The very dance itself seemed to have paused in her, so motionless her light form held itself, so rapt in its breathless suspension as the words sounded through her, and before her eyes the small shapes of glory turned and intertwined.
“But once,” he went on, “—some say in Egypt long before the Pharaoh heard of Yussuf Ben-Yakoob, and some in Europe while the dreaming rabbis whispered in the walled ghettos over fables of unspeakable words, and some in the hidden covens of doctrine which the Church called witchcraft—once a dancer talked of the dance, not with words, but with images; once a mind knew it to the seventy-eighth degree of discovery, and not only knew it, but knew how it knew it, so beautifully in one secret corner the dance doubled and redoubled on itself. And then the measure, turning here and there, perpetually harmonious, wrought out these forms of gold in correspondence with something at least of itself, becoming its own record, change answering to change. We can’t guess who, we can’t tell how, but they were carried in the vans of the gipsies about Europe till they were brought here, and here they still are.”
She moved a hand and he paused; as if willing to speak from herself, she said (the voice and the words desiring a superfluous but compensating confirmation, as of step answering to step), “To look at these then is to have the movement visible? this is what is going on … now, immediately now? Isn’t there anything anywhere that isn’t happening there?”
He pointed to the table. “This is the present,” he said, “and this is the only present, and even that is changed before it can be known.”
“Yet you said,” she answered, “that this unknown man knew how it was to be known. How was that? and why, dearest, are the figures—the images, I mean—made as they are?”
“It would need another seer to explain,” he said, “and that seer would have to pass behind the symbols and see them from within. Do you understand, Nancy? Do you understand that sometimes where one can hardly go, two may? Think of that; and think what might be seen and done within the dance if so much can be seen without. All we know is that the images are the twenty-one and the nought, and the four fours and the four tens. Doubtless these numbers themselves are of high necessity for proper knowledge, but their secret too is so far hidden within the dance.”
“Yet you must have considered the shapes, darling?” she asked.
“The shapes, perhaps, are for two things,” he answered more slowly, “for resemblance and for communication. On the one hand they must mean some step, some conjunction, some—what we call a fact—that is often repeated in the infinite combinations; on the other, it must be something that we know and can read. This, I think, is what was meant, but even the secondary meaning has been lost—or was lost while the cards were separated from the golden images, as if a child were taken from its mother into some other land and never learned her language, that language which should have been the proper inheritance of its tongue.”
He stopped short, as if the thought troubled him, and the girl, with the same memory in her mind, said, “Did the woman on the road mean that when she talked to us?”
“I don’t care what she meant,” he said almost harshly. “Neither she nor anyone but ourselves concerns us now. No one but ourselves has a proper right to talk of the cards or the images.”
He glanced at her as he spoke, but, smiling very slightly, she let the utterance die, and said only, “Tell me more of the cards.”
“The cards were made with the images,” he answered. “The mark in the corner of each of them is the seal of the bottom of each golden shape; seventy-eight figures and as many seals on as many cards. The papyrus paintings are exactly the same as the figures; they are the paintings of the figures. This, as I told you a month ago, when we first saw them, is the only perfect set, correspondence to correspondence, and therefore the only set by which the sublime dance can be read. The movement changes incessantly, but in every fractional second it is so, and when these cards are brought to it they dispose themselves in that order, modified only by the nature of the hands in which they are held, and by the order into which they fall we read the fortune of whoever holds them.”
“But the suits, you said, are the elements?” she asked.
He nodded. “But that is in the exterior world; they are the increasing strength of the four elements, and in the body of a man there are corresponding natures. This is the old doctrine of humors which your schoolmistress taught you, no doubt, that you might understand Ben Jonson or what not.”
“And the others?” she said, “the Greater Trumps?”
He came near to her and spoke more low, almost as if he did not want the golden dancers to know that he was talking of them. “They,” he said, “are the truths—the facts—call them what you will—principles of thought, actualities of corporate existence, Death and Love and certain Virtues and Meditation and the Benign Sun of Wisdom, and so on. You must see them—there aren’t any words to tell you.”
“The Devil—if it is a devil?” she said.
“It is the unreasonable hate and malice which moves in us,” he answered.
“The Juggler—if it is a juggler?” she asked.
“It is the beginning of all things—a show, a dexterity of balance, a flight, and a falling. It’s the only way he—whoever he was—could form the beginning and the continuation of the dance itself.”
“Is it God then?” Nancy asked, herself yet more hushed.
Henry moved impatiently. “What do we know?” he answered. “This isn’t a question of words. God or gods or no gods, these things are, and they’re meant and manifested thus. Call it God if you like, but it’s better to call it the Juggler and mean neither God nor no God.”
“And the Fool who doesn’t move?” she said after a pause.
“All I can tell you of that,” he said grimly, “is that it is the Fool who doesn’t move. There are tales and writings of everything but the Fool; he comes into none of the doctrines or the fortunes. I’ve never yet seen what he can be.”
“Yet Aunt Sybil saw him move,” she said.
“You shall ask her about it some time,” he answered, “but not yet. Now I have told you as much as I can tell of these things; the sense of them is for your imagination to grasp. And when you have come to understand it so, then we may see whether by the help of the Tarots we may find our way into the place beyond the mists. But meanwhile I will show you something more. Wait for me a minute.”
He paused, considering; then he went to a different part of the curtains and disappeared through what she supposed was another opening in them. She heard a sound, as if he were opening a window, then he came back to her.
“If you look up at this room from without,” he said, “you will see it has four windows in it. I have opened the eastern one. Now see.”
He went to the part of the table nearest to the window he had opened, and, feeling beneath it, drew out a curved ledge, running some third of the way round the table. It was some three feet wide, and it reached, when it was fully extended, almost to the curtains; it also was of gold, and there were faint markings on it, though Nancy could not see very well what they were—some sort of map of the world, she thought. Henry turned a support of wood to hold it rigid and began to lay the Tarot cards upon it. He spread the Greater Trumps along the table edge in the order of their numbering. But he began, not with the first, but with the second card, which was that of the Empress, and so on till he came to the pictures which were called (xx) The Last Judgment—where a Hand thrust out of cloud touched a great sarcophagus and broke it, so that the skeleton within could arise, and (xxi) The World—where a single singing form, as of a woman, rose in a ray of light towards a clear heaven of blue, leaving moon and sun and stars beneath her feet. The first, however, which showed a Juggler casting little balls into the air, he laid almost in the middle, resting it upon the twelfth card, which was the Wheel of Fortune, and supporting it against the edge of the table itself behind, over which it projected; under the Wheel of Fortune he hid the Fool. Havin
g done this carefully, he went on very quickly with the rest of his task. He took the four suits and laid them also on the ledge from left to right, the deniers, the cups, the scepters, the swords. Of each suit he laid first, against and slightly overlapping the Greater Trumps, the four Court cards—the King, the Queen, the Knight, the Esquire; in front of, and again overlapping these, the ten, the nine, the eight, and the seven; then, similarly arranged, the six, the five, and the four; then the three and the two; and in front of all, pointing outwards, the ace of each suit, so that the whole company of the Tarots lay with their base curved against the table of the dance, and pointing with a quadruple apex towards the curtains behind which was the open window.
As soon as this was done he stepped back to Nancy, thrust an arm round her, and said, “Look at the curtains.” She obeyed, but not continuously; her eyes turned back often to the cards on the ledge, and it was while she gazed at them that she became aware how, in the movement of the dance, the Juggler among the images had approached the corresponding card. He seemed to her to run swiftly, while still he kept the score or so of balls spinning over him in the air, and as he went he struck against the card and it slid from its place. Its fall disturbed the Wheel of Fortune on which it stood, and immediately the whole of the cards were in movement, sliding over and under each other. She gazed, enchanted, till Henry whispered in her air, “The curtain!”
She looked and at first instead of a curtain she saw only the golden mist in which she had found herself on the previous night. But it was already gathering itself up, dissipated, lost in an increasing depth of night. At first she thought the curtains had disappeared and she was looking out through the open window, but it was hardly that, for there was no frame or shape. The dark hangings of the room here lost themselves in darkness. She had not passed through the mist, but she was looking beyond it, and as within it her own fortune had been revealed so now some greater thing came into conjunction with the images, and the cards moved under the union of the double influence. For within the darkness a far vision was forming. She saw a gleam of green close before her; she heard for an instant what seemed the noise of waves on the shore. Then against that line of greenish-blue a shore actually grew; she saw the waves against it. As she gazed, it dwindled, growing less as that which was beyond it was shaped in the darkness.
Small and far, as if modeled with incredible minute exactitude, there emerged the image of a land with cities and rivers, railways and roads. The shape defined itself and was familiar; she was looking at a presentation of Holland and Belgium and Northern France, and—for, even as she understood, the limits expanded and what she saw seemed to grow smaller yet, as wider stretches came into view—there were the Alps, there was Italy; that dome of infinitesimal accuracy, above like infinitesimal detail, was St. Peter’s—and beyond were more seas and islands and the sweep of great plains. Before her breath had thrice sighed itself out she saw India and Asia, with its central lakes, and Everest, its small peak dazzling white against the dark, and, as she breathed again, Tibet expanded into China, and the horizon of that mysterious night fled yet farther away and closed at length upon the extreme harbors of Japan. The whole distance lay before her, and she knew certainly within her that she was seeing no reproduction or evoked memory, but the vast continents themselves, with all that they held. She looked on the actual thing; earth was stretched before her, and the myriad inhabitants of that great part of earth.
Fast in Henry’s arm, as if leaning forward from a height, she strained to see; and something of man’s activities she did indeed discern. There were moving specks on certain roads—especially away in Northern China; and, since there chiefly she could trace movement, without deliberate intention she concentrated on it. It grew larger before her, and the rest of the vision faded and diminished. She unconsciously desired to see, and she saw men—companies of men—armies—all in movement—details she could not hold her gaze steadily enough to observe, but there was no doubt that they were armies, and moving. There was a town—they were about it—it was burning. Her concentration could not but relax, and again all this receded, and again before her the whole of Europe and of Asia lay. But now the seas and continents were no longer still; they were shaken as if with earthquake; they were dissolving, taking fresh shapes, rising into, changing into, the golden images that danced upon their golden ground. Only here they danced in night upon no ground. They started from the vanishing empires and nations; cities leaped together, and Death came running instead; from among the Alps the Imperial cloak swept snow into itself; rivers poured into the seas and the seas into nothing, and cups received them and bearers of cups, and a swift procession of lifted chalices wound among the gathering shapes. From Tibet, from Rome, some consummation came together, and the hierophant, the Pope of the Tarots, took ritual steps towards that other joined beauty of the two lovers for which her grateful heart always searched. All earth had been gathered up; this was the truth of earth. The dance went on in the void; only even there she saw in the center the motionless Fool, and about him in a circle the Juggler ran, forever tossing his balls.
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
IT 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 woma
n’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.