The Greater Trumps (9 page)

He came to hold the door for her. “You've certainly done it,” he said. “How did you know what to say to her?”

“I thought she talked very sensibly,” Sybil said, getting into the car. “In her own way, of course. And I wish she'd come with us—that is, if … would it be very rude to say I gathered she had something to do with your family?”

“She's my grandfather's sister,” he answered. “She's mad, of course; she—but I'll tell you some other time. Stephen was a brat she picked up somewhere; he's nothing to do with us, but she's taught him to call her ‘grandmother,' because of a child that should have been.”

“Conversation of two aunts,” said Sybil, settling herself. “I've known many wilder minds.”

“What were you at, Sybil?” Mr. Coningsby at last burst out. “Of all the scandalous exhibitions! Really, Henry, I think we'd better go back to London. That my sister should be subjected to this kind of thing! Why didn't you interfere!”

“My dear, it would mean an awful bother—going back to London,” Sybil said. “Everything's settled up there. I'm a little cold, Henry, so do you think we could go fairly fast? We can talk about it all when we get in.”

“Kneeling in the road!” Mr. Coningsby went on. “Oh, very well—if you will go. Perhaps
we
shall smell things too. Is your grandfather anything like his sister, Henry?

If so, we shall have a most agreeable Christmas. He might like me to kneel to him at intervals, just to make things really comfortable.”

Sybil laid a hand on his knee. “Leave it to me to complain,” she said. “All right, Henry; we all know you hated it much more than the rest of us.” Nancy's hand came over the seat and felt for hers; she took it. “Child, you're frozen,” she said. “Let's all get indoors. Even a Christian rat—all right, Henry—likes a little bacon-rind by the fire. Lothair dear, I was going to ask you when we stopped—what star exactly is that one over there?”

“Star!” said Mr. Coningsby, and choked. He was still choking over his troubles when they stopped before the house, hardly visible in the darkness. He was, however, a trifle soothed by the servant who was at the door and efficiently extricated them, and by the courtesies which the elder Mr. Lee, who was waiting just within the hall, immediately offered them. He found it impossible, within the first two minutes, not to allude to the unfortunate encounter; “the sooner,” he said to himself, “this—really rather pleasant—old gentleman understands what his sister's doing on the roads, the better.”

The response was all he could have wished. Aaron, tutored at intervals during the last month by his grandson in Mr. Coningsby's character and habits, was highly shocked and distressed at his guests' inconvenience. Excuses he proffered; explanations he reasonably deferred. They were cold; they were tired; they were, possibly, hungry. Their rooms were ready, and in half an hour, say, supper.… “We won't call it dinner,” Aaron chatted on to Mr. Coningsby while accompanying him upstairs; Sybil and Nancy had been given into the care of maids. “We won't call it dinner tonight. You'll forgive our deficiencies here. In your own London circle you'll be used to much more adequate surroundings.”

“It's a very fine house,” said Mr. Coningsby, stopping on what was certainly a very fine staircase.

“Seventeen-seventeen,” Aaron told him. “It was built by a Jacobite peer who only just escaped attainder after the Fifteen and was compelled to leave London. It's a curious story; I'll tell it to you some time. He was a student and a poet, besides being a Jacobite, and he lived here for the rest of his life in solitude.”

“A romantic story,” Mr. Coningsby said, feeling some sympathy with the Jacobite peer.

“Here's the room I've ventured to give you,” Aaron said. “You can't see much from the windows tonight, but on a clear day you can sometimes just catch a glimpse of the sea. I hope you've everything. In half an hour, then, shall we say?”

He pattered away, a small, old, rather bent, but self-possessed figure, and Mr. Coningsby shut his door. “Very different from his sister,” he thought. “Curious how brothers and sisters
do
differ.” His mind went to Sybil. “In a way,” he went on to himself, “Sybil's rather irresponsible. She positively encouraged that dreadful old woman. There's a streak of wildness in her; fortunately it's never had a chance to get out. Perhaps if that other had had different surroundings … but if this is her brother's house, why's she wandering about the country? And, anyhow, that settles the question of giving Henry those cards. I shall tell Nancy so if she hints at it again. Fancy giving poor dear Duncannon's parting gift—the things he left me on his very death-bed—to a fellow with a mad gipsy for an aunt! Isis,” he thought, in deep disgust, “the Divine Isis. Good God!”

5

THE IMAGE THAT DID NOT MOVE

M
UCH TO
her own surprise when she found it out in the morning, Nancy slept extremely well; rather to his own disgust, so did her father. No one ever thought of asking Sybil—or, at least, no one ever listened to the answer; it was one of the things which wasn't related to her. She never said anything about it, nor, as a consequence, did anybody else; it being a certain rule in this world that what is not made of vivid personal importance will cease to be of social interest. The shoemaker's conversation therefore rightly returns to leather. Nancy woke and stretched and, as her senses returned, considered healthily, voluptuously, and beautifully the immediate prospect of a week of Henry, interspersed with as much of other people as would make him more rare if not more precious. It occurred to her suddenly that he might already be downstairs, and that she might as well in that case be downstairs herself. But as she jumped out of bed—with the swinging movement—she swung into a sudden change of consciousness. Here they were—at his grandfather's, and here then all his obscure hints and promises were to be explained. He wanted something; he wanted something of her, and she was not at all clear that she wasn't rather frightened, or anyhow a little nervous, when she tried to think of it. She took a deep breath. Henry had something to show her, and the earth had grown in her hands; however often she washed them she never quite seemed to get away from the feel of it. Being a semi-educated and semi-cultured girl, she dutifully thought of
Macbeth
—“the perfumes of Arabia,” “this little hand.” For the first time in her life, however, she now felt as if Shakespeare had been talking about something more real than she had supposed; as if the words echoed out of her own deep being, and again echoed back into it—“cannot cleanse this little hand.” She rubbed her hands together half-unconsciously, and then more consciously, until suddenly the remembrance of Lady Macbeth as she had once seen her on the stage came to her, and she hurriedly desisted. Lady Macbeth had turned—a tall, ghostly figure caught in a lonely perdition—at the bottom corner of the stage, where the Witches … what was it they had sung?

The weird sisters, hand in hand
,

Posters of the sea and land
.

“Posters of the sea and land”—was that what she had been yesterday in the car—in her sleep, in her dreams? Or that mad old woman? The weird sisters—the old woman and Aunt Sybil—hand in hand, posters of the sea and land? Posters—going about the world—from point to point in a supernatural speed? Another line leaped at her—“Peace! the charm's wound up.” Wound up—ready for the unwinding, and Henry ready too. Her expectation terrified her; this day which was coming but not yet quite come was infinite with portents. Her heart filled and labored with its love; she pressed a hand against it to ease the burning pain. “Oh Henry,” she murmured aloud, “Henry!” What did one do about it? What was the making of earth besides this? This, whatever it was—this joy, this agony—was not out of key with her dreams, with the weird women. It too posted by the sea and land; the universe fell away below the glory of its passion.

She rose, unable any longer to sit still, drawing deep breaths of love, and walked to the window. The morning as it grew was clear and cold; unseen, miles away, lay the sea. Along the seashore, between earth and water, was the woman of the roads now hobbling? Or were the royal shapes of the Emperor and the Empress riding out in the dark heavens above the ocean? Her heart labored with power still, and as that power flooded her she felt the hands that rested on the window-frame receive it; she leaned her head on the window and seemed to expect mysteries. This was the greatest mystery; this was the sea and land about which she herself was now a fortunate and happy poster.

It was too early; Henry wouldn't be about yet. But she couldn't go back to bed; love and morning and profound intention called to her. Her aunt was in the next room; she decided to go there, and went.

Her aunt, providentially, was awake, contemplating nothing with a remote accuracy. Nancy looked at her.

“I suppose you do sleep?” she said. “Do you know, I've never found you asleep?”

“How fortunate!” Sybil said. “For after all I suppose you've generally wanted something, if only conversation?”

Nancy, wrapping herself in her aunt's dressing-gown as well as her own, sat down and looked again, this time more attentively.

“Aunt Sybil,” she said, “are you by any chance being offensive?”

“Could I and would I?” Sybil asked.

“Your eyes are perpetually dancing,” Nancy said. “But is it true—do I only come to you when I want something?”

“Why,” said Sybil, “if you're asking seriously, my dear, then by and large the answer is yes.” She was about to add that she herself was quite content, but she saw something brooding in Nancy's face, and ceased.

“I don't mean to be a pig,” Nancy said. Sybil accepted that as a soliloquy and said nothing. Nancy added, “I'm not all that selfish, am I?”

“I don't think you're particularly selfish,” her aunt said, “only you don't love anyone.”

Nancy looked up, more bewildered than angry. “Don't love?” she said. “I love you and father and Ralph very much indeed.”

“And Henry?” Sybil asked.

“Well—Henry,” Nancy said, blushing a little, “is different.”

“Alas!” Sybil murmured, but the lament was touched with laughter.

“What do you mean—‘alas'?” Nancy asked. “Aunt Sybil, do you
want
me to feel about everybody as I do about Henry?”

“A little adjustment here and there,” Sybil said, “a retinting perhaps, but otherwise—why, yes! Don't you think so?”

“Even, I suppose,” Nancy said, “to Henry's great-aunt or whatever she was?” But the words died from a soft sarcasm to a softer doubt; the very framing of the question, as so often happens, was itself an answer. “Her body thought”; interrogation purged emotion, and the purified emotion replied to the interrogation. To love.…

“But I can't,” she exclaimed, “turn all
this
”—she laid her hand on her heart—“towards everybody. It can't be done; it only lives for—him.”

“Nor even that,” Sybil said. “It lives for and in itself. You can only give it back to itself.”

Nancy brooded. After a while, “I still don't see how I can love Joanna with it,” she said.

“If you give it back to itself,” Sybil said, “wholly and utterly, it will do all that for you. You've no idea what a lot it can do. I think you might find it worth trying.”

“Do you?” Nancy said soberly; then she sighed and said with a change of tone, “Of course I simply adore this kind of talk before breakfast. You ought to have been a missionary, Aunt Sybil, and held early services for cannibals on a South Sea Island.”

“The breakfast,” Sybil said gravely, “would have a jolly time listening to the bell before the service—if I had a bell.”

“Oh, you'd have a bell,” Nancy said, “and a collection of cowrie-shells or bananas, and open-air services on the beach in the evening. And Henry and I would lean over the side of our honeymoon liner and hear your voice coming to us over the sea in the evening and have—what is it they have at those times?—
heimweh
, and be all googly. And father would say, ‘Really, Sybil!' without being googly. Well, thank you for your kind interest in a Daughter of the Poor.” She kissed her aunt. “I do, you know,” she said, and was gone.

The day passed till dinner without anything particularly striking having taken place. They looked over the house; they lunched; they walked.
The Times
arrived, sent up from the village, about mid-day, and Mr. Coningsby settled down to it. Henry and Nancy appeared and disappeared. Sybil walked and rested and talked and didn't talk, and contemplated the universe in a serene delight. But after dinner and coffee there came a pause in the conversation, and Aaron Lee spoke.

“My grandson thinks,” he said to his visitors, “that you'd be interested to see a curiosity which we have here.”

“I'm sure anything——” answered Mr. Coningsby, who was feeling rather inclined to be agreeable.

Nancy said to Henry in a low voice, “Is it whatever you meant?” and he nodded.

The old man rose. “If I may trouble you, then, to come with me,” he said, leading the way from the room, and Mr. Coningsby sauntered after his sister without the smallest idea that the attack on his possession of the Tarot cards was about to begin. They came into Aaron's room; they crossed it and stood about the inner locked door. Aaron inserted the key; then, before turning it, he looked round and said, “Henry thinks that your ownership of a particular pack of our gipsy cards may make you peculiarly interested in … in what you'll see. The pack's rather rare, I believe, and this”—he unlocked the door—“is, I may say, very much rarer.”

Henry, from the back, watched him a little anxiously. Aaron had not been at all eager to disclose the secret dancing images to these strangers; it was only the absolute necessity of showing Mr. Coningsby an overpoweringly good reason for giving away the cards that had at last convinced him. A day's actual acquaintance with Mr. Coningsby had done more towards conviction than all Henry's arguments—that, and the knowledge that the Tarot cards were at last in the house, so close to the images to which, for mortal minds, they were the necessary key. Yet, under the surface of a polite and cultured host which he had presented, there stirred a longing and a hostility; he hated this means, yet it was the only means to what he desired. In the conflict his hand trembled and fumbled with the door-handle, and Henry in his own agitation loosed Nancy's arm. She felt his trouble and misunderstood it. “Darling,” she murmured, “you don't mind us seeing, do you? If you do, let's go away.”