaything compared to Joanna. She longed to adore him, and she could only mock at him and herself. Yet she was fierce for him after the flesh and she made him her child's father and hated him for his feebleness. She would strike and taunt him while the child was in her womb, for love and anger and hate and scorn and fear. The child was a seven-months child, and it died. The father ran away from her the day before it was born, and the same night was killed in a street accident when he was drunk. But Joanna, when she heard that the child was dead, screamed once and her face changed, and the Tarot cards that she sought (as we have all done), and the myth of gods that she studied, and the child that should have been a lord of power and was instead a five-hours-old body of death—these tangled themselves in her brain forever; and for fifty years she has sought the thing that she calls Osiris because it dies and Horus because it lives and at night little sweet names which only Stephen hears. And it has one and twenty faces, which are the faces of them within and of the Tarots, and when she finds the limbs that have been torn apart by her enemy, who is her husband and is Set and is we who seek the cards also, she thinks she will again become the Queen of Heaven, and the twice twenty-one gods shall adore her with incense and chanting. No doubt she is mad, Henry, but I had rather deal with your other mad creature than with her.”

Henry meditated for some time, walking about the room in silence; then he said, “Well, there's no reason why she should hear of it, unless she snuffs the news up out of the air.”

“She may even do that,” Aaron said. “Her life is not as ours, and the air and the lords of the sceptres are one.”

“In any case, I don't see what she can do to interfere with us,” Henry answered. “She had her chance and lost it. I will see that I don't lose mine. As for Coningsby——” He walked up and down the room for a few minutes in silence; then he said, “I've a good mind to try and get them here for Christmas. It's a month off; that ought to give me time. You could manage, I suppose?”

“What good would that be?” his grandfather asked.

Henry sat down again. “Why, it's clear,” he said, “that we shall have to let them know something—Nancy and her father anyhow. If he's got to give us the cards, he's got to have a reason for doing it, and so far as I can see——”

“You're not going to show him
them
?” Aaron exclaimed, glancing over his shoulder at the door of the inner room.

“Why not?” Henry asked lightly. “What does it matter? There're all sorts of explanations. Besides, I want to show Nancy, and she'll be able to work on him better if he's seen them.”

“But he'll tell people!” Aaron protested.

“What can he tell them?” Henry asked. “And, if he does, who's to believe him? Besides—after we've got the cards … well, we don't know what we can do, do we? I'm sure that's the best. See, I'll ask Nancy, and she'll bring her aunt, I suppose.”

“Her aunt?” Aaron interrupted sharply. “How many are you going to bring? Who is this aunt?”

“Her aunt,” Henry said, “is just the opposite to her father. As serene and undisturbed as … as
they
are. Nothing puts her out; nothing disturbs her. Yet she isn't a fool. She'll be quite harmless, however; it won't matter whether she sees or not. She'll be interested, but not concerned. Well, Nancy and her aunt and her father. I'll try and dodge the brother; he's simply a bore. There'll be the three of them, and me; say, for—Christmas Day's on a Saturday, isn't it?—say, from Thursday to Tuesday, or a day or two longer. Well?”

“But will he come?” Aaron asked doubtfully.

“I think he may,” Henry said. “Oh, of course he won't want to, but, as he won't want to do anything else in particular, it may be possible to work it. Only you'd better keep Joanna out of the way.”

“I don't know in the least where she is,” the old man said irritably.

“Can't you find out by the cards?” Henry smiled. “Or must you wait for the Tarots?” On the word his face changed, and he came near to the table. “We will certainly have them,” he said in a low, firm voice. “Who knows? Perhaps we can find out what the Fool means, and why it doesn't dance.”

Aaron caught his sleeve. “Henry,” he breathed, “if—if there should be an accident—if there should—who would get the cards?”

“Don't be a fool,” Henry said roughly. “Haven't you always told me that violence breaks the knowledge of the cards?”

“They told me so,” the old man answered reluctantly, “but I don't see … anyhow, we needn't both …”

“Wait,” his grandson answered, and turned to pick up his coat. “I must get back.” He stretched himself and laughed a little. “Nancy told me to have a good night,” he said, “and here I am spending it talking to you.”

“Don't talk too much to these people of yours,” Aaron grumbled, “Nancy or any of them.”

His grandson pulled on his coat. “Nancy and I will talk to one another,” he said, “and perhaps what we say shall be stranger talk than ever lovers had before. Good night. I will tell you what I can do about it all in London.”

3

THE SHUFFLING OF THE CARDS

T
HE
C
ONINGSBYS
usually went to Eastbourne for Christmas. The habit had been begun because Mr. Coningsby had discovered that he preferred hotel life for those few days to having his own house treated as an hotel. Groups of young people would arrive at any hour of day or night, and Nancy or Ralph, if in, would leap up and rush to welcome them, or, if not in, would arrive soon after, inquiring for friends who had already disappeared. Mr. Coningsby disapproved strongly, but for once found himself helpless, so sudden was the rush; he therefore preferred to be generous and give everyone a thorough change. It was never quite clear whether he regarded this as on his sister's account chiefly or on his children's. She was supposed to need it, but they were supposed to enjoy it, and so after the first year they all went back each Christmas to the same hotel; and Mr. Coningsby put up with playing bridge and occasionally observing the revels and discussing civilization with other gentlemen of similar good nature.

It annoyed him slightly at times that Sybil never seemed quite grateful enough for the mere change—as change. Even the profound content in which she normally seemed to have her being—“sluggish, sluggish,” Mr. Coningsby said to himself when he thought of it, and walked a little more briskly—even that repose must surely be all the pleasanter for a change. There were always some nice women about for her to talk to. Of course, she was pleased to go, but not sufficiently pleased to gratify Mr. Coningsby; he was maddened by that continuous equable delight. She enjoyed everything—and he, he enjoyed nothing.

But this year things were different—had got, or anyhow were going, to be different. It had begun with Ralph, who, rather confusedly, had intimated that he was going to have a still more thorough change by going off altogether with some friend of his whose people lived somewhere near Lewes. Mr. Coningsby had not said much, or did not seem to himself to have done so, but he had made it clear that he disliked such secession from the family life. To summer holidays spent with friends he had (he hoped) never objected, but Christmas was different. Christmas was, in fact, the time when Mr. Coningsby most nearly realized the passage of time and the approach of age and death. For Christmas every year had been marked by small but definite changes, through his own childhood, his youth, his marriage, his children's infancy and childhood; and now there were only two possibilities of change—the coming of a third generation or the stopping of Christmas. Each year that Mr. Coningsby succeeded in keeping Nancy and Ralph by him for Christmas postponed either unwelcome change, and enabled him to enter the New Year with the pretense that it was merely the old year beginning over again. But this year his friend's death had already shaken him, and if he and Sybil and Nancy—an engaged Nancy—were to be without Ralph, the threat of an inevitable solitude would loom very near. There would be a gap, and he had nothing with which to fill the gap or to meet what might come through it; nothing except the fact that he was a Warden in Lunacy, and had all the privileges of a Warden—such as going in to dinner before the elder sons of younger sons of peers. He did not know where, years before, he had picked up that bit of absurd knowledge, in what odd table of precedence, but he knew it was so, and had even mentioned it once to Sybil. But all the elder sons of younger sons of peers whose specters he could crowd into that gap did not seem to fill it. There was an emptiness brought to mind, and only brought to mind, for it was always there, though he forgot it. He filled it with his office, his occupation, his family, his house, his friends, his politics, his food, his sleep. But sometimes the emptiness was too big to be filled thus, and sometimes it rolled up on him, along the street when he left the home in the morning, blowing in at evening through the open window or creeping up outside when it was shut, or even sometimes looking ridiculously at him in the unmeaning headlines of his morning paper. “Prime Minister,” he would read, “Announces Fresh Oil Legislation,” and the words would be for one second all separate and meaningless; “Prime Minister.” What was a Prime Minister? Blur, blot, nothingness, and then again the breakfast-table and
The Times
and Sybil.

Ralph's announced defection therefore induced him unconsciously to desire to make a change for himself, and induced him again to meet more equably than he otherwise might have done Nancy's tentative hints about the possibility of the rest of them going to Henry's grandfather. It didn't strike him as being a very attractive suggestion for himself, but it offered him every chance of having Nancy and Henry as well as Ralph to blame for his probable discomfort or boredom or gloom, and therefore of lessening a concentration on Ralph, Ralph's desertion, change, age—and the other thing. Sybil, when he consulted her, was happy to find him already half reconciled to the proposal.