“Unless you have a trick to lure back the chalices and the staffs,” he said. “If you can, you can put them in their order and seal up the storm. But since they are rushing and dancing about the sky, I can’t tell you how you’ll do it. Perhaps if you talked to those that are left——”
“Mightn’t we?” she asked, but he did not understand her.
“Try it,” he mocked her again. “Here are the four princes; take them and talk to them. Perhaps, since you struck all the rest loose, these will tell you where they are. Oh, to be so near, so near——!”
“I should have done it all the same if I’d known,” she said, “but I didn’t know—not that I should do that. I only wanted to hold your hands still.”
“They’ll be still enough soon,” he mocked, “and so will yours”; and suddenly his hand felt for and caught hers. “They’re beautiful hands,” he said; “though they’ve ruined the world, they’re beautiful hands. Do you know, Nancy, that you’ve done what thousands of priests and scientists have talked about? This is the end of the world. You’ve killed it—you and your beautiful hands. They’ve sent the snow and the wind over the whole world, and it’ll die. The dance is ending; the Juggler’s finished with one ball.”
“Love them a little then,” she said, “if you’re sure. If you’re quite sure.”
“Can you bring back the staffs?” he asked, “from the one to the ten? Shall I open the window for you to call or catch them? Maybe one’s on the window-sill now.”
“Can’t the images help?” she asked. “I don’t know, but you should. Isn’t there any way in which they could command the Tarots?”
She felt him stiffen in the darkness. “Who told you that?” he said. “I can’t tell. I don’t know anything of what can be done from within. If …”
“If——” she answered, and paused. “I will do anything with you that I can. What would you like me to do?”
His figure turned and leaned towards her. “You?” he said. “But you hated what I was doing, you wanted to save your father—of course you did; I’m not blaming you—but how can you help me now?”
She broke unexpectedly into a laugh, the sound of which surprised some solemn part of her nature but seemed to bring freedom at once into herself and into the dark room, so that she felt relieved of her lingering fear. “Oh, Henry darling,” she said, “must those dancers of yours concentrate on my father? Haven’t they any way of doing things without bothering the poor dear? Don’t you think they might manage to save the world and yet leave him alone? Henry sweetest, how serious you are about it all!”
“You can laugh,” he said uncertainly, not as a question nor yet in anger, but as if he were feeling after some strange fact. “You can laugh … but I tell you it is the end of the world.”
She scrambled to her feet. “I begin to agree with Aunt Sybil,” she said; “it isn’t quite decent to break into the poor thing’s secrets when it’s gone to such trouble to keep them quiet. But since you and I together drove things wrong, shall you and I together see—only see, darling—if we can put them straight?”
“You’re afraid of the Tarots,” he said; “you always have been.”
“Never again,” she said, “or yes—perhaps again. I’ll be afraid again; I’ll fall again; I’ll hate and be angry again. But just for a moment there’s something that runs and laughs and all your Tarots are flying along with it, and why shouldn’t it catch them for us if we ask it very nicely? Only we won’t hurt anyone, will we, if we can help it? Nothing’s important enough for that.”
He got to his feet heavily. “There’s no way anywhere without hurting someone,” he said.
“Darling, how gloomy you are,” she said. “Is this what comes of making blizzards and trying to kill your own Nancy’s own father? Perhaps there’s a way everywhere without hurting anyone—unless,” she added, with a touch of sadness clouding the full gaiety that had seized her, “unless they insist on being hurt. But let’s suppose they won’t, and let’s pretend they don’t, and let’s be glad that my father’s safe, and let’s see if the golden dancers can call back the staffs and the cups. I think perhaps we owe the world that.” She kissed him lightly. “It was sweet of you to pick out a nice soothing way of doing what you wanted,” she said. “Some magicians would have put him in a barn and set it on fire, or forced him into a river and let him drown. You’ve a nice nature, Henry, only a little perverted here and there. All great geniuses are like it, they say. I think you must be a genius, darling; you take your job so solemnly. Like Milton and Michelangelo and Moses. Do you know, I don’t believe there’s a joke in all the Five Books of Moses. I can’t see very well, Henry, but I think you’re frowning. And I’m talking. And talking and frowning won’t do anything, will they? Oh, hark at it! Come along, my genius, or we shan’t save the world before your own pet blizzard has spoilt it.”
“There’s no other way,” he said, “but I warn you that you don’t know what may happen. Perhaps even this isn’t a way.”
“Well, perhaps it isn’t,” she answered. “But they are dancing, aren’t they, dearest? And perhaps, if we mean to love——”
“Do you love me still then?” he asked.
“I never loved you more and yet I never loved you less,” she told him. “Oh, don’t let’s stop to ask riddles. And, anyhow, I wasn’t thinking of you, so there! Come, darling, or your aunt will be doing something curious. Yours is a remarkable family, Henry; you get all het up over your hobbies. And so you shall if you like, bless you! only not just now.”
“Joanna——” he exclaimed, unconsciously following her as she drew him towards the door. “Is she here?”
“She is,” Nancy said, “but we won’t worry about her now. Take me to them, darling, for the dance is in my ears and the light’s in my eyes, and this is why I was born, and there was glory in the beginning and is now and ever shall be, and let’s run, let’s run, for the world’s going quickly and we must be in front of it tonight.”
11
JOANNA
IN THE HALL below, the kitten stretched itself and yawned. Sybil had put it down when she was once well inside and asked one of the maids to look after it. But there had been no time yet; Mr. Coningsby, Ralph, Sybil herself, had to be seen to. And now there were still Joanna and Stephen. Aaron Lee, looking at his sister with something very much like watchful hatred, said, “Now you’re here, Joanna, you’d better get into bed. And so,” he added, jerking his head at Stephen, “had he.”
“Yes, Aaron,” said Joanna docilely, with a little giggle. “It’s a bad night to be out in, isn’t it?”
Aaron glanced round him; the three, except for the kitten, were alone in the hall.
“Why have you come?” he asked.
“To see you, dear,” the old woman said. “So’s Stephen. He’s very fond of you, Stephen is. Aren’t you, Stephen?”
“Yes, grandmother,” Stephen answered obediently.
“He’s very big, isn’t he?” Joanna ran on. “Much bigger than you, dear Aaron.” She hopped off her chair and began to prowl round the hall, sniffing. Presently she came to the kitten and stood staring at it. The kitten rubbed itself against her leg, felt the wet, and sprang aside. The old woman, bending, scratched its head, and began muttering to it in words which the others couldn’t hear.
The kitten jumped up, fell down, twisted over itself, dashed off, and dashed back. Joanna gesticulated at it, and it crouched watching her.
“You’d better get to bed, Joanna,” Aaron exclaimed to her. “Get those things off and get between the blankets. You’ll be ill if you don’t.”
“You fool, Aaron,” Joanna said. “Illness can’t touch me any more than death. I shall never be ill. I shall be transformed when the body that’s lost is made whole.” She turned her face towards him. “And where’ll you be then, Aaron? Screeching among the tormentors.”
“You’re mad,” Aaron answered. “You’re a mad old woman hobbling about in a dream.”
She left the kitten and almost ra
n back to him. “Dream, hey?” she snarled. “Little dream, Aaron Lee, for you that help to hide my baby.”
“Your baby’s dead,” Aaron snarled back, as the two small old creatures faced each other fiercely and spitefully. “Don’t you know that by now?”
She caught at his coat, and at the movement of her arm the water that still ran from her was flung wide-spattering around. “My baby never dies,” she cried, “and you know it. That’s why you hate me.” Her whole manner changed. “But you’re right, dear Aaron,” she mumbled, “yes, you’re right. Give me your bed to sleep in and your plate to eat from and I’ll give you a plate and a bed one day in a finer house than this. Give me a kiss first, Aaron, and I’ll never set Stephen on you to twist the news of the grave where you’ve hidden him out of your throat. Kiss me, Aaron.”
She was up against him, and he stepped sharply back to face her. His foot came down on the tail of the kitten, which was smelling at his shoes. It yelped; Aaron tottered and lost his footing, staggering a pace or two away. He turned fiercely on the kitten, which had dashed wildly across the hall.
“Put it out,” he cried, “put it back in the snow. Who brought it in? Stephen, catch it and put it out.”
The young man, who all this while had been leaning dully against the wall, the snow melting from him, his eyes following Joanna wherever she went, moved uncertainly. Joanna made no sign, and he, with movements that seemed clumsy but were exact, first attracted the kitten and then caught it up in his great hands.
“What shall I do with it, grandmother?” he said.
“Put it out,” Aaron called to him.
“Ah, no, don’t put it back in the snow,” Joanna said. “Ah, it’s a cunning little cat; it’s very small, but everything’s small at first. It’ll grow; it’ll grow. Let it sleep in my blankets, Aaron; the cats know where the blood fell and they sit in a circle round the hidden place watching for God. Have you ever found their eyes looking at you, Aaron, when you were shuffling the cards? little green eyes looking up at you? little claws that scratched? Give it to me, and it’ll sleep till the right time comes.”
“No cat’ll come to you in those drenched clothes,” Aaron said, with a curious flat effort at common sense. But, unhearing, she beckoned to Stephen and, when he came, took the kitten from him. It wriggled a little in her hands and mewed once, but it did not make any serious effort to escape. She held it near her face, peering and muttering at it, and it stared back at her. The colloquy of their eyes lasted some dozen seconds; then Joanna said, “Show me where I’m to rest, Aaron.” A maid returned at the moment. Aaron conferred with her and then said abruptly to Joanna, “Go along with Amabel; she’ll show you.” Then to Stephen, “And you—come with me. You can rub yourself down and have some food.”
“Ah, let Stephen sleep in the same room with me,” Joanna cried, “for we’re used to it and we’re uneasy apart. Haystack or lych-gate or king’s house or quarry, it’s all one to us so long as there’s Stephen to watch while I’m dreaming and me to wake while Stephen sleeps. Only he can’t see my dreams, and though I see his they’re only water and wind and fire, and it’s in earth that the other’s hidden till Horus comes.”
With the word a quietness fell on her; she brought the kitten against her cheek and crooned to it, as she followed the bothered and dubious Amabel away.
Stephen presumably “had some food,” but he was not at the late and bewildered dinner to which, soon after, Aaron sat down with Sybil and Ralph. Aaron muttered something about Henry’s probably being busy, and seemed to take it for granted that Nancy, after her experience of the storm, was also in bed. Sybil, when she grasped this, thought that Nancy might have been annoyed to have it thought so, but then even Sybil had not quite grasped the true history of the afternoon. She knew that Nancy believed that Henry had loosed the storm on Mr. Coningsby, by means of the magical operation of the power-infused Tarots. But she was not aware of the short meeting of Henry and Aaron, when the young man had recovered consciousness to find his grandfather, summoned by an agitated maid, bending over him. In a few sentences, as he came to himself, he told Aaron what had happened. Aaron stepped back, appalled.
“But then,” he faltered, “we can’t stop the winds,” and his face paled. “We shall all be killed.”
“Yes,” Henry said. “That’s the end of all our dreams.” As he spoke he had gone away to his own room, to sit in darkness brooding over his hope and his defeat, waiting for the crash that must come when the force of the released elements broke in on the house, and had sat so till Nancy came to him. But Aaron had refused, in his own mind, to believe it; it couldn’t be so. Something might happen, some wild chance might save them. He had never cared much for Henry’s intrusion into the place of the powers, and Henry might easily be wrong. The manuscripts told them this and that, but the manuscripts might be wrong. In the belief that they were true, Henry and he had plotted to destroy his guest—but the storm might be a coincidence; Coningsby might be safe; in an ordinary storm he would be; it wasn’t as if, all put together, it was a long distance or a great danger, unless—unless the snow and wind had been aimed at him. If they were not, if it was chance, if indeed the Tarots and the images had no power in themselves and were but passive reflections of more universal things, if the mystery of both was but a mystery of knowledge and prophecy and not of creation and direction—why then—the stranger would come back safely, and, if he did, why then they would all be safe.
That some of the paintings should be lost was indeed a catastrophe; no one now could justly divine the movement of the images and their meaning. The telling of fortunes would be forever but a childish game, and never the science of wisdom. But he would be alive. The long study in which he had spent his years might partly fail. But he would be alive. On the very verge of destruction, he cried out against destruction; he demanded a sign, and the sign was given him. Lothair Coningsby came stumbling into the hall, and when Aaron saw him he drew great breaths of relief. The storm was but natural; it would cease.
In this recovered quiet of mind he was able to deal with immediate practical questions; he was even able to confront Joanna with his old jealousy and hatred. Since, many years before, the images had come into his possession, since his father and he had—oh, away in his boyhood!—taken them (with what awful and breathless care! what almost eye-shutting reverence!) from the great round old silver case, only some six inches high, but marvelously huge in diameter—in which for centuries, so his father had told him, this hidden secret of the gipsies had been borne about the world, covered by wrappings and disguises, carried in wagons and carts, unknown even to most of their own wandering bands, who went straying on and did not know that one band of all those restless companies possessed the mystery which long since some wise adept of philosophical truths had made in the lands of the east or the secret houses of Europe: Egyptian or Jew or Christian heretic—Paulician, Bogophil, or Nestorian—or perhaps still farther off in the desert-circled empire of Abyssinia, for there were hints of all in the strange medley of the sign-bearing images, and the symbols wore no accepted or traditional aspect.
Their familiarity was foreign, they had been before the building of churches and sects, aboriginal, infinite; but, from wherever they came, he who had made them, and the papyrus paintings with them, up to seventy-eight degrees of knowledge, had cased and hidden them, and sent them out on everlasting wanderings without as they kept among themselves the everlasting dance within. But at that making and hiding the Tarot cards had lain in due mysterious order on and about the golden base of the Tarot images, each subtly vibrating to the movements of its mightier golden original, as that in turn moved in correspondence to the movement of that full and separate center of the created dance which it microcosmically symbolized. There was to be a time, the legends said, when one should arise who should understand the mystery of the cards and the images, and by due subjection in victory and victory in subjection should come to a secret beyond all, which secret—it had always b
een supposed by those few who had looked on the shapes, and few they had been even over the centuries—had itself to do with the rigid figure of the Fool. But the dark fate that falls on all mystical presentations, perhaps because they are not presentations only, had fallen on this. The doom which struck Osiris in the secular memory of Egypt and hushed the holy, sweet, and terrible Tetragrammaton in the ritual of Judah, and wounded the Keeper of the Grail in the Castle of the Grail, and by the hand of the blind Hoder pierced the loveliest of all the Northern gods, and after all those still everywhere smote and divided and wounded and overthrew and destroyed; by the sin of man and yet by more and other than the sin of man, for the myth of gods and rebellious angels had been invoked—by reason, no doubt, to explain, but by something deeper than reason to frame the sense of a dreadful necessity in things: the need that was and yet must not be allowed to be, the inevitability that must be denied, the fate that must be rejected, so only and only by such contradictions of mortal thought did the nature of the universe make itself felt by man.
Prophesied within itself by the Tower that fell continually or by the fearful shape of Set who was the worker of iniquity ruling over his blinded victims, prophesied thus within itself, the doom came to pass on the mystery of the images, none knew when, for some said as long since as the son of the first maker, who fell from his father’s wisdom, and others but in the very generation that preceded the speaker’s. But, whenever the sin was done, it chanced upon a night that one opened the silver case, sealed with zodiacal signs and, daring the illustrious beauty that shone forth, thrust in his hands and tore out the translucent painted leaves, thinking that by them alone he might tell the fortunes of men and grow rich by his fellows’ yearning to know what was to be, or wantonly please an idle woman in the low chambers of Kieff or Paris. The images he dared not touch and the golden base that carried them he could not. So he fled, completing the sacrilege, and died wretchedly, the tale said, but rather because it was thought proper that the sinner should suffer than because anything certain was known. Thus the leaves of the presentation were carried one way, and the golden shapes another, and the people of the secret waited in hope and despair, as Israel languishes till the Return, and the Keeper till the coming of the Haut Prince, and Osiris the slain till Horus overcomes his foes, and Balder in the place of shades till after Ragnarok, and all mankind till the confusion of substance be abolished and the unity of person be proclaimed. But, even when the paintings had been found by chance and fate and high direction in the house of Lothair Coningsby, yet the wills of the finders had been set on their own purposes, on experiment of human creation or knowledge of human futurity, and again the mystical severance had manifested in action the exile of the will from its end.