The Greater Trumps

  “Quite, quite; the left,” Mr. Coningsby said, and disappeared. Henry went his own way—not to the drawing-room, where Nancy, with all her heart but much against her temper, expected him to look in for a few minutes. He didn’t. She cursed herself, and went on staring at the peer’s extremely eighteenth-century diary, taking no part in the chat of the other two. Sybil began reading a poem aloud.

  TO CLARINDA: ON RECEIVING A LETTER

  Ah, cruel Clarinda, must this Paper show

  All of thy Fortune that I now may know?

  Though still the Town retain thee, perjured Maid,

  May not some Thought of me the Town invade?

  Was I forgotten when I did depart,

  And thou oblivious of a Faithful Heart?

  Despair to thee is but a grateful Pain,

  Coolly pretended by the Amorous Swain;

  But Oh, in me Despair is all my Sense

  As hateful as impoverished Joy’s Pretense——

  “Impoverished Joy’s pretense”—Nancy knew that was what she was feeling, and knew how hateful it was. At the same time she realized that she was feeling tired—oh, so absolutely tired. She must get away and lie down and rest; she’d be better then by tea-time. And perhaps Henry would be free, and impoverished Joy need no longer pretend. When the poem was finished, she said, rather ungrateful to the wretched peer, “He wasn’t a very good poet, was he? I suppose Clarinda had thrown him over. Mr. Lee, would you think me a perfect pig if I went and lay down and went to sleep? I’m only just keeping my eyes a little way open.”

  “My dear girl, of course,” Aaron said. “Anything you like. I’m so sorry. You’re not overtired, are you?”

  “No. Oh, no,” Nancy protested. “It’s just … it’s just … that I’m unutterably sleepy. I can’t think what’s come over me.”

  As he went to open the door, she smiled at her aunt. Sybil said in a low voice, “Being in love is a tiring business—I mean getting into love. Sleep well, darling.”

  She slept at least without dreams, unless that sudden vision of her father falling from a high precipice from which she woke and sprang up was a dream. It was his scream that had wakened her; was it—or was it that howling wind? There was something driving against the windows; for a moment she thought it was a great white face staring in, then she knew it for snow—heavy, terrific snow. Bewildered, she blinked at it. The day had changed completely; it was dark, and yet, from the unlit room, white with snow. The wind or the scream sounded again, as, still half-asleep, she clung to the bed and gazed. Her father—he must be in by now. It was close on five. Her father—faces looking for him—her father crying out. She ran uncertainly to the door and, driven by an unknown fear, went hurrying to the hall. There was Sybil and Aaron—Sybil with her coat on, Aaron protesting, offering.… Nancy came up to them.

  “Hallo,” she said. “I say, aunt, you’re not going out, are you?”

  Sybil said something that was lost in the noise of the blizzard; Nancy looked round. “Where’s father?” she asked.

  “Out,” Sybil said. “I was just going to meet him.”

  “Hasn’t he come back?” Nancy said. “But, I say, he’ll never find his way.…” If only she hadn’t dreamed of his being thrown over a precipice. There was no precipice here. But he’d screamed.

  “But it’s absurd,” Aaron said. “Henry’ll go. I’ll call him. I’ve let the chauffeur go home. But Henry’ll go.”

  Sleep was leaving Nancy, but dream and fear and cold took her. Her father ought to have been back long ago—and where was Henry? He couldn’t be working all this time in this tumult. He and her father were missing—and her aunt was going out—and she?

  “I’ll go,” she said. “You can’t go, aunt. I’ll go.”

  “You,” Sybil said, “can go and look for Henry. We can’t leave Mr. Lee to do everything. I’ve no doubt your father’s all right, but he may be glad of an arm. Even mine. Help Mr. Lee to shut the door.”

  If her father had taken the wrong road—if hands were guiding him the wrong way—if he were being thrust——

  Sybil opened the door; the wind struck at their throats and half stifled them; the snow drove at their faces. Over her shoulder Sybil said, “It is rather thick.”

  “Oh, don’t go,” Nancy said. “You’ll be flung over the edge too. I’ll go—I hated him—I’ll go. What can you do?”

  “You go and find Henry,” Sybil said, leaning forward against the wind. “I can adore the mystery of love.” The tall figure was poised for a moment against the raging turmoil beyond and around, then it took a couple of steps forward and was lost to sight. Aaron struggled to close the door, desperately alarmed; it had been no part of his intention that Sybil also should be exposed to the powers that were abroad. But he hadn’t been able to stop her. Nancy, in a torment of anger at herself, flung forward to help him; that done, she turned and fled to find Henry. Where was Henry? Some terror beat in her. Henry and her father—a scream in the storm. She ran into Henry’s room; he wasn’t there. She rushed out again—to other rooms; she raced through the house and couldn’t find him. Was he in the room of the images? If so, the old man must open it for her. But Aaron had vanished too, and the wind was howling even louder round the house. She burst in on the maids in the kitchen thrilling at the storm—“Mr. Lee; where’s Mr. Lee?” Before they could answer with more than the beginning of stammered ignorance she was off again. Well, if he wasn’t here she would go without him. She must go. She rushed into her own room, and as she pulled on her coat she gazed out of the window on the wild chance of seeing her father’s returning figure, though (could she have thought) she would have remembered that her room looked out over the terrace at the side of the house. But it was then that she saw Henry.

  He was standing at one end of the terrace facing slantingly out so as to command from a distance the road that led to the village, and to be himself unseen except from one or two higher windows. He was standing there; she could only just see his figure through the dark snow-swept day, but it was he—certainly it was he. What he was doing there she couldn’t think; he couldn’t be watching for her father—that would be silly. He must have a reason, but, whatever the reason, it must wait; his business now was to come with her. She flew out of the room, downstairs, along a corridor that led to a small door giving on to the other end of the terrace, just beside the drawing-room which occupied the bottom corner of the house; not more than thirty yards from Henry she’d be then. She opened it and desperately fought her way out.

  The next thing she knew was that the wind had flung her back against the wall of the house and was holding and stifling her there. Bludgeons of it struck her; snow and wind together choked her. She turned her head to face the wall, drew a sobbing breath or two, and cried out “Henry” once. Once, for she could hardly hear herself, and with her remaining intelligence she kept her breath for other things. Surely Henry couldn’t be out in this; the wind beat and bruised her again, thrusting her against the wall. For a moment she forgot everything, and reached out to find the doorway and drag herself into shelter, but even as her hand touched the edge she tore it away. No, Henry wasn’t indoors and he was out here; and her business was to get to him. She began to edge along the wall. He had been standing at the extreme end of the terrace; so if she worked along the wall, and then (if necessary) crawled out on her hands and knees, she ought to find him. Unless he had gone.…

  She ventured to look over her shoulder. The wind, even in its violence, was rhythmical; it rose to its screaming height and ceased a little, and then began to rise again. In a pause she looked and could see only the falling snow. She looked back just in time to avoid a blast that seemed almost to smash at her as if it were a great club, and went on struggling along the wall. Aunt Sybil was out in this, and her father, and Henry. In God’s name, why Henry? Her father by accident, and Sybil by—by love. Love—Oh, to get away from this, and anyone who liked could have love! “No, no,” she gasped. “No, darling; I’m sorry.” Sh
e looked round once more and saw—not Henry, but another shape. In the snow, leaping up through the air, preluding the new blast of wind that blinded and strangled her, there swept a wild figure waving in each hand a staff of some kind, and another like it followed. She saw the swinging clubs, she heard shrieking—the wind shrieking—and almost lost her footing as the renewed strength of it came against her. For some minutes she clung to the wall; mad memories that the crisis of the last half-hour had driven from her mind returned. Death with the sickle—earth from the deniers—the gipsy who drove the Armada—and the powers of the wind screamed again as if once more they saw the dismasted and broken ships swept before them through the raging seas. Henry—where was Henry? What was Henry doing out at the end of the terrace? Before the thought had formed in her mind she herself screamed—one protesting shriek, “Henry, my darling, don’t, don’t!” And as she did so she began to struggle on again towards an end which she did not dare imagine. Whatever it was, she must be there; Sybil had told her to find Henry—but Sybil must be dead by now; nothing could live in this storm, any more than the Spanish vessels flung on the Scottish rocks. Sybil must be dead—well, then, it all lay on her; she was left to do the bidding of a greater than herself. And if Sybil wasn’t dead—Sybil who had seen the Fool moving, who had said “Try it, darling.” “Try it”—and she was crawling along the house-wall! Though Death ran at her, though the Hanged Man faced her, though the Tower fell upon her, though a skeleton rose in her path—“Rise to adore the mystery of love.” She pulled herself upright and passionately flung round to face the wind and snow.

  Something, away, among them, was moving; something was sweeping up and down. She forced herself a step out from the wall. There was the end, there was where Love meant her to be, there then was where she was except for the slight inconvenience of getting there. Another step; another—she was, by the mere overwhelming force of the storm, driven down, she stumbled and fell on to one knee; there she looked up to those moving shapes and knew them for hands. Regularly, monotonously, they swept down and out, holding something; they were huge, gigantic—as her own had seemed in the golden mist. As her own in the golden mist, so these in the white surges of the snow, and the snow swept out from them. On one knee she fought to get nearer—to face another terror, she dimly felt, but of a different kind. This, if that other were true, this could be stopped. The great hands swept down again, and colossal snow-flakes drove towards her on a renewed blast that drove her down literally to hands and knees. But she crawled and dragged herself on; she was almost there; she was under them—those awful moving origins of storm. She knelt upright, she struck up at them and missed, they had swept right outward and as they more lightly turned she flung at them with her own hands outstretched. She caught and held them, but as they struggled with hers in that first surprise, and dragged themselves away and up, bringing her to her feet with them, something that they held slipped and was gone. She clutched and clung to them, holding them in, pressing them back, and as she did so and was drawn inward with them she fell forward and knew suddenly that she lay on Henry’s breast.

  Lost in the concentration and movement of the spell, he did not know she was near him till his hands were seized and, pulling them frantically away, he dragged her grey-coated form up with them out of the storm. It was against his heart before he knew it; he had one spasm of terror lest something unknown had turned on him, lest an elemental being, a bearer of staffs, had crept near to embrace its master. He cried out, then, recovering, checked, and then again broke into a shout of rage. “You fool,” he cried, “you fool! You’ve knocked the cards away!” In his hand he held but a few; peering at them in the dusk, he discerned but the four princely chiefs; the rest, as she clutched them, had slipped or blown off, and were now tossing in the wind which rose from them, seething with power, vagabond and uncontrolled. Even with her weight against him he took a step or two forward, but her arms clung round his shoulders and he could not shake himself free. The catastrophe—the double catastrophe, for the magical instruments were lost, and the wild whirlwind was free—struck at his heart; he stood still, stricken. She half raised her head. “Henry, please don’t,” she murmured.

  “You’ve stopped it,” he said. There could be no secrets now; by another way than either had intended they had been brought into knowledge of each other and might speak clearly.

  “Stop it now,” she urged. “Darling, don’t do it. Not this way.”

  “I can’t stop it,” he said. “I haven’t got them. You’ve——Get in, get in; we mustn’t be here. Anything may happen.”

  In that great rending of both their spirits they could not clamor. The Tower that each had raised—the Babel of their desired heavens—had fallen in the tumult of their conflicting wills and languages, and a terrible quiet was within their hearts. They were joined in an unformulated union of despair. He accepted the arm about his shoulder; he put his own arm round her. “Back,” he said, “to the wall; to the door. Come.”

  The storm was still soaring upward and outward from around them, so that their way was at first easier. But before they reached their refuge it had spread more wildly; battle raged in the air, and the heavens, once disturbed only at a distance where the invoked disturbance struck them, were now themselves in full action. Natural and supernatural riot ruled everywhere. Once Nancy was torn from him, and only as if by chance their clutching hands re-gripped, frenzied with the single desire and power of preservation. Twice they were beaten down amid the already heaping snow, and had to drag themselves along till an accidental and local lull in their enemy let them scramble to their feet. They were dashed against the wall; they were held motionless by the madness of the elements. At last they came, almost broken, to the harbor of the open doorway. They stumbled through the drift that was forming in it, and the need for new labor presented itself. But other human aid was near. Henry, half blind, staggered towards the kitchen, called the maids, and ordered one of them to help him to clear the doorway and fasten the door, while the other took charge of Nancy. With his last effort he saw the lock turned, the bolt driven home; then he dropped to the floor of the passage, unconscious at once of his purpose, his thwarting, and his accomplishment.

  9

  SYBIL

  SYBIL CONINGSBY stepped out into the storm and tried to see before her. It was becoming very difficult, and the force of the wind for the moment staggered and even distressed her. She yielded to it a little both in body and mind; she knew well that to the oppositions of the world she could in herself offer no certain opposition. As her body swayed and let itself move aside under the blast, she surrendered herself to the only certain thing that her life had discovered; she adored in this movement also the extreme benevolence of Love. She sank before the wind, but not in impotence; rather as the devotee sinks before the outer manifestations of the God that he may be made more wholly one with that which manifests. Delaying as if both she and it might enjoy the exquisite promise of its arrival, it nevertheless promised, and, as always, came. She recovered her balance, swaying easily to each moment’s need, and the serene content which it bestowed filled again and satisfied her.

  It satisfied, but for no more than the briefest second did she allow herself to remain aware of that. Time to be aware, and to be grateful for that awareness, she enjoyed; literally enjoyed, for both knowledge and thankfulness grew one, and joy was their union, but that union darted out towards a new subject and center. Darted out and turned in; its occupation was Lothair Coningsby, and Lothair was already within it. It did not choose a new resting-place, but rather ordered its own content, by no greater a movement than the shifting of the accent from one syllable back to the other. So slight a variation as gives the word to any speaker, a new meaning gave to this pure satisfaction a new concern. She was intensely aware of her brother; she drew up the knowledge of him from within her, and gave it back within her. In wave after wave the ocean of peace changed its “multitudinous laughter” from one myriad grouping to another.
And all, being so, was so.

  Such a state, in which the objects of her concern no longer struck upon her thoughts from without, recalled by an accident, a likeness, or a dutiful attention, but existed rather as they did in their own world—a state in which they were brought into being as by the same energy which had produced their actual natures—had not easily been reached. That sovereign estate, the inalienable heritage of man, had been in her, as in all, falsely mortgaged to the intruding control of her own greedy desires. Even when the true law was discovered, when she knew that she had the right and the power to possess all things, on the one condition that she was herself possessed, even then her freedom to yield herself had been won by many conflicts. Days of pain and nights of prayer had passed while her lonely soul escaped; innocent joys as well as guilty hopes had been starved. There had been a time when the natural laughter that attended on her natural intelligence had been hushed, when her brother had remarked that “Sybil seemed very mopy.” She had been shocked when she heard this by a sense of her disloyalty, since she believed enjoyment to be a debt which every man owes to his fellows, partly for its own sake, partly lest he at all diminish their own precarious hold on it. She attempted dutifully to enjoy and failed, but while she attempted it the true gift was delivered into her hands.

  When the word Love had come to mean for her the supreme greatness of man she could hardly remember; one incident and another had forced it on her mind—the moment when her mother, not long before death, had said to her, “Love, Sybil, if you dare; if you daren’t, admit it”; the solemn use of the name in the great poets, especially her youthful reading of Dante; a fanatic in a train who had given her a tract: Love God or go to Hell. It was only after a number of years that she had come to the conclusion that the title was right, except perhaps for go to—since the truth would have been more accurately rendered by be in Hell. She was doubtful also about God; Love would have been sufficient by itself but it was necessary at first to concentrate on something which could be distinguished from all its mortal vessels, and the more one lived with that the more one found that it possessed in fact all the attributes of Deity. She had tried to enjoy, and she remembered vividly the moment when, walking down Kingsway, it had struck her that there was no need for her to try or to enjoy; she had only to be still, and let that recognized Deity itself enjoy, as its omnipotent nature was. She still forgot occasionally; her mortality still leaped rarely into action, and confused her and clouded the sublime operation of—of It. But rarely and more rarely those moments came; more and more securely the working of that Fate which was Love possessed her. For it was fatal in its nature; rich and austere at once, giving death and life in the same moment, restoring beyond belief all the things it took away—except the individual will.